When to Throw Out Your Herbs and Spices (and What Still Works)

Revised September 1, 2026

Imagine it is a Sunday afternoon in Affton and you have finally pulled everything out of the spice cabinet. There are four jars of cinnamon. There is a container of oregano with a lid that does not want to come off. Behind the vanilla there is a bag of something green that has faded to roughly the color of dust.

Imagine the same scene in a Maplewood galley kitchen where the rack sits directly above the stove, or a Florissant pantry where the paprika has gone the color of a paper bag. Picture a cabinet in St. Charles holding poultry seasoning bought for one Thanksgiving several presidents ago, and a drawer in Dogtown with three half-empty jars of garlic powder because nobody could ever find the first two.

Here is the part that surprises most people. Almost none of that is going to hurt you. The real question is not whether the jar is dangerous. It is whether the jar still does anything, and that turns out to be a much easier thing to test than anyone expects.

So below: how long each type actually lasts, the three signs a jar is finished, the one that never expires at all, and what to do with the ones that are simply tired.

Do dried herbs and spices actually go bad?

Not in the way most people fear. Dried herbs and spices do not spoil and do not become unsafe to eat, and an old jar is not going to make anyone sick. What they lose is aroma and flavor, gradually, until a spoonful does almost nothing to a pot of soup. Healthline makes exactly that point in its rundown of whether spices expire.

The reason comes down to water, or the absence of it. Drying removes the moisture that bacteria and mold need in order to grow, which is why a jar of dried thyme in a cabinet behaves nothing like a bunch of fresh thyme in the crisper drawer. Fresh herbs wilt and rot on a schedule. Dried herbs just quietly fade.

What degrades is the volatile oil. That is the compound doing the smelling and most of the tasting, and it evaporates over time. Heat pulls it out faster. So do light, air and humidity. Nothing in the jar turns hazardous along the way. It turns into green confetti.

Which means the honest way to think about that shelf is performance, not safety. A dried herb past its window is not contaminated. It is weak. And cooking with a weak jar has a real cost, because you season the dish, taste nothing, and then reach for salt to compensate for a flavor that was never going to show up.

How long do herbs and spices really last?

Longer than the date stamped on the jar suggests, and the answer depends entirely on the form. McCormick puts the ranges at one to three years for dried herbs, two to three years for ground spices, three to four years for whole spices, and one to two years for seasoning blends.

• Dried herbs (basil, oregano, parsley, thyme, dill, bay leaves): 1 to 3 years.
• Ground spices (cinnamon, cumin, paprika, turmeric, ginger, chili powder): 2 to 3 years.
• Whole spices (peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, nutmeg): 3 to 4 years.
• Seasoning blends (taco, Italian, pumpkin pie, curry powder, ranch): 1 to 2 years.

Read those as quality windows rather than safety deadlines, because that is what they are. Nothing switches off on the last day of year three. A jar simply keeps sliding down a gentle slope, and somewhere on that slope it stops being worth the cabinet space it occupies.

Why do whole spices last longer than ground ones?

Surface area, mostly. An intact peppercorn or a cinnamon stick keeps its oils sealed inside a structure that air cannot get at. Grinding shatters that structure and exposes everything at once, which is exactly why fresh-ground pepper smells like something and the pre-ground stuff at a diner smells like paper.

This is the single best lever most home cooks have, and it costs nothing to pull. Buy whole where it is practical, grind what you need, and a jar that would have faded in two years holds up closer to four. Peppercorns, cumin seed, coriander seed, cloves and nutmeg all reward this. A cheap blade grinder or a microplane covers most of it.

Can you eat 20 year old spices?

Almost certainly yes, which is the genuinely strange thing about spices. Because dried spices do not spoil or become unsafe, a twenty year old jar of coriander is not a health hazard. It is just tired. Expect close to no aroma and close to no flavor. The one real exception is a jar that got wet somewhere along the way.

