RawSpiceBar November 2015 “Ethiopia” Spice Subscription Review and 50% Off Coupon

Yes, there’s a subscription for everything! RawSpiceBar sends freshly toasted and ground spices to your door every month. Also included are recipes to help you make the most of what you’ve been sent. Each month focuses on a different region of the world so you  never know what will be arriving but you can be sure you’ll get out of your cooking comfort zone. Or at least it gets me out of mine.

The Cost: $6/month

What You Get: 3 freshly ground spices & blends with a new regional theme
Kitchen-tested recipes for cooking 3 global dishes serving 4-6
Spice stories & culinary history of each new region
Surprises like bonus spices, toasting tips, discounts and other fun stuff

Berbere– This is a smoky, spicy, mouthwatering blend of one of the most traditional and famous Ethiopian spice blends. It’s used in stews, on meats and poultry and can be used as a rub for roasted veggies. You can even stir it into oil and vinegar! Basically its in everything.
It’s composed of dried chilies, sweet paprika, coriander, ginger, cardamom, fenugreek, nutmeg, allspice, cloves and black peppercorns. All ground into a powder and smelling like heaven. Mmm!
Ethiopian Mitmitma– Made of African Birds Eye Chili Peppers, dried red chilies, cardamom, black peppercorns and garlic, this blend is potent and powerful. I nearly burned my nose hairs off breathing it in. It smells absolutely fantastic and I can’t wait to use it!
My husband loves spicy stuff and one of the included recipes is for Key Wat which is a spicy Ethiopian stewed beef dish. It’s going to be sooo gooood!
Pumpkin Pie Spice– I had to laugh when I saw this because this is definitely not Ethiopian. But it is November and Thanksgiving is filled with pumpkin pies, so I can see why they included it. Hey, I appreciate the nod to the holidays! Even funnier is that they included a recipe for a traditional Ethiopian Dabo Kolo (ricotta donuts) that adds in this spice blend to make it fit better with the theme. The blend includes cinnamon, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, mace, star anise and… wait for it… spices. Er… why list something as a “spice” when it’s a spice blend. Seems weird you wouldn’t just name the rest of the spices. Hm. The smell is glorious. Whatever’s in there makes my nose happy. I won’t make ricotta donuts or pumpkin pie with this but it probably will become part of some dessert. I just have to figure out which one.
VERDICT: What I love about RawSpiceBar, is they really stretch my horizons when it comes to cooking. I’ve tried SO many delicious spice blends in dishes I never would have known otherwise. It’s really one of the best benefits of this subscription. I do wish, though, that there was a way to get more since it’s impossible to find some of the ones they’ve created over the last year. I also am disappointed to see that the spice blends continue to be less than one ounce. Honestly, I think it’s still worth the six bucks but I do NOT like the fact that they aren’t meeting the terms of what they say they will deliver. I also wish they’d go back to the resealable packets since it makes storing them so much easier.

If you would like to sign up for RawSpiceBar, you can do that right here. There’s a special deal running right now, too! Use code freshspices to get 50% off your first shipment! If you sign up now, you’ll start with Decembers delivery.

Do you subscribe to RawSpiceBar? What do you think of it?