Should I buy spices in Morocco?

Spices are one of my favourite buys because they're light, packable, genuinely useful, and they carry the smell of Morocco straight into your kitchen at home. The pyramids of colour in the spice souks are partly for the photos, but the spices themselves are real and good. The ones worth carrying home are ras el hanout (the signature 'top of the shop' blend that varies by vendor), cumin, sweet paprika, dried ginger, the deep-red dried rose buds, and the makings for a tagine — preserved lemons, olives and a spice mix.

Buy whole rather than ground where you can — whole cumin seeds and cinnamon sticks keep their oils far longer than pre-ground powder, which may have been sitting in the sun. Smell before you buy: fresh spice should hit you immediately, while dull or musty ones are old stock. Ask for a small amount first; you rarely need the giant bag they'll try to weigh out, and a hundred grams of a good blend goes a long way. Reputable spice shops sell by weight and will vacuum-pack or bag things tightly for the flight.

The thing to be genuinely careful about is saffron. Real saffron is among the world's most expensive spices, so anything sold cheaply in bulk is almost certainly safflower ('false saffron') or dyed corn silk. Genuine saffron is thin red threads with a slightly trumpet-shaped end; a few threads steeped in warm water turn it golden-yellow slowly, whereas fake floods the water orange-red instantly. Taliouine in the south is Morocco's real saffron region. If you want the genuine article, buy a small, properly labelled quantity and expect to pay accordingly.

Two practical notes. First, those pretty pre-made 'gift sets' of tiny jars are convenient but heavily marked up for tourists — you'll get far more and fresher spice buying loose by weight and bagging your own. Second, check your home country's customs rules: dried spices are generally fine, but fresh produce, seeds for planting, and some plant matter can be restricted, so stick to dried culinary spices and you'll have no trouble. Prices are very reasonable and negotiable — a good bag of ras el hanout might be 30–80 MAD depending on size.