The Best Containers for Spices: Glass Jars, Tins, Plastic and Bags Compared

Is that rack of spice jars over the stove doing your spices any favors? Probably not. The best home for a dried spice is a small glass jar with a tight lid, kept in a cupboard or drawer away from the stove. No container can stop a spice from fading, but the wrong one can speed it up: in one study, a dried herb stored in thin polyethylene film lost 87% of its aroma compounds in six months.¹ And the form of the spice matters more than the jar.

At a glance

What a container has to do

The UC Cooperative Extension names four things that speed the loss of flavor and color in herbs and spices: air, light, moisture and heat. America’s Test Kitchen names heat, light and moisture. A container can handle air and moisture directly. Light and heat mostly come down to where you put it.

• Air: keep the spice in a tightly covered container.
• Light: keep it in a dark place away from sunlight.
• Moisture: keep moisture out of the container while you use it: take spice out with a dry spoon, and don’t shake it straight from the jar over a steaming pot.
• Heat: don’t store spices above the stove, dishwasher, microwave or refrigerator, or near a sink or heating vent. ATK also says to keep them off the counter near the stove.

Glass jars

Every source we found recommends glass. America’s Test Kitchen’s spice storage review says glass is best, because it doesn’t react with the oils in spices or absorb flavors and odors the way plastic does.³ A separate ATK article says the same.

Clear glass lets you see what’s inside, which is handy, but the jar itself does nothing about light. ATK’s answer is placement: keep spices somewhere cool and dark, since heat and light make them go bad faster, in a cabinet or drawer that isn’t near the stove or oven. It says to skip countertop racks unless you have no other space.

Amber or other tinted glass is often sold as light-blocking. We found no test comparing tinted and clear jars for spice quality, so we can’t say how much difference it makes inside a dark cupboard.

Size. ATK’s makeover used a set of 4-ounce, square-sided glass jars.⁴ Smaller is generally better, but the extension’s reason is turnover, not headspace: buy a smaller container until you know how fast you go through a particular spice. ATK also recommends buying most spices in small amounts. You’ll often hear that the empty air in a half-full jar is what makes the spice go stale. We found no measurement of that.

Labels. ATK recommends labeling the lids and storing the jars below eye level, for visibility.

Metal tins

Tins keep light out completely, and a tin with a tight lid counts as a tightly covered container. Beyond that, we found no study or test comparing tins with glass for flavor, and no source ranking metal second after glass. ATK’s review mentions tins only as one of the container shapes a good rack should hold.

Plastic bottles and tubs

Plenty of spices come in plastic. ATK’s position is that glass doesn’t absorb flavors or odors or react with the volatile oils in some spices, “as plastics can.”⁴ That’s a reason to prefer glass for long storage, especially if you refill the same container with different spices. It isn’t a measured shelf-life difference, though; we found no test putting a number on it for kitchen spices.

Plastic bags

There’s one useful piece of evidence here, though it isn’t about a kitchen spice. A 2013 Queensland study stored three dried Australian native herbs, lemon myrtle, anise myrtle and Tasmanian pepper leaf, in different packaging for six months at room temperature. The authors note that the standard polyethylene packaging used for these herbs had proven ineffective at preventing a significant loss of volatile compounds.¹

Source: Chaliha et al., 2013.¹ For anise myrtle and Tasmanian pepper leaf, losses in both high-barrier materials were below 30%.¹

Keep the scope in mind: this is one study, on three high-oil native herbs, in commercial packaging films. It didn’t test zipper-top kitchen bags. What it does show is that a thin polyethylene film can let a big share of a dried herb’s aroma escape over months, and that the barrier material makes a big difference. If you buy spices in bags, move them into a glass jar or use them up quickly.

Paper bags

We found no test of paper bags for spice storage. A paper bag isn’t a tightly covered container, which is the extension service’s first recommendation. If you have to use one briefly, whole spices hold up better: both the extension service and ATK give whole spices about twice the life of ground ones.

Whole spices keep longer than ground in any container

The form matters more than the container. America’s Test Kitchen advises buying spices whole whenever you can and grinding them just before use. Shelf-life guidance varies from source to source, but every one we found gives ground spices the same or a shorter life than whole:

These are quality windows, not safety dates, and we haven’t averaged them. For more, see do spices go bad?

The refrigerator

The extension service recommends refrigerating paprika, chili powder and red pepper for best color retention, especially in summer or in hot climates. A 1992 laboratory study of Hungarian paprika powders supports the point for paprika: after 150 days, untreated powder had lost an estimated 27% of its color at ambient temperature, against 15% under refrigeration. The same study found that adding antioxidants cut the loss further, but that’s a processing step, not something you can do at home.⁷ If you refrigerate a spice, keep it in a tightly covered container, same as anywhere else.

Related

• Do spices go bad?
• How long can spices last?
• How to store nutmeg
• How to store saffron
• How to store sage
• How to store thyme
• Dried herbs vs fresh
• Whole spices that keep well: black pepper, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon
• Paprika