I make a lot of my own spice and seasoning mixes and the base of many of them is paprika. I used to be able to buy gigantic jars of it at Kroger, for a reasonable price, but now they only sell it in small jars like everyone else. Since I can easily use most of a little jar in one big batch of taco seasoning or seasoning salt, I had to find a better option. Penzeys has it of course, but it is quite expensive there. A pound bag of California paprika costs $17.60 from Penzeys and the Spanish variety would be $20.40. Yikes! So, this morning I looked at both Food Town and HEB in hopes that they might have the large jars. Neither one had anything other than tiny jars but then I remembered that HEB sells spices in their bulk food department. I'm so glad that I thought to look there because the Spanish paprika was only $5.99 pound and I could buy as much as I needed! I bought a little over half a pound and it only cost me $3.23, which is not much more than I would have paid for a little 3.75 ounce jar or tin at Kroger ($2.69). I just did the math and Kroger's paprika works out to almost $11.50 pound!
HEB has a nice selection of bulk spices so I'll definitely go back for more. I'd forgotten that I'm running a little low on allspice because of all the pickles I've been making lately so I'll pick some up next week. I did buy two other things to try. I got 26-cents worth of mixed dried vegetables to use for something. I have no idea what but they looked interesting. The mixture is carrots, onions, tomatoes, spinach, celery and bell peppers. If I had to buy that in a little jar in the spice aisle, there's no way it would have only cost 26-cents. I also bought 27-cents worth of garam masala. Again, it will easily fill a small spice jar that probably would have cost me at least $4.00. You just don't see exotic spices like that except in the premium spice brands like Spice Islands and they're very pricey.
As you can see, I didn't buy any meat today. It's just as well that my freezer is full because they didn't have anything marked down this week anyway.
Great spice prices but what is HEB?
ReplyDeleteIt's a Texas grocery store chain where I shop.
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