A spice rack is a great way to organize your impressive collection of spices. Without a spice rack, it’s easy to get overwhelmed from trying to isolate a bottle of spice from a cluster.
In this article, we’ll go through the most common questions you have about spice racks so you can choose one for your kitchen without hassle.
Do You Really Need A Spice Rack?
A spice rack isn’t a tool you must have in the kitchen, especially when you don’t have a huge collection of spices. If your household cooking is contented with only a few essential spices, then investing in a spice rack might be a waste of time and money.
Anyone on the more adventurous side however, should consider sparing a couple of bucks for a spice rack, because it would help organize the kitchen spices and create space that can be used for other purpose.
When it comes to purchasing a spice rack for your kitchen, you don’t have to fork out money to by an expensive one, even though a decorative spice rack will contribute greatly to the general aesthetics of the kitchen stratosphere.
There are less costly options you can find online and in local stores that would serve the purpose just right. Heck, you can even build your own spice rack from scratch when you’re a handy person and probably have the materials at home.
What Are The Popular Types of Kitchen Spice Racks?
There are a couple of options you have when it comes to choosing a spice rack for your kitchen. Let’s go through each one them carefully so you get familiar with them.
Installable Pull-out Spice Racks
Pull out spice racks, as the name suggests, conceals bottles of spices in a cabinet or drawer and allows you to access these bottles using a single pull of the rack.
These racks employ glides or rails that come in a particular length and can be adjusted to fit the depth of the cabinet — so the rack pops past the face of the cabinet frame when pulled thus giving a much better view of the spices while also eliminating the need to stretch hands into the cabinet to retrieve a spice bottle).
Pull out spice racks come in different shapes and sizes to accommodate your spices, and can also be useful for storing pantry staples when they’re very spacious.
They’re also very easy to use but can be a pain in the neck when installed in the wrong position, (of course, they can always be detached and fixed to a better position in the kitchen).
Mounted Spice racks
Mounted spice racks save a lot of spaces when they’re installed properly in the kitchen. Mounted spice rack can come with magnetic bases that attach to metallic surfaces like the door of your refrigerator or microwave, and the spices can be stuffed in the provided slots on the racks for storage.
Mounted spice racks often have guard rails that extend up to a couple centimeters high to protect spice jars from tipping over.
You can also find mounted spice racks hung using nails or glued onto walls in close proximity to the cooking area, fixed to the underside of an upper cabinet, or installed on the inside of the pantry door.
Mounted racks are available in different sizes to suit your needs. And the good news is that you can actually make one for yourself. Check out the video below to learn how to make a mounted spice rack of your own.
Countertop Spice racks
Countertop spice racks are racks you place on the kitchen countertop. They are not typically complicated in design, and most at times, have only few slots to accommodate a handful of spices.
Among one of the most popular types of countertop racks include the test-tube rack and the revolving spice rack having so much space to accommodate more spices than the regular rectangular design.
A spice cabinet
When you have pretty huge collection of spices, going the route of a spice cabinet might be a good idea.
By spice cabinet, i mean an entire cabinet allocated to the storage of spices, or a huge portion of it at least.
Of the many cabinets in your kitchen, you can dedicate a single one for your collection of spices and other cooking bottles.
Make sure to choose a cabinet that is convenient for you or for whoever uses the kitchen the most, and also arrange the spices in a sleek fashion so retrieving bottles becomes easy. You can try alphabetizing or sorting based on category.
What Type Of Spice Rack Is The Most Convenient For Cooks?
Spice drawers and countertop racks are the best types of spice racks to have in any kitchen.
Spice drawers are simply cabinet drawers installed with a rack (preferably an inclined rack) for accommodating spices.
The best drawer to use is the one right next to the oven or cooktop. It can be the drawer positioned to the right or left depending on which side the most active user of the kitchen prefers.
An inclined rack is recommended to make reading labels and locating spices easier.
If you have a spice rack positioned at the bottom or lower drawer of your cabinet, you’ll have to do a lot of bending over and checking in order to retrieve a bottle, and that can be frustrating, especially for taller individuals.
Countertop rack are very convenient too, especially the revolving ones that are compact yet able to accommodate a lot of spices in them.
When you’re opting for the countertop racks however, make sure to keep them a good distance away from sunlight and heat as that would cause a quicker deterioration of the spices.
Spice racks attached to walls or the siding of the refrigerator or microwave might require you to make short trips during cooking which can be annoying, but of course this will depend on how close these items are to your cooking zone, and whether or not you collect all the spices you need prior to cooking.
Spice racks place underneath the base of overhead cupboards present a problem for shorter individuals because then, you’ll have to stretch in order to read spice labels and eventually grab the right one.
Do Spice Racks Come With Spices?
There are actually spice racks that come with spices, typically essentials like basil, garlic, pepper, chives, sea salt, rosemary, oregano etc. Some of these racks even offer plans to register with them and get spice refills for a lengthy duration of time, subject to their terms and conditions.
These racks are normally a bit more expensive than regular racks that don’t come with spices. But they’re totally worth it in my opinion.
Some spice racks only come with empty spice jars while other don’t even come along with anything.
Before you purchase a spice rack online, make sure to expand the “more information” tab in it’s page to read more about the contents of the package, so you know whether your box is coming with free spices or not.
What Else Can You Put In A Spice Rack?
Spice racks are primarily made to accommodate spice containers, but they can definitely hold other pantry staples like vinegar, syrup and grain containers etc., provided they fit into the available slots.
To ensure your kitchen stays organized however, let spices occupy a niche of the own and other pantry ingredients occupy a different container, so you know you’re only getting spices when you turn to the spice rack.
And also, organize your spice containers with labels that are bold and big and arrange them in alphabetical order. It’s much easier to locate spices that way.
Where Should You Put A Spice Rack In The Kitchen?
The placement of your spice rack really depends on who’s using the kitchen the most. How tall or short they are, How good their eye sight is etc.
All these factor in when considering the best spot to place your spice rack. A rack placed too far or too high can be frustrating to reach especially in urgent times of cooking, which are definitely bound to happen.
Having a pull out rack installed at the bottom cabinet also means you’ll have to bend over constantly to reach for spices.
These are all things that you should consider because they will eventually frustrate your cooking adventure, and also force you to embrace back the habit of scattering spice bottles all over the countertop again.
For most people, a spice rack that holds spices on the counter would do just fine. Placing them horizontally with the spice labels facing up in a spice drawer is also a great idea.
What Are Some Cool Spice Rack Ideas?
There are many cool spice rack ideas out there but one i find very fascinating is the wall mounted spice rack using a floral wire.
Like keys, you can hang small bottles of spices on your wall to make for a decorative kitchen and easy retrieval of spices. Whenever you need a bottle, simply grab it like you would a hung key, and when you’re done, hang it back on the hook or nail.
To make this cool rack idea, get small bottles of spices, make sure they’re small and not heavy as big jars will often fall off eventually. Attach a floral wire to the necks of the jars and create a loop at the end. This is what we’ll use to hang the jars on the wall. Now drive nails into the specific spots you wish to hang the spices on, and then hang the jars from the nails one after the other.