More about Penzey's.....

I have a Penzey's 7 miles from my house so I get there quite often. As I entered the store yesterday an exiting shopper gave me a coupon from their catalog for a free sample. I normally buy only a few of their spice mixes but I accepted their newest, salt free mix freebie but was dumbfounded when I read the contents carefully after returning home. I have not had time to research but wonder why they found it necessary to include " spice extractives [ including oleoresin of celery. rosemary, black pepper, thyme, basil, paprika]". That was in addition to the tellicherry pepper, onion, paprika, garlic, tumeric that headed up the list.
Not wanting to dismiss it out of hand, I scrambled up an egg and sprinkled some in. The clerk mentioned that this was a particularly apt usage. The smell of the mix is great but cooked it had a distinct taste of stale oil [ I used unsalted butter as I mostly do for scrambled eggs]
The only other outstanding thing from the shopping trip was an awareness of the huge jump in prices. I shop there fairly often and this was the first time I had sticker shock.
Are they resorting to the "oleoresin of spice extractives" to boost the flavors at lesser cost ? Has the demand outstripped the supply ?
I really love Penzey's, a Wisconsin native business that has succeeded and I won't pass general judgment for this one item but I hope that it is not a foretaste of things to come.

The last batch of Penzey's I bought from the internet was no better than supermarket, where the blends are comparable.
I've found a spice shop that I like better, called Savory. They're a franchise outfit and have a store in downtown Santa Rosa, walking
distance for me. Small shop, nice folks behind the counter. I talked to the boss and apparently her aunt started the chain. It's headquartered in Colorado.

John

We have not seen any decrease in quality on the items we frequently purchase. Out of curiosity, I compared prices on 5 items we frequently use from the 2009 catalog with the current 2011 catalog. The prices on these 5 items has increased about 9%, or ~4.5% annually. Most of these spices are imported and the increased price most likely reflect higher transportation costs and the relatively weak $$.
Nevertheless, the amount of the increase seen by an individual purchaser will obviously differ based upon their buying patterns.

Agree with Winger. No problems here.

I use it when I want to purchase spices/herbs with more specificity than I can find at other locations.

I have always found Penzey's quality to be very, very good for a commercial outfit. I don't have time to visit every specialty store, or wring them out of Salil.

Any comments about the use of "oleoresin spice extractives " ? Does anyone understand what this means and why they would use it rather than the ordinary spices ?

[Jenise]

Any comments about the use of "oleoresin spice extractives " ? Does anyone understand what this means and why they would use it rather than the ordinary spices ?

Other than to say 'oleo' + 'resin' sounds like something to be suspicious of, I can't imagine. Where are the scientists?

Any comments about the use of "oleoresin spice extractives " ? Does anyone understand what this means and why they would use it rather than the ordinary spices ?

Other than to say 'oleo' + 'resin' sounds like something to be suspicious of, I can't imagine. Where are the scientists?

Not a scientist (but one should be along soon), but oleoresin prolly just refers to extraction of essential oils and saps to obtain intense flavors thereof. I believe you can do that either through cold extraction or hot extraction (like distillation). As in, putting the flavor of juniper in gin: some gins are 'compounded', that is, vodka flavored with the extracted oils of juniper, or 'juniper essence.' Suspect this is much the same....enhancing the flavor of the ingredients.

Hoke has it right. Nearly all of the flavors in spices come from highly volatile, non-polar organic compounds (essential oils). You can extract these from the raw spice by grinding the spice very fine and then either distilling it or mixing it with a non-polar solvent (such as fat or oil) and filtering out the solids. Distillation gives you the pure essential oils. Extracting with a non-polar solvent gives you a flavored oil. In this case they used a non-polar solvent, giving an oleoresin as the result.

This potentially can give you a more concentrated spice flavor, but it is never quite the same as using the raw spice.

-Paul W.

I thought I would give this a "bump" since we have a resurrected 2006 thread.

Frankly I am a little alarmed that they are so enthusiastic in pushing these new generic "one size fits all" flavoring mixtures, especially since they also have oleoresins etc. included.

But then again -- one can simply refuse to buy them and ignore them, and the OTHER stuff seems pretty much as good as ever.

Hmm, wasn't there also a thread about a major Penzey's store closing in Manhattan?

I was in the store the other day and decided to look at a bunch of different things. YIKES ! A lot of mixes have the oleoresin spice extractives.
I can tell you from the freebie sample it was not a positive experience....and that was BEFORE I read the label. The only reason I read the label was because I had a distinctive odd old oil taste in my mouth after using it the first and only time.
I use only a few of the mixes but will be very careful from now on to carefully read the labels as they may change.
I understand that spice qualities vary according to temperature, rainfall, natural disasters etc. but I will be keeping an eye on the quality of everything there from now on.

Noticed the changes, too. So, I only buy stuff with natural seasonings - no oleoresins or any artificial sounding ingredients.

[Robin Garr]

Frankly I am a little alarmed that they are so enthusiastic in pushing these new generic "one size fits all" flavoring mixtures, especially since they also have oleoresins etc. included.

I was an early adopter of the original Penzey's, and still use them as my primary source for Tellicherry peppercorns. But the more they got into those generic mixes, the less interested I got. Irrespective of oleoresins. I don't want the mixes because, "frankly, my dear, I'd rather do it myself."

It appears to me that what we have here is a case of a quality small business that grew into a bigger business, got dollar signs in its eyes, and its priorities shifted. Too bad.

But I still like their Tellicherry.

I'm lazy so I've tried a number of the mixes. Many of them I like, especially southwestern ones. A lot of them are salt-free, but add plenty of flavor so I don't miss the salt (and if I do, I can add a pinch) I also buy a lot of their individual spices. Everything is so much fresher and full flavored compared to the grocery store spices.

The cassia in various forms that Penzey's sources is impressive. The Vietnamese is still all the rage---and it's good---but now they have a Chinese cinnamon that is outrageously good. Not for the faint of cinnamon heart tho.