When you add spice to food.

Do you prefer liquid (Tabasco, Frank's, chili sauce etc) or dry (ground chili / paprika / cayenne pepper etc)!Why!

I prefer spices that don't add heat, so none of the above thanks! Love things like cumin, coriander, smoked paprika, and Chinese 5 spice. These days I prefer knowing exactly what is in the dish so I like to use individual ingredients rather than pre-packaged stuff.

Hmm I was thinking that. And I DO like heat, so I just put paprika, cayenne pepper, ginger, ground chili, S & P into mince for burritos but not very hot yet. might resort to Frank's sauce,Also love jalapenos in everything mind you!

Depends what I'm making and what I want it to taste like. Sweet Thai chilli sauce, for instance, is used more as a condiment than a cooking ingredient. Tabasco, or similar, is also used more as a condiment but I sometimes throw some drops into mince to give it some heat without losing the basic mince taste because my DH thinks he hates chilli but cannot detect tabasco even though it changes the taste of the dish completely.

Powdered spices are usually used when you want a more intense or specific flavoured hot dish. They need to be sauteed first, in some fat, to bring out their flavours. I wouldn't use them without doing that first.

Some specialty spice 'sauces' are already blended and cooked. The Valcon spice sauces come in two different types. The first one is where the cooked paste is included with all the made sauce. Just follow the instructions on the bottle or can. The other type is a paste for adding to a sauce or for flavouring the dish.

Davidt4 has some amazing recipes using all sorts of spices, fresh and powdered, and these are cooked from scratch.

Fresh ingredients such as ginger, tumeric, chilli, capsicum, garlic, lemon grass, etc are, well, they are fresh. What more needs to be said!

A bit too general a question. Depends what's cooking.