How to spot a fake spice.
Spices are among the most adulterated foods sold in India. Almost every test is a glass of water and two minutes. Run them on ours too — that is the point.
Adulteration is rarely exotic. It is chalk, sawdust, starch, dye, and cheaper seed dressed up as expensive seed. Most of it fails the moment it meets water, because the filler behaves differently from the spice.
Several of the tests below come from DART — Detect Adulteration with Rapid Test — a booklet of more than fifty household checks published by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India. It is free, and worth a read.
The glass of water
Do this: stir a teaspoon of turmeric into a glass of water and let it settle.
Pure: the powder sinks and leaves the water a pale, weak yellow.
Adulterated: a strong, bright yellow bleeds through the water as it settles. That is dye, most often metanil yellow — an industrial colour, not a food one.
FSSAI DART
Float or sink
Do this: drop a spoon of peppercorns into a glass of water.
Pure: mature peppercorns are dense. They sink.
Adulterated: dried papaya seeds float. They look close enough to pepper in a jar and cost a fraction of it.
FSSAI DART
White paper, then warm water
Do this: tip the threads onto white paper, then drop a few into warm water.
Real: red to deep orange along the whole thread. In water the colour releases slowly and the thread stays red.
Not: a yellow or white tail means the pale style is still attached — weight, sold at saffron prices. Colour that floods out at once and leaves the thread pale is dye.
Look at the end of the quill
Do this: look at the cut end, then try to snap it.
Ceylon: many paper-thin layers rolled together, under a millimetre thick. It crumbles.
Cassia: one thick, hard curl of bark. It snaps rather than crumbles, and carries far more coumarin.
Sprinkle, do not stir
Do this: sprinkle the powder onto the surface of a glass of water and wait.
Pure: it wets and sinks.
Adulterated: sawdust and powdered bran sit on the surface and refuse to go down.
FSSAI DART
Smell it, then float it
Do this: crush a little between your palms and smell, then float the powder.
Pure: sharply citrus, almost soapy-fresh.
Adulterated: flat and dusty. Ground coriander is commonly cut with starch, husk or worse, and the smell goes first.
Wet cotton wool
Do this: rub the seed on damp cotton wool or a wet white cloth.
Pure: the cotton stays clean.
Adulterated: green comes off on the cotton. Tired seed is often re-coloured to look fresh.
Bend it
Do this: wrap a bean around your finger.
Good: supple and slightly oily. It bends without breaking and smells sweet from the pod itself.
Not: brittle beans that crack are old or over-dried, and the seeds inside will be dry and thin.
We would rather you ran these than took our word. Every VIROOT pack carries a batch number, the harvest month and the packing date, so what you test can be traced back to a specific lot rather than to a promise.
If a VIROOT spice ever fails one of these tests, tell us which batch it was and we will replace it and go back to the lot. That is what the batch number is for.