Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I buy onion and garlic powder at Penzey's. They never fail to clump up even when properly stored. When my jar gets too clumpy to use, I return it to Penzey's and they give me a new one. Penzey's says it's not supposed to clump, even though it always does.

I store it in a glass jar with a sealed lid (small jam jar). I think this is much better sealed than a spice jar kind of think. Doesn't clump. OTOH, our humidity is managed relatively well in the house, and I might be lucky.

trinket -

That's interesting, because we live in the same area and I haven't had that problem (at least with the garlic powder - don't have onion powder). I am using the glass jars Penzey's sells, FWIW. It does stay pretty dry here in the winter because we don't have a proper humidifier, but in the summer I still don't have a problem and we have barely enough central air to keep the house cool.

I store my spices in a drawer--one drawer over from the stove. It gets opened and closed every day - maybe that's enough jiggling to keep it from getting stuck?

Given that the humidity gauge here frequently exceeds its top measurement ( 80% ), keeping any kind of powdered, granulated or dried minced allium is hopeless. Heck, we can't even keep spice mixes that have dried garlic in them; they cake up hopelessly. Which is a shame, because Penzey's Sandwich Sprinkle is the perfect seasoning for croutons.

For that matter, some of my dried peppers cake up, and you'll remember that I gave up on keeping cayenne because it kept getting moldy.

We run a dehumidifier, but that only brings it down to around 65%. Given that I'm pretty sure it's 110% humidity outside, that's good of the humidifier, but still doesn't dry my spices out.