That exception matters more than the age does. If the contents have caked into lumps, moisture found a way in at some point, and moisture is the one thing that can lead to mold inside an otherwise stable jar. Lumps are a signal to throw it out, not a problem to solve by breaking them up with a fork.

Assuming it is dry and loose, the test takes about five seconds. Tip a pinch into your palm, crush it between your fingers, and smell it. Something identifiable coming back means there is still fuel in the tank. A vague dusty nothing means the jar has been finished for years and nobody noticed.

Would we cook with two decade old spices? In practice, no, and not because of any risk. It is that you cannot season food with an ingredient that has nothing left to give. You end up adding three times as much, getting a chalky texture, and still wondering why the chili tastes flat.

Which spices never expire?

Salt is the honest answer, and it is the only one on the shelf that earns the word. Salt does not expire. It is a mineral rather than plant material, so there is no volatile oil in it to evaporate and nothing to fade. A box of kosher salt from ten years ago is the same box of kosher salt it was on day one.

Be careful with the things that look like salt and are not. Seasoned salt, garlic salt, celery salt and most of the shaker blends contain dried plant material mixed in, and that portion behaves like every other blend. The salt half is immortal. The flavor half is on a clock.

Everything else has a window, though “expire” stays the wrong verb for all of it. Nothing in the cabinet turns into a safety problem the way milk does. It fades, which is a completely different kind of failure and calls for a completely different response.

What are the signs it is time to throw a jar out?

There are three, and you can check all of them in under a minute: a faint smell when you rub the contents in your hand, caking or lumps inside the jar, and a color that has visibly faded. Two of those are about flavor. One of them, caking, is the only one that is genuinely non-negotiable.

The rub test

Tip a small amount into your palm and crush it between your fingers. Warmth and friction release whatever volatile oil is still in there, which is the whole point of the exercise. If you get a clear hit of the thing it is supposed to be, the jar works. If you get dust, it does not.

In our experience, the trap here is that your nose adjusts. You have smelled that weak oregano for six years, so it smells like oregano to you. Buying one fresh jar and smelling them side by side is a slightly humbling exercise, and it is the fastest way to recalibrate a whole cabinet at once.

Caking, clumping and moisture

Lumps are the one sign that is about more than flavor. Caking means moisture got into the jar, and moisture is what can lead to mold in something that was previously stable and dry. Do not chip the clumps apart and carry on. That jar goes in the trash, and the decision is not a close call.

How does the water get in? Usually the same way every single time. Somebody shakes the jar directly over a steaming pot, steam rises into the open holes, and a few drops condense on the inside. Do that twice a week for a year and the garlic powder becomes a brick.

Faded color

Color is the slowest signal and the easiest to read from across the kitchen. Paprika that has gone from brick red to a pale rust. Oregano that has drifted from green toward gray-brown. Turmeric that has lost its glow and looks like sand. When the pigment goes, the aroma has usually been gone for a while already.

Can I use 10 year old cinnamon?

You can, and it will not hurt you, but ground cinnamon at ten years old sits far outside the two to three year window McCormick gives for ground spices. It is safe. It is also probably not doing the job you are asking of it, and cinnamon is one of the easier failures to taste.

Run the rub test before you decide. Ground cinnamon that still smells warm and sweet in your palm has something left, and doubling the amount in a recipe covers a fair bit of the gap. Ground cinnamon that smells like a cardboard box is finished, and no amount of it will fix that.

A cinnamon stick from the same decade is a different conversation entirely. Whole spices hold on longer, and a stick that still smells like cinnamon when you scratch it will do fine in mulled cider or a pot of rice pudding. That is the whole-versus-ground gap showing up in a real cabinet.

The recipe decides how much this matters. In snickerdoodles or cinnamon toast, cinnamon is the entire event and a weak jar ruins it. In a pot of chili where it is a background note behind cumin and chili powder, an older jar disappears into the mix and nobody files a complaint.

Can you keep spices for 10 years?

