Quatre Epices Spice Blend

Discovering good spices to use in cooking is essential on the Paleo diet.  You are limiting your salt intake and eliminating many fats and oils.  Basically, you are removing things from your food that makes it taste good.  Your food must taste good or you won’t eat it and will fall off of your diet.  When I started eating Paleo, I went on a quest for good spices and spice blends to use to replace the salt and fats that I was removing from my cooking.  I’ve fallen in love with Quatre Epices.

Quatre Epices is a classic French spice blend.  It literally means “Four Spices” in English and typically includes ground (usually white) pepper, cloves, nutmeg and dried ginger.  Some recipes substitute allspice for pepper and some substitute cinnamon for ginger, or include cinnamon as a fifth spice.

The Slope Paleo recipe includes all six of these spices so you could call it “six epices” but use it wherever Quatre Epices is called for.  I use it as an integral part of my duck recipes (confit and breast).  I also use it to season roasted squash seeds.

You can use ground spices, but I prefer to grind my own (except for the ginger of course – it needs to be dry after all).  Freshly ground spices pack more flavor into your food.  I typically double this recipe, because I use so much of it, but you are better off making it in smaller batches and grinding it with fresh spices as needed.  You are typically only using quatre epices in quantities of 1 tsp or less.

First, I grind the peppercorns, allspice, cloves and nutmeg together.  You are going to want to cut the nutmeg into pieces so it grinds well in a spice grinder.  I use a coffee grinder that I use exclusively for grinding spices.

Then I grind the cinnamon stick after breaking it into several pieces.  I process the cinnamon separately because I find it requires more time than the other spices and the goal is to have everything with the same granularity.

Finally, just mix everything together and store it in a spice jar.  Voila!

Print Recipe

Quatre Epices

Classic French spice blend

Cuisine

French

Servings

ounces

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp White Peppercorns
• 1/2 whole Nutmeg
• 12 whole Cloves
• 1 tbsp Allspice Berries
• 2 inch Cinnamon Stick
• 1 tsp Ground Ginger

Cuisine French Servings ounces Ingredients 1 tbsp White Peppercorns 1/2 whole Nutmeg 12 whole Cloves 1 tbsp Allspice Berries 2 inch Cinnamon Stick 1 tsp Ground Ginger

Instructions

1. Chop a whole nutmeg in half, and then cut one half into four smaller pieces
2. Put the nutmeg, allspice, peppercorns and cloves into a spice grinder and grind until fine.
3. Empty spice grinder into bowl
4. Break cinnamon stick into 2-3 pieces and grind in spice grinder until fine.
5. Empty spice grinder into bowl
6. Add ground ginger to bowl
7. Mix well and store in a spice jar