Are you tired of fishing out cloves and star anise from your stews and soups? Learn how to make spice sachets to store your herbs and spices using coffee filters and tea filter bags. Save even more time with an epic hack. Read on to find out.
What Is a Spice Sachet or Sachet d’Épices in Cooking?
If you want to make flavorful food, you’ve likely added herbs and spices to your cooking at some point. If you drop your herbs and spices directly into your saucepan or soup pot, it’s a hassle to fish out the bits and pieces once you’re done stewing.
When I made the Taiwanese beef noodle soup recipe for The Spruce Eats, it took me 15 minutes, maybe more, to collect all the cloves, Sichuan peppercorns, and cinnamon bits out of the soup pot. What a waste of time!
You can avoid this frustration by using a spice sachet (or sachet d’épices in French), which is a little bag that stores your herbs and spices.
Why Should You Use a Spice Sachet?
A spice sachet works like a teabag. You can store your spices in the sachet and add it to your soup pot. When your food is cooked, you can take the sachet out and toss it. It saves you the time and mundane work of fishing out pieces of spice bit by bit.
Garlic Delight Spice Sachets Using Teabags and Coffee Filters
Traditional spice sachets are made from muslin or cheesecloth with spices bundled inside. The reality is that most home cooks don’t have muslin or cheesecloth lying around the kitchen. Plus, it is wasteful and expensive to buy the specialty spice sachet bags that many food bloggers advocate using, especially when spice sachets are a one-time-use disposable item.
That’s why I advocate using coffee filters or loose-leaf tea filter bags that you probably already have in your pantry. They cost less than 5¢ a piece and are biodegradable.
In this tutorial, you’ll dive into how to make a spice sachet using a coffee filter and a tea filter bag. But first, let’s look at a little secret hack that makes spice sachets even more convenient than a simple bundle of spices.
Epic Hack To Save More Time
If it weren’t enough that you can save a lot of time by bundling your spices into a sachet, here’s another amazing tip to save you even more time.
Most cooks throw the spice sachet into the pot and expect to find it at the bottom after the food has been served.
Here’s a twist: when you make your spice sachet with kitchen twine, instead of tying the sachet closed in the middle of the twine, tie the sachet with one end of the twine. Tie the opposite end of the twine to the handle of your soup pot.
When you’re ready to fish out the spice sachet, you simply need to pull on the string to find it.
Teabag vs. Coffee Filter Spice Sachet
Use whatever you’ve got in your kitchen. In most American homes, coffee filters are the norm, so use those. But if you have both, I would lean towards using the loose-leaf tea filter bags because they contain the flap and are designed to hold loose tea, which is not that different from loose spices.
Recipes That Benefit From Spice Sachets
If you don’t have a sieve to filter spices when making chai, using a spice sachet is a great idea, especially because you don’t want to eat cardamon pods or star anise in your chai, right?
Spice Combination Ideas
Here are ideas for spices that you can combine in a spice sachet and how to cook with them.
- Masala chai: fennel seeds, cardamon pods, cinnamon, star anise, peppercorns, dried bay leaves, and ginger root.
- Mulled wine: cinnamon sticks, cloves, and nutmeg.
- Chinese braised pork ribs: star anise, bay leaves, cinnamon, bay leaves.
- Spiced tea eggs: star anise, cloves, and cinnamon.
- Braised tofu: star anise, bay leaves, and cinnamon.
Extra Spice Sachet Tips
- Instead of buying premade spice mixes, you can make multiple spice sachet with your favorite spice combinations and store them in an airtight plastic container. This speeds up batch cooking because you already have your spice sachet ready to use.
- You can make spice sachets as a cute DIY gift, especially during the holiday seasons when spice sachets filled with cinnamon and cloves would be perfect for mulling wine and apple cider.
Spice Sachet Made from Teabag or Coffee Filter
Equipment
- scissors
Ingredients
Sachet Materials
- 1 coffee filter, for drip coffee
- 1 tea filter bag
- kitchen twine
Spices
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 2 Bay Leaves
- 3 star anise
- 8 Cloves
- 15 Peppercorns, white or black
Instructions
- Gather the ingredients.
Spice Sachet Using a Teabag
- Put the spices inside the loose-leaf tea filter bag.
- Cut a piece of kitchen twine about 12 inches/30 cm. Tie one end of the kitchen twine around the opening of the tea filter.
- Tie the other end of the kitchen twine around the handle of your pot. Your spice sachet is now ready to use. Place the spice sachet in your pot with your other ingredients for stewing.
Spice Sachet Using a Coffee Filter
- Put the spices inside the coffee filter. Fold the edges of the coffee filter towards the center.
- Cut a piece of kitchen twine about 12 inches/30 cm. Tie one end of the kitchen twine around the opening of the coffee filter.
- Tie the other end of the kitchen twine around the handle of your pot. Your spice sachet is now ready to use. Place the spice sachet in your pot with your other ingredients for stewing.
- Enjoy your time savings thanks to the spice sachet!
Nutrition
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will this still give of the same amount of flavor. when all herbs are contained into one place instead of mixed throughout the food? or would you need to use more to make up for that or perhaps use multiple bags throughout the pan?
Since water passes through the bag, I find it works as well as when the spices are mixed throughout food. So I don’t think you need to add more spices or herbs to make up for anything. The main consideration if that fresh herbs may be more dilute than dried herbs so follow the recipe you use for a good idea on how much spice/herb to use.
Can you use a diy tea spice bag for pickles?
Hi Glenda,
Thanks for your comment. Just to make sure I fully understand your question, do you mean you want to use the spice bag to store the herbs and spices you would use to make pickles? Like the peppercorns, fresh dill, garlic, and other spices? If so, then yes, you can use the tea bag to store those spices for easy removal. You may need to account for the spice bag by leaving extra room in your pickling jar. While I haven’t tried pickling with a spice bag, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Coffee filters might be harder because they’re much thicker than tea bags. I would use tea bags for your purpose.
Let me know if you have any questions. Or if I misunderstood your question, please let me know (you can reply to the email I sent you).
Using coffee or tea filters to make Spice Sachets. What a magical idea.
Make I ask….can I use an empty tea bag instead ??
Hi Nickolas,
Yes, you can use an empty tea bag! In fact, jump to this section and you will see a picture of an empty (unused) tea bag used as a spice sachet: https://garlicdelight.com/spice-sachets/#garlic-delight-spice-sachets-using-teabags-and-coffee-filters