How do I decide what spices to add to any dish?!

Spices are easy to learn and hard to master.

In general, you should be guided by the cultures who use the spices. The Italians favor basil, oregano, and parsley. The French use chervil, tarragon, rosemary, sage, and parsley. The Mexicans use cumin and chile, with some oregano and cilantro. Northern Europeans like dill and caraway. The Indians use just about everything.

Everybody uses garlic and onions, as well as salt and pepper. Chile can also be added to nearly every cuisine.

(Technically, only seeds are spices. The things that come from leaves, like basil and cilantro, are really herbs. But they all live in your "spice rack". European cuisines use more herbs; Asian cuisines tend to spices. European cuisines mostly use spices for desserts: cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, etc that go into making pumpkin pies.)

So, let that be your guide. You probably don't want to combine tarragon with cumin; it'll taste weird. If you're a genius chef you can probably make that an avant garde taste combination, but home cooks should probably skip it. So when you're cooking from scratch, refer to a recipe to get an idea of what herbs and spices traditionally go into that dish.

Proportions are up to you. You can start with any recipe to get a rough idea, but that's where each cook is distinctive. The right amount of garlic, basil, and oregano for your spaghetti sauce will be a matter of experimentation.

A few other guidelines:
Fresh herbs are better than dried ones. Dried ones are often pointless, flavorless and dusty. The main exception is sage, which actually does taste better dried. Home-dried herbs will do OK. Spices are best bought whole, becuase they keep their flavor longer. A cheap coffee grinder will do to grind them. Spices (but not herbs) should usually be "toasted" or "bloomed", that is, heated in a hot dry pan, before being ground. It activates the flavor; they can't be heated enough inside the dish. You can also cook them in hot oil, either after grinding or if you want to leave them whole. Cooking in oil (either herbs or spices) helps get the flavor out of the spice and into the rest of the dish. The flavor compounds are often soluble in oil but not in water. This is especially true of garlic and onions. Dry herbs and spices require some time to spread their flavors in the dish, and should be added early. Fresh herbs should usually be added later, sometimes right at the very end, so keep their fresh flavors fresh. Salt, BTW, is a whole separate category. Everything needs salt, and not just to taste salty. It's necessary to the perception of flavor. Whole chapters are devoted to salt.

So, whenever you decide to cook on your own, just start with the spices and proportions usually used in that cuisine, and you won't go wrong. Fortunately, there's a wide range, and you can generally use double the amount in most recipes (or more) without destroying the dish.

Mastering it, on the other hand, takes years of tasting to find out what you like, so get cooking.

following recipes teaches you what goes together well and there is nothing wrong with that.
established recipes are designed by people who, in their time, also followed someone elses recipes and improved on them or added to them or created something perfectly new.
Until you know how to cook I would recommend you follow recipes until you have the basic cooking skills.
Unless of course you are independantly wealthy and can afford to waste perfectly good food and spices.
Then you can branch out and create your own.
If you think cooking for "real" is going without recipes you are wrong.
all a recipe is, is a set of instructions for a certain dish with a certain flavor. It is not a cheat sheet for those who cannot cook.
That is just arrogant thinking.

When I want to add a spice, and I have a drawer full of spice jars, I sniff each spice or herb and think about how it would taste with whatever it is I'm cooking. If I need to taste what's in the pot first, I do that, or I sniff the pot, then the spice or herb - maybe several times until I can decide.

Do not be afraid to experiment. If you're thinking of making a big batch of something, get it started and then put a small amount in a small pot and simmer it with the herb you're thinking of going with, then taste it.

I have found it takes about 20 minutes of simmering for most herbs/spices to meld nicely in the dish. The flavors of lots of spices seem enhanced after being in the refrigerator overnight following the cooking.

If you find a combination you like, write it down! Happy cooking!

When you're improvising a recipe with spices (and herbs, I presume), you sort of have to know what the spice tastes like on its own, how it might interact with other spices, and how it might taste with the other flavors in your dish.

Take cinnamon for instance: it actually does very well in savory dishes that have hot and spicy flavors. It's mostly used in American cooking for sweet dishes, however (like rice pudding or apple pie for instance) because that's how we think of it. However, in other countries, cinnamon is used as an undertone to much stronger tastes. In India, with curries; in SE Asia, with chillies, etc.

It will take some experimentation and you sort of need a "mental image of taste" to really get better at this kind of cooking skill.

If you have some favorites or standbys that you're used to, add one or two new spices to your repetoire and give them a try in some of your favorite dishes. There's not a lot of risk that you'll ruin a dish, but you might want to make a mental note that certain flavors don't play well together. There's really no "right or wrong" here, but there are some that you might not like. I wouldn't, for instance, add clove to something light-tasting (like a fish dish) but it's really good added to a hearty soup or stew of red meat -- if you add it sparingly. That's probably another good rule to remember: You can always add more, but you can't take it out.... So add a little at a time, taste and then adjust if necessary.

Good luck and happy cooking!

Bon Appetit!

My technique is to taste and smell the food you are making. Then open the jar of spices or crush the leaves, depending on whether they are dried or fresh ingredients, and smell them. If they smell like they belong in the food you are making (e.g. garlic does smell like it belongs in spaghetti sauce, while cinnamon doesn’t smell much like chicken pot pie to me), then add some and taste again.

Many cookbooks for regional cuisines and many about general cooking have lists of things to keep your pantry full. There are online lists for pantries, too. Look through some and see if a list feels right to you. That way, you’ll have some ingredients to do the smell test on.

Do this even if you already know basil goes in tomato sauce. It will tell you if the herbs and spices are getting old, as well as provide good practice. And by tasting before and after, you will quickly get good at estimating the amounts you need.

I actually have a crummy sense of smell, but this still works well for me if I am working off a recipe.

This is really hard one and good on you. I taught myself by trial and error. Start with the basics, like you know rosemary will go with lamb, basil matches tomatoes, you can use garlic with almost anything. If your not sure try adding just a little of something, and see how it tastes, if it's good you know you can use a little more next time. Just keep on playing, and have fun

chef

If you are making something Italian:

Garlic, tomatoes, onions, oregano, thyme, bay leaf, olive oil, fresh ground pepper

If you are making something Oriental

Garlic, ginger, soy, teryaki, fish sauce, hoisen sauce, scallions, canola oil

If you are making something Mexican

Garlic, tomatoes, onions, cumin, cilantro, peppers, chillies, olive oil, onions

There is a powerful research tool called a "computer"-oops, sorry, you have one, don't you?

Garlic and bacon grease. Nuff said.