During this cold and wet weather, everyone craves recipes with warm herbs and spices. At this time of year, there are a few herbs and spices that always return: they warm you up and make everything smell wonderfully cozy. It's no wonder, then, that we start using them in the kitchen as the temperature drops outside and the days grow shorter. Let's take a look at three spices you can use to create the most delicious winter recipes.

One thing all these herbs and spices have in common is that their flavors and aromas are often described as warm or warming. That's why we love using them in fall and winter recipes. While you can use these herbs year-round, their richer flavors pair particularly well with the winter dishes we love to make during this colder season.

Warm up cold days with cloves
When you think of winter recipes, you quickly think of a warm stew or a delicious cabbage dish. Cloves are often paired with red cabbage. This spice has a peppery flavor and works well with red meat, such as beef or game. With this meat, the cloves should be simmered for a longer period of time so that the flavors are fully absorbed. This classic hachee needs to simmer for three hours with these and a number of wonderful spices that give the dish its flavor. It takes a while to cook, but when it's done, you'll have a delicious meal!

Cloves also pair beautifully with citrus fruits, like this combination of orange and cinnamon in a delicious chai latte . When cooking with cloves, it's recommended to stick the cloves into a suitable ingredient so you don't lose them, for example, the orange in the chai latte recipe.

Deliciously sweet with cinnamon
Mulled wine is another delicious drink to warm you up when you come in chilled. How you make it can vary depending on who you ask. We made it without alcohol, for example, with cinnamon and star anise, but cloves are also delicious.

Cinnamon is best known for its sweet and baking flavor, characterized by its characteristic aromatic, sweet, warm, woody taste, with a hint of bitterness. But this spice also works beautifully in stews, where it's important that the pod cooks for a long time to fully develop its flavor. Cinnamon is often used in curry pastes and bumbu, as well as in a variety of sweet baking recipes and fruit preserves. Apple is one of the fruits often paired with cinnamon; think of an apple turnover or this stuffed apple.

Winter queen cardamom
Cardamom's sweet, citrusy flavor is unique, and like cinnamon, it pairs well with a wide variety of ingredients. For this reason, cardamom is sometimes called the queen of herbs and spices; it truly complements everything.

Cardamom lends itself particularly well to beverages. In the Middle East, the spice is often added to coffee and tea, and like cinnamon, it's used in chai teas. This recipe for coffee cake with caramel sauce uses the spice particularly well. Something to look forward to with tea!

This pumpkin and cardamom risotto is a truly delicious winter recipe. The cardamom is simmered along with the risotto rice in the broth, and the pumpkin is baked until soft and tender in the oven.

The perfect combination
Another use for all three of these winter spices is: cookie spices! The spices used vary, but almost all recipes for cookie or speculaas spices include these three warm spices. With our ground spices, you can easily make your own speculaas spices. But you can also opt for our own cookie and speculaas mix .

Whatever you're making this winter, you can find all the herbs and spices you need in our webshop !