How I tried to solve the issue of clumping of spices in the kitchen?
Approaching the solution with Design Thinking and Problem Solving.
Hey people, This is Subhranil; A designer, a food lover and a peace seeker in the mountains.
Context of the Problem Statement:
Ever experienced the problem of clumping of spices in the kitchen? Well, few days ago, I was in the kitchen preparing some snacks in the evening and while I was putting spices in the pan, I noticed that the spices got clumped, and I just opened the packet a few days back only.
This made me wonder why it happened and how can we avoid it. I asked my mother if this issue happens with other spices as well and she said that it happens with all spices, but she didn't know the reason behind it.
This triggered me to think about the problem and how we can avoid it. The designer in me got excited and started searching for the solution.
Research Phase:
Discovering the problem:
I had so many questions in my mind and to get a clear picture I listed down all the questions that I had in my mind.
- The first thing I did was to go through the internet and searched whether there are any solutions to this clumping problem.
- Why does clumping of spices happen?
- How does clumping of spices effect it’s quality?
- Who are we solving this problem for?
- I searched whether people have faced this problem and how much they have tried to solve it.
Answers:
- I found that the proposed solution is to use Air Tight Containers. But the constraints are that in the kitchen the temperature around is quite high and moisture gets trapped, this makes the spices get clumped.
2. Why Clumping take place: As for spices age, they naturally lose the essential oils within them. This loss of oils leads to flavor losses. The three biggest threats to spices are light, humidity, and oxygen. Light is particularly damaging to dried leafy herbs and pigmented spices, such as turmeric or saffron. When photosensitive elements in spices are exposed to light, they begin to oxidize and break down.
Source: http://surl.li/cjaxb
3. Effect on Quality: Dry spices absorb moisture in the air. Moisture leads to changes in weight and flavor. When ground spices absorb moisture, they often become lumpy and hard, making them more difficult to incorporate into foods well. Moisture also poses a health hazard as it promotes mold growth, which spoils spices. While many types of mold aren’t harmful, some produce mycotoxins that are genotoxic, carcinogenic, or are responsible for food-borne illnesses. Best practices to prevent contaminating foods with dangerous mold and bacteria include humidity control solutions and regular sampling and analysis of stored spices to determine water activity and microorganism levels.
( Source: http://surl.li/cjaxb )
4. After some web crawling and asking real people, I found that there is this issue people are frustrated about this issue.
Define the problem :
Now after discovering most of the aspects of the problem, I decided to define the problem and what the solution should be.
In order to define I performed HMWs to niche down the potential problem statements.
- How might we prevent the moisture from getting into the spices container?
- How might we prevent the usage of plastic in food product packaging? (since most of the kitchen containers are plastic made)
- How might we make the packaging airtight?
- How might we prevent spices from getting lumpy?
Well, I decided to go with the 4th point, How might we prevent spices from getting lumpy?
Exploring Potential Solutions:
After doing the research on internet I went on to have conversations with people who cook regularly / occasionally regarding this lumpy spices and during this conversations I found few points:
I asked my mum, what she does to prevent lumpy spices? She told me that she puts the masalas in small quantity in the kitchen for regular usage and keeps the excess in other compartment of the kitchen (Away from the cooking place). She also told me that if she found lumpy spices she puts them in the microwave to get the moisture out.
I also asked my friend who lives in some other town for job and cooks his own food, he told me that he does face this issue a lot, since he could not keep the kitchen well organised. So normally he consumes the spices with little lump but yes he finds that these lumpy spices has less flavor, than the regular ones. But if the lump is more he simply throws them.
I also had a chat with few more people about this issue and found the similar pain points.
Designing Solutions:
Taking these pain points into consideration, I started looking for solutions and found that this issue might be by using:
- Silica Sachet / Food safe oxyabsorber.
- Storing the spices in glass containers.
Considering Glass containers:
But the constraints of glass containers are that they are fragile.
Considering oxyabsorber sachets e.g Silica Sachet (Though it is poisonous to humans):
On the basis of these findings, I decided to experiment with the oxyabsorber solution, since it is cheaper and can prevent the problem
It’s time to test the potential solution whether it works or not and also test with the people I interviewed earlier.
I tried two approaches to test the solution:
- I have put a packet of oxyabsorber in a container of lumpy chat masala and will keep track of the time it takes to absorb the moisture from the spices.
- I have put a packet of oxyabsorber in a container of regular masala and place it near the high humidity area of the kitchen and see whether the moisture gets absorbed by the oxyabsorber or not.
Result:
Yayyyy, It worked! , It works with the second approach better and prevented the moisture to affect the original texture of the masala.
But when I shared the results with the people I interviewed earlier, they were quite hesitant to use the masala since they are are not sure of the oxyabsorber sachet, and whether it will be safe to use it or not.
They also asked, whether I am sure that the oxyabsorber didn’t got leaked out during the experiment.
This took me into thinking how can I work on these certain use cases and also started searching about what can be the other probable solution to this problem.
Time for some Iteration:
Similar to oxyabsorbers, I found that there is a age old technique that dry rice is a very good absorber of moisture. Thus, I took some rice and put it in a tissue paper and placed it in the following container:
- The container of lumpy chat masala and will keep track of the time it takes to absorb the moisture from the spices.
- The container of regular masala and place it near the high humidity area of the kitchen and see whether the moisture gets absorbed or not.
Since it is in testing phase, I will update the blog with the results of this experiment once I get the result.
Post Test Result:
Well finally after few days of experimenting, I got the results and found that if we keep rice in an already clumped spice container, it doesn’t absorb the moisture as much as if we keep it before clumping.
Therefore, we can put some rice in a sachet and place it in a container and then add the spice powder to it. This will absorb the moisture from the spices and keep the spices dry and fresh.
Another solution can be: Keeping few silica sachet in the compartment of the kitchen where the spices are kept, this will absorb the moisture from the area and keep the spices dry.
Thanks for reading till the end, and also let me know if you have any comments or suggestions regarding this problem statement.
You can contact me at: subhranil.design@gmail.com
P.S:
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