Indian spice mixes

[whortleberry]

We have a number of large Indian grocery stores in our city and I've found they stock a broad range of spice mixes.

I'm guessing Soul and MacNut may have opinions on this, but do any of you use these mixes? Are they viewed with the same disdain that buying cook-in sauces is here? I'm guessing they're not too bad because these stores cater primarily to our local Indian community.

I've tried a few curry ones (Mangal, Badshah) and one for daal (Shah - which is actually from Pakistan) and had good results. Are any brands better than others? Any favourites to look out for?

[sprite]

it's not indian, but ras el hanout is a mix i use and love. i would eat it straight out of the packet.

[whothingie]

I sometimes use them as small individual packs tend to loose the flavour before I can use them all - and sometimes convenience is more important than the self appointed guardians of what one mustmust not do.

[SoulCurry]

I don't use ready-made spices, but that's only because I don't eat spicy food on a daily basis (hard to believe, eh?!). Thus, buying a packet of the spice powder means having some of it lie unused for months. 
That said, Badshah is a trusted brand. For non-vegetarian curries, Shan is great. This is not an Indian brand but the flavours of Pakistani and north Indian food are similar.
No injunctions about ready-made spices. These days few people have the time to prepare them afresh, so the ready-made ones come in mighty handy. The other reason I don't use them is because in the cuisine from my part of the country, we don't use all spices together in one go - it is usually a mix of this and that (only cloves in one dish, only black pepper and cummin in another and so on). Thus, it is economical to simply take a few pods and pound them by hand.

[MacademiaNut]

I don't think anyone has problems using them -- they're great time and labour savers, and grinding things up on a daily basis is a terrible time sink if you have to do it yourself. I also don't believe that fresh spices make or break a dish -- the best cook I know uses spice powders for everything and EVERYTHING she cooks is delicious. Shan masala is superb, I use their mixes and follow the recipes for that sort of food (as Soul says, North Indian, broadly speaking) -- usually I buy it when we're having a party or cooking for several people, so the spice packet gets finished up at one shot. Badshah and Everest are also reliably good. We buy spice powders and use a pinch of this and a pinch of that for our cooking. The food from my part of the country can be made using a mix of spices, but you don't get mixes for particular dishes outside of a particular geographical area, so we don't buy mixes for that...

[whortleberry]

Thanks for your advice It's good to know that these mixes are not cooking faux pas!

I guess we'll keep trying different ones, keeping an eye out for Everest brand as well.

[tzarine]

bought a few packs of parampara spice mix from the maldives
quite tasty

[sprite]

craving mixed pickle now.

[SoulCurry]

tzarine, Parampara is pretty delicious.

sprite

[tzarine]

soul

i need to find a source for parampara in ny