Spice Up Your Health AND Your Recipes

We’ve scoured the internet to feature a variety of tasty recipes specifically selected to help you add the healing power of medicinal spices and healing herbs to your diet.

Evidence captured from medical research of common spices shows that their intake can have profound health benefits, even lowering cancer risk and suppressing negative tumor activity. To get the scoop on spices with scientifically validated evidence of health benefits, including disease prevention and healing, see our two recent articles The Medicine Cabinet in Your Kitchen and More on the Medicine Cabinet in Your Kitchen. For their culinary benefits, read on!

Recipes with Healthy Spices and Healing Herbs

Try these recipes, designed to use the healthiest kitchen spices. They’ll not only flavor your food but boost your health by using the medically researched spices and herbs allspice, basil, caraway, cardamom, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, clove, coriander, cumin, and garlic.

Allspice Recipes 

• Cincinnati Chili – You haven’t truly experienced Cincinnati unless you’ve had authentic Cincinnati chili served up at one of 170-plus well-known chili chain parlors, such as Skyline Chili and Gold Star Chili. But why wait for that next Cincy trip, when you can make this Authentic Cincinnati Chili recipe in your own kitchen? As a nice health bonus, the recipe uses lots of allspice.

• Spiced Nut Mix – If you haven’t the time or patience to make the chili recipe above, here’s a snack recipe that can be ready in an hour and uses several spices with outstanding health benefits, including allspice: Spiced nut mix.

Basil Recipes

• For a healthy hot breakfast with basil, try a Mushroom, Tomato, Basil Frittata.
• To boost your basil intake with a salad, here’s a Broiled Salmon Salad recipe.
• For the main course, try this Chicken Marsala, a Sicilian dish that uses a teaspoon of basil leaves.

Caraway Recipes

To get a day full of caraway, follow this plan:

• Do up your breakfast toast with this Pumpernickel Rye Bread recipe that uses a full tablespoon of caraway seeds.
• Enjoy a German Potato Salad for lunch, which uses 1-1/2 teaspoons of caraway seeds.
• Get carried away with caraway for dinner with Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Dijon, Walnuts & Crisp Crumbs as the side dish paired with Spice-Rubbed Roast Beef Tenderloin with Red Wine Sauce for your main course.
• And for dessert, enjoy some Irish Soda Bread Cookies.

Cardamom Recipes

To spice up your life with Cardamom, let’s go around the globe:

• Amsterdam Hippie Soymilk Chai, which uses 1 1/2 tablespoons whole cardamom.
• Get another 1 1/2 tablespoons ground cardamom with this Moroccan Lentil Soup recipe.
• Continue your culinary travels to the Caribbean for some Tropical Grilled Pork Chops, using a full pod of cardamom seeds.

Cayenne Pepper Recipes

These healthy cayenne recipes all come from whfoods.com, and are ideal when you’re in a hurry, since they can all be prepared and cooked in 30 minutes or less!

• Awaken your dinner with Lemon Fish with Puree of Sweet Peas, which also uses garlic.
• For a vegetarian diet, try Spicy Black Bean Burritos 
• Make a meatless Cajun Kidney Bean Chili recipe, rich in healthy spices, including garlic, cayenne, and cumin.

Cinnamon Recipes

An easy way to boost your cinnamon intake is to add it liberally to your smoothies.  For your kids, it doesn’t get easier than the classic cinnamon toast (for a healthier twist use honey instead of sugar).  For more healthy cinnamon recipes, try these:

• 10-Minute Energizing Oatmeal 
• Hot Polenta Breakfast with Dried Fruit Compote 
• 5 Spice Onion Soup (also uses cloves)
• Sweet Potatoes with Ginger and Cinnamon 

Clove Recipes

Cloves are a useful flavor addition to deserts, such as applesauce cake, cookies, desert sauces, and gingerbread.  It’s also popular in side dishes like baked beans, cranberry, and sauerbraten, or in spiced nut recipes.

• Clove Snaps – similar to the popular ginger snaps cookies, this clove snaps recipe gives a nice crunch but with a couple teaspoons of the health clove spice.
• Bourbon Sweet Potato Pie – Another clove-full dessert, Bourbon Sweet Potato Pie, looks just like pumpkin pie but uses sweet potatoes as the main ingredient, along with (you guessed it) ground cloves.

Coriander Recipes

• Hard-Boiled Eggs with Chiles – This recipe uses a full tablespoon of coriander seeds and creates a flavorful side dish with other healthy spices, including cumin and garlic.  Get the recipe here.
• Stuffed turkey breasts – This main course dish, Boudin Blanc–Stuffed Turkey Breasts with Chestnuts, includes a cornucopia of healthy spices, including coriander seeds, allspice, clove, and more.

Cumin Recipes

• Roast Chicken – This version of a popular American dish adds a nice Middle East flavor, thanks to its generous use of cumin, as well as allspice: Roast Chicken with Cumin, Paprika and Allspice.
• Classic Hummus – This traditionally Middle East dip has become popular throughout the U.S. To make it fresh, try this classic hummus recipe, which not only uses lots of cumin, but also garlic.

Also see the Authentic Cincinnati Chili recipe in the allspice section above – it uses lots of cumin too!

Garlic Recipes

Garlic is easy to add to just about any kind of dish. Some particularly healthy ways to boost your garlic:

• Try a Italian Tofu Frittata or Poached Eggs over Spinach breakfast.
• Enjoy a garlic-rich Marinated Bean Salad or Mediterranean Tabouli Salad for lunch.
• For dinner, start with Minestrone Surprise soup, 5-Minute Brussels Sprouts for a side dish, and Fettuccini with Spinach Pesto or Black Bean Chili for your entrée.

Spice up our lives!

Do you have recommendations or experience on recipes that use these medicinally healthy spices and herbs? Don’t keep that juicy gossip to yourselves – share here with your fellow readers by using the comments field below.


Ric Moxley
Contributing Writer