Turmeric Spice Blends

• If you don't have curry powder on hand and you want to prepare a curry-style dish, you can make your own blend from ground spices, including turmeric. Turmeric gives curry spice blends their characteristic yellow color. Its flavor is musky and earthy, and it complements stronger-flavored spices such as cumin and coriander, which are also included in many curry powder blends. Other common curry powder ingredients include cardamom, cinnamon, peppercorns, cloves, brown mustard seeds and fennel seeds.

Achieving Balance

• Just as the ingredients that go into curry powder vary, so do the proportions of these ingredients. Although turmeric isn't used in all curries, it does serve as a primary ingredient in curry powder recipes that include it; in fact, some curry powder recipes call for a larger amount of turmeric than of any other ingredient. The ratio of other spices you use should depend on your personal taste as well as what happens to be in your cupboard should you be cooking on the spur of the moment and need to improvise.

Turmeric, Curry and Authenticity

• If you're looking for a substitute for curry powder, you're probably more interested in making do with what you have available than in creating the most authentic possible dish with an irreplaceable combination of flavors and ingredients. There's no shame in that: Many dishes, such as egg foo yong, General Tso's chicken and Tex-Mex burritos, are well-known and widely enjoyed despite the fact that they are not traditional. A turmeric-based spice blend that stands in for curry powder can be as simple and straightforward as mixing turmeric, cumin and coriander in proportions that taste good to you.

Turmeric's Health Benefits

• You may choose to substitute turmeric for curry powder because of turmeric's health benefits. Even though turmeric is usually an ingredient in curry powder, you receive more of its health benefits if you use turmeric alone than if you use if as part of a blend, simply because you consume more of it. According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, turmeric is a powerful antioxidant, freeing your body of potentially carcinogenic free radical compounds. Turmeric also has anti-inflammatory properties, and soothes gastrointestinal discomfort.