Do dried herbs and spices go out of date?

[TWD89]

Got several that are varying levels of past their sell by date but all look fine... how long am I okay to keep them for? Seems a shame to throw them away when there’s nothing wrong with them!

I recently finished a jar of herbs I had at university. I graduated in 2000... They were a little muted flavourwise but still ok! My cupboard also holds a jar of chilli flakes a friend gave my mum when she returned to the States in 1990. I put some in a stew when she visited a few years ago. They were fine too. Some things lose flavour a bit, and fresh taste better, but I'd never throw them away because of the date.

I throw them away when they're a short time after the date on the jar.
They wouldn't do you any harm, but they might have lost their flavour, so the finished dish could taste better.

I keep them and use them until they don't smell of anything. They don't go off in the sense that they could make you sick, they just get less potent over time, that's why it doesn't make sense to buy herbs and spices in large quantities unless they're whole spices like peppercorns or cloves, or you use it all the time. (I buy 100g bags of ground cinnamon and cumin just because I seem to go through those at a rate of knots, but something like allspice I would never buy larger than 40g at a time.)

Haven't people used things dug up from tombs and burials in Egypt that have lasted thousands of years ?

We discovered a (sealed) packet or cajun spices for chicken that was dated 2014 a few weeks back. Came out a treat.

I think they lose their flavour but that’s about it. I wouldn’t throw them away.

Yes, they taste musty or very one-note. Depends a bit - things like ground cloves seem to me pretty indestructible, but herbs go musty pretty quickly. Obviously ground spices go off faster than non-ground.

Thy can lose their oils and flavour and spices can go mouldy. If the colour and texture are OK, they're usually fine, though.

In 1992 my late dm had a bag of cloves in a cupboard, double layered brown paper but unsealed and they still packed a punch. They were labelled PK Bottomley MPS from a time when pharmacists sold all sorts of things..

He got his MPS in 1906, retired in 1957, but the cloves were still going strong nearly 34 years later, probably still were when dm died in 2012.

I bought a full size sack of dried chilli, I’m now down to a small Tupperware box. I have had them for years.

Herbs definitely lose their flavour fairly quickly after the use-by date. I'm sure they won't poison you or anything, but they won't do the job they're meant to do any more, i.e. adding or enhancing flavour, so it seems fairly pointless to me to use them.

My mum is a terror for keeping herbs until they turn into brown powder in their jars, and even then she won't throw them away. She's still got some dried dill that she bought to put in some salmon vol au vents for my grandmother's funeral tea in 1990, and never used again. It looks like snuff now.

I don't think they go off, in terms of of going bad or making you ill but they lose their taste and potency and so there's no point using them.

For the few quid they cost I replace them when they have been open a while and approaching their best before date.

I use a pinch or two of celery salt a year, and I bought the jar in 1983. It's half-full and still going strong