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Hello!

I cook mostly European food, but I love to cook the occasional dish from different Asian countries/cuisine, from China to Thailand to India..

Thing is, it always calls for different pastes, red curry paste, green curry paste, yellow curry paste, tamarind paste, massamam, garlic paste, miso paste, there are so so so many. And while I love cooking Asian I am not cooking enough of each one to use up the pot.

So my questions are :

- How long does each paste last (before and after opening, in the fridge or in the cupboard)? Is the best before date accurate usually? What about the usual advice (once opened, store in the fridge and consume within 3 weeks)

- How do you resolve this? I have thought of : make up ice cubes of the paste, then store them in a labelled bag/making it from scratch each time/that's about it

Thanks in advance for your help!

Agnes

Check out http://www.stilltasty.com/ to see how long a particular ingredient should last (and storage suggestions). 

I buy dry spice blends at my local spice shop, because I think they last longer than pastes. (I suppose you could make your own spice blends if necessary.) Then I mix in the appropriate wet ingredients to make the amount required for a particular recipe.  The spice shop suggests mixing water & oil with most of their blends to make a paste. However, some of the Southeast Asian blends suggest coconut milk or fish sauce & lime juice for a more authentic version.

Originally Posted by: lkgrover

Check out http://www.stilltasty.com/ to see how long a particular ingredient should last (and storage suggestions). 

I buy dry spice blends at my local spice shop, because I think they last longer than pastes. (I suppose you could make your own spice blends if necessary.) Then I mix in the appropriate wet ingredients to make the amount required for a particular recipe.  The spice shop suggests mixing water & oil with most of their blends to make a paste. However, some of the Southeast Asian blends suggest coconut milk or fish sauce & lime juice for a more authentic version.

Thanks for the link lkgrover - what a great resource !

The tip on the dry ingredient is great 1 I will see if I can find it.

However, the information on the site, for the product I was interested in, is nothing more than what I could see on the jar, or else the product was not listed at all. I mean the guidelines are frequently very conservative?

When you look into people experiences on other forums, you have a different answer, and this is what I was after :

https://www.chowhound.co...ned-fridge-362073?page=2

https://www.chowhound.co...-concentrate-long-397229

https://www.pistonheads....&f=192&t=1438022

Miso paste and any Japanese pastes/sauces last forever in refrigerator.  This is true for Chinese and Korean sauces and pastes in jars. 

Thanks guys!

That is great, because then I can avoid workarounds and just keep sniffing... 6 months sounds OK - 4 weeks is just undoable, as I switch cooking types/countries too often !