You can keep them safely, since dried spices do not spoil. Whether you should is a separate question, and the answer is usually no. Ten years clears every quality window on the list by a wide margin, including the three to four years McCormick gives whole spices, which are the longest-lived category there is.

There is a hidden cost to holding on, and it is not the money. It is that a cabinet full of dead jars makes cooking worse without ever announcing itself. You reach for cumin, add a teaspoon, taste nothing, add another teaspoon, and end up with a gritty pot of beans that still needs help. Nobody blames the jar. Everybody blames the recipe.

A once-a-year sweep handles it. Pick a date you will remember, pull everything out, rub-test each jar, and toss what has nothing left. Ten minutes, once a year. Most households find they are keeping eight jars they never open and are out of the two they use constantly.

Buying habits are the other half of the fix. A large club-size container of a spice you use twice a year is a false economy, because most of it fades before it gets used. Small jar, used up, replaced. That is cheaper in practice than a big jar that lives to see a decade, and it is the same logic that runs through cutting a St. Louis grocery bill generally.

Spices are cheap. Meat is not. See whether a St. Louis butcher beats the grocery store.

Does taco seasoning go bad?

It fades faster than nearly anything else in the drawer. Seasoning blends run one to two years by McCormick’s reckoning, the shortest window of any category, and taco seasoning is a blend. It will not turn unsafe. It will turn into a packet of salt with some beige powder in it.

Blends fade unevenly, and that is the part people miss. A taco packet is chili powder, cumin, paprika, garlic, onion, oregano and salt, all sitting in one container on different clocks. The salt is unchanged forever. The oregano is the first to go. So an old packet does not just taste weaker, it tastes saltier and flatter than it used to, because the balance shifted while it sat there.

Same story for the rest of that shelf. Italian seasoning, pumpkin pie spice, curry powder, lemon pepper, ranch mix, everything bagel blend. Rub-test them the same way, and if a blend is past two years and smells like not much, replace it. These are the cheapest jars in the cabinet to refresh and the ones that pay you back fastest.

How should you store spices so they last?

Cool, dark, dry and closed. Heat, light, air and moisture are the four things that pull volatile oil out of a jar, and every storage rule worth following is just a way of blocking one of them. Get the storage right and you land at the long end of every range above instead of the short end.

• Get them off the stove. A rack mounted above the range is the most common kitchen mistake in America. It is convenient, and it is the hottest, steamiest spot in the room.
• Keep them out of direct sun. A cabinet or a drawer beats an open shelf under a window, and opaque containers beat clear glass if you have the choice.
• Never shake over a steaming pot. Measure into your hand or a spoon over the counter, then add. This one habit prevents most caking.
• Close the lids all the way. Air is a slow leak on flavor, and a half-turned cap is a jar with the door left open.
• Buy small for anything you use rarely. Bulk makes sense for the jars you empty. It makes no sense for the ones you open twice a year.
• Write the date on the jar. A marker on the lid the day it comes home removes all the guesswork later.

Refrigeration is not the answer, by the way, and it is a fairly common instinct. Moving jars in and out of a cold fridge invites condensation every time the lid comes off in a warm kitchen, which is the exact problem you were trying to avoid. A dry cabinet away from the stove beats the fridge for anything dried.

What can you do with spices that have faded?

Use more of them, first of all. A dried herb sitting at year four is weak rather than useless, and doubling the amount in a long-simmered dish is a perfectly legitimate move. Soups, stews, braises, chili and tomato sauce are forgiving in a way that a vinaigrette or a spice rub is not.

Faded turmeric is a good example of the split between the two things a spice does. It holds color long after the aroma has gone quiet, so an older jar can still tint rice, a dressing or a pot of lentils even when it contributes very little flavor. Same with paprika that has gone pale, in our experience: it will still color a deviled egg.

Whole cloves are the other one worth keeping around past their prime. Even a tired jar tends to hold a little scent, which makes them fine for a simmer pot with orange peel and a cinnamon stick, or for studding an onion in a stock where nobody expects fireworks. Cooking with them is optional. Making the kitchen smell like fall is not.

And when a jar is genuinely finished, or when it has caked, let it go. Compost or trash, both fine. Keeping a dead jar because it feels wasteful is how a cabinet ends up with four cinnamons and no room for the one that works.

Where do you find herbs and spices near you?

Frequently asked questions

Which spices never expire?

Salt. It is a mineral, not plant material, so it has no volatile oil to lose and no color to fade. A box from a decade ago performs exactly as it did new. Blends built on salt are a different case, because seasoned salt, garlic salt and celery salt all carry dried plant material that fades on the usual schedule. Everything else in the cabinet has a quality window, though none of it becomes unsafe.

Can you keep spices for 10 years?

Safely, yes, since dried spices do not spoil. Usefully, rarely. Ten years is well past every range McCormick lists, including three to four years for whole spices, which last longest. Rub a pinch in your palm and smell it. If something identifiable comes back, the jar still has a job in a long-simmered dish. If it smells like dust, throw it out. And if it has caked into lumps, that one goes regardless of age.

Can I use 10 year old cinnamon?

It is safe to use, but ground cinnamon at ten years is far outside the two to three year window for ground spices. Crush a pinch in your fingers first. Still warm and sweet, and it will work in something forgiving like chili or oatmeal, especially if you use extra. Smells like cardboard, and it is done. A whole cinnamon stick of the same age often holds up better, since whole spices keep their oils sealed in longer.

What to do with expired turmeric powder?

Turmeric loses aroma faster than it loses color, so an older jar still earns a place if you want the golden tint in rice, lentils, a dressing or scrambled eggs. Use noticeably more than the recipe asks for and taste as you go. If the powder has caked or lumped, moisture got in and it should go in the trash instead. Once it is pale and smells like nothing at all, replace it rather than fighting with it.

What can you do with expired cloves?

Whole cloves are one of the longer-lasting things in a cabinet, and even a tired jar tends to keep a little scent. Scratch one with a fingernail and smell it. If there is anything there, use them in a stovetop simmer pot with orange peel and a cinnamon stick, stud an onion for a stock, or drop a few into mulled cider. Ground clove fades faster. If it is caked or smells flat, it is finished.

Does taco seasoning go bad?

It does not become unsafe, but it fades quickly. Seasoning blends carry the shortest window of any category at one to two years, and taco seasoning is a blend of chili powder, cumin, paprika, garlic, onion, oregano and salt. The herbs fade first while the salt stays exactly as salty, so an old packet reads flat and oddly salty. Rub-test it, and if it smells like very little, a fresh packet is a cheap fix.

Do salt and pepper expire?

Salt does not expire at all. Pepper does fade, and how fast depends on the form. Whole peppercorns sit in the three to four year range for whole spices and hold their aroma well, while pre-ground black pepper follows the two to three year window for ground spices and loses its bite considerably sooner. A grinder full of whole peppercorns is the single easiest upgrade most kitchens can make.

How should I store spices so they last longer?

Cool, dark, dry and tightly closed. Move the rack off the wall above the stove, keep jars out of direct sunlight, and never shake a container over a steaming pot, since that steam is what causes caking. Measure into your hand or a spoon away from the heat, close lids fully, and buy small quantities of anything you use rarely. Writing the purchase date on the lid takes two seconds and settles every future argument.

More St. Louis food guides

• Is a St. Louis butcher cheaper than the grocery store
• How to cut your St. Louis grocery bill
• How to shop a health food store in St. Louis

About the Author: The St Louis Near Me Directory Team
Written by a dedicated team of St. Louis locals who live, work, and play right here in the St. Louis metro. Founder Lane Forman and team are committed to building the region’s most trusted directory by verifying listings and connecting local businesses with loyal customers across Missouri and Illinois.

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