Homemade Seasoning Blends: 5 Easy Spice Mixes to Make
I have far too many herbs and spices in my kitchen, yet somehow I can still start making dinner and discover that the one seasoning mix I actually want is the one I haven’t got. I can’t be the only person who has stared at a cupboard containing about 30 different little jars while being annoyed that none of them says fajita seasoning!
Luckily, if you’ve already built up a reasonable collection of herbs and spices, you can usually make your own seasonings and spice blends instead of buying another jar or packet. It also means you can adjust them a little to suit what you’re cooking, perhaps adding less chilli if you don’t want something particularly spicy or leaving the salt out and seasoning the finished meal instead.
Below are five homemade seasoning blends I’ve used for everything from fajitas and chilli to potatoes and jerk-style dishes. They are easy to mix together and can be made ahead and kept in a clean, dry jar so they’re there when you need them.
Before you start mixing spices
One thing worth remembering is that spices don’t last forever. I am definitely guilty of discovering something at the back of the cupboard and wondering whether I bought it during this decade, but older spices gradually lose their flavour and aroma.
You don’t necessarily need to throw everything away because it has passed the date on the jar, but if you open something such as cumin or paprika and can barely smell it, you probably won’t get much flavour from it either.
If you’re starting to build up your spice cupboard rather than already having half of a supermarket spice aisle at home, my guide to herbs and spices is useful for working out what you’ll actually use. I also have separate guides to ingredients including cumin, paprika and garlic granules if you’ve bought them for one recipe and now have no idea what else to do with them.
Homemade fajita seasoning
Fajita seasoning is probably one of the blends most worth making yourself because the individual ingredients are things I tend to have in anyway. You can mix up a jar in advance, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with just measuring the spices straight into whatever you’re cooking.
For roughly a small spice jar of fajita seasoning, mix together:
- 2 tablespoons chilli powder
- 4 teaspoons ground cumin
- 2 teaspoons ground coriander
- 1 teaspoon onion granules
- 1 teaspoon garlic granules
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 2 teaspoons salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
How much you use in a meal will depend on how strongly flavoured you want it and, particularly, how hot your chilli powder is. I would always rather start with less and add more than discover I’ve made something ridiculously spicy and spend the rest of dinner trying to rescue it.
This works nicely in fajitas, of course, but don’t assume that’s all you can do with it. Try a little on roasted vegetables, wedges or chicken, or use it in my chicken fajita pasta bake when you fancy something a bit different from actual fajitas.
Homemade all-purpose seasoning
This is the sort of seasoning that doesn’t really need rules. I like it for chips and roast potatoes, and it can also be used on chicken or vegetables when they need a bit more flavour but you don’t particularly want them to taste like a curry, fajita or anything else specific.
Mix together:
- 2 tablespoons onion granules
- 2 tablespoons chilli powder
- 2 tablespoons garlic granules
- 1 tablespoon paprika
- 1 tablespoon dried parsley
- 1½ tablespoons black pepper
Because this contains quite a lot of pepper and chilli, don’t coat everything enthusiastically the first time you use it! Sprinkle some on, cook your food and see what you think. You can always use more next time.
It’s particularly handy for potatoes, so if you’re making my homemade chips, try adding a little seasoning before cooking rather than automatically reaching for salt afterwards.
Homemade Cajun seasoning
Cajun-style seasoning is brilliant when you want something smoky, spicy and full of flavour without making a complicated sauce. It works with chicken and fish but is just as useful for vegetables, potatoes and rice dishes.
My blend uses:
- 2½ tablespoons salt
- 1 tablespoon oregano
- 1 tablespoon paprika
- 1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
- 1 tablespoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon onion granules
- 1 teaspoon garlic granules
This particular mix is quite salty, so use it as a seasoning rather than adding this and then automatically adding more salt to your meal. If you prefer to control the salt separately, that’s something you could experiment with when you make your next batch.
Cayenne can also have a fair kick to it, so this isn’t one I’d tip liberally over dinner without thinking about who is eating it. Stuart and Ben are generally much more useful for testing things like this than I am when I’ve made a vegetarian version of whatever they’re having!
Homemade jerk-style seasoning
Jerk seasoning has a very different flavour from the previous mixes, with thyme and cayenne alongside warmer spices such as cinnamon and mixed spice.
For my homemade version, combine:
- 3 tablespoons onion granules
- 1 tablespoon mixed spice
- 1 tablespoon dried thyme
- 1 tablespoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1 teaspoon garlic granules
- ½ teaspoon salt
I use this as an easy dry seasoning rather than suggesting it is the same thing as a traditional Jamaican jerk marinade. Proper jerk cooking has much more to it than throwing some dried spices into a jar, but this mixture is handy when you want those warm, spicy flavours without making a marinade from scratch.
You can use it with chicken, vegetables or rice dishes, and it works particularly well anywhere you want something with plenty of flavour without needing a long list of ingredients every time you cook.
Homemade chilli seasoning
I make chilli often enough that having the basic spices together makes sense. That doesn’t mean every chilli has to taste exactly the same, though. Sometimes I’ll add extra cumin, sometimes more paprika and sometimes I’ll make it hotter depending on what we fancy.
For the basic seasoning mix, combine:
- 2½ tablespoons chilli powder
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- 1 tablespoon garlic granules
- 1 tablespoon onion granules
- 1 tablespoon paprika
- ½ tablespoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
Obviously this works well in chilli, including my turkey chilli and chilli con carne, but you can also try a small amount in rice, roasted vegetables or anything else that needs a smoky, spicy kick.
Again, chilli powder varies enormously, so don’t assume that the amount that works perfectly with one jar will necessarily be identical with another. Taste as you cook and adjust rather than blindly adding more.
What about homemade curry seasoning?
I haven’t included a single curry seasoning recipe here because curry isn’t really one flavour that can be reduced to one universal spice mix.
Depending on what I’m cooking I might be using cumin, coriander, turmeric, chilli, garam masala, cardamom, cinnamon or all sorts of other combinations. That’s one of the reasons I have a separate guide to making a curry, where I go into much more detail about curry bases and how different spices work together.
If you’re actually looking for dinner rather than information about the spices themselves, have a look through my curry recipes too. There are chicken curries, vegetarian curries, slow cooker recipes and fakeaway-style curries, so there should be something there that sounds good.
How much homemade seasoning should you use?
This is one of those questions where I don’t think giving an exact answer is particularly helpful because it depends on the recipe, the quantity you’re making and how strong you like your food.
For a family-sized meal, I’d start with a small amount, perhaps a teaspoon or two, and taste before deciding it needs more. That’s particularly important with blends containing chilli, cayenne, pepper or quite a lot of salt.
Remember that you can add seasoning but removing it is considerably harder. I’ve rescued enough over-seasoned dinners over the years to know that being a bit cautious at the beginning is much less annoying!
Can you change these spice blends?
Absolutely. In fact, that’s one of the best reasons to make them yourself.
If everyone in your house finds the fajita seasoning too hot, reduce the chilli next time. If you adore smoked paprika, try swapping some ordinary paprika for smoked. If you’re trying to reduce the amount of salt you use, experiment with less salt and season the finished dish if it needs it.
These mixtures are useful starting points rather than something you need to measure with laboratory precision every time.
How to store homemade spice blends
Once you’ve mixed your seasoning, transfer it to a clean, completely dry jar or airtight container and label it. The labelling bit sounds ridiculously obvious until you’ve got three anonymous brownish-red mixtures in the cupboard and absolutely no idea which one is Cajun seasoning.
Keep your spices somewhere cool and dry, away from direct sunlight and away from steam from the hob or kettle. I wouldn’t make enormous quantities unless you use a particular blend constantly because spices gradually lose their punch once they’ve been sitting around for a long time.
It is much better to have a smaller jar that actually tastes of something than a year’s supply of seasoning you no longer particularly want.
Are homemade seasoning blends cheaper?
They certainly can be if you already own the individual spices. I wouldn’t recommend buying seven separate jars purely to avoid buying one packet of seasoning, because at that point you’ve rather defeated the object!
Where making your own really comes into its own is when you regularly cook from scratch and already use ingredients such as cumin, paprika, chilli powder, oregano, garlic and onion granules in other meals.
I also like knowing what’s actually in the jar. If I decide a particular mixture is too salty or too spicy, I can change it next time rather than hunting around the supermarket for another brand.
What spice blend do you use most?
For me, that’s the interesting thing about having a well-stocked spice cupboard. Once you start using spices regularly, you stop thinking quite so much about following a mixture exactly and get more confident about changing things according to what you’re making.
You might start with one of these blends and eventually decide that yours always needs more cumin, less chilli or twice as much garlic. That’s absolutely fine. Cooking at home should ultimately result in food that you enjoy eating, not food that perfectly follows somebody else’s spice ratio.
If your spice cupboard is getting slightly out of control like mine, you might also find my herbs and spices guide useful for deciding what is actually worth keeping. And if all this talk of cumin, coriander and chilli has made you fancy a curry, head over to my curry recipes and find something good for dinner.
