I grew up watching my mother and grandmother cook elaborate meals every day. Sometimes, I got to help with the prep work: chopping vegetables and yes, grinding spices. I watched the care and love they put into every dish and loved being let in on the little secrets of their cooking. I learned which spices pair with which recipes and how one green cardamom pod can transform a bowl of rice.

Once I moved to the United States, I found it very hard to find the South Indian ground spices and spice blends I grew up eating. What I did find in American stores was mass produced spices with ambiguous origins and long shelf lives. It was often impossible to tell how long a spice had been sitting on the shelf and many had faded in flavor by the time I brought them home. After years of having friends and family mail me fresh spices from India I started mixing my own spice blends at home. Before long, I was daydreaming about making high-quality, carefully sourced South Indian spices accessible to everyone here in the U.S. That’s how Spicytude™ was born, right there in my kitchen.

We now ship our carefully crafted spices nationwide. All of our spices are ground and packaged in small batches using fine ingredients. Most of our spices are ground personally just like I did in my mother’s kitchen. Ground spices are always limited in inventory as we grind them every month as needed for maximum freshness.

We’re also proud to share classic recipes, some passed down from my mother and grandmother and some fusion recipes to make cooking with these classic spices easy and fun for any home cook. I take as much care preparing Spicytude™ spices and recipes as my mother and grandmother did cooking meals for my family all those years ago, and I’m looking forward to offering more spices, spice blends, and even recipe kits to you in the future. And to this day I still appreciate just how much aroma and flavor one little green cardamom pod can add to a simple dish of rice.

- Arpi