Favorite spices, seasonings, or condiments?

So I'm thinking about going shopping in the next couple of days, and I'm going to replace a few things that have gotten a little old/clumpy/possibly rancid.

I use them frequently, but apparently the humidity is causing problems.

Here are the ones I use most frequently when cooking, and if anyone knows of any better alternatives (short of buying individual spices and making my own seasoning, which I would prefer to avoid), please recommend them.

1. Lawry's Low Sodium Seasoned Salt, with MSG (it practically turns your home cooked meals into junk food, and works as an alternative to a boring old salt shaker)
2. Chicken Seasoning Packets from bricks of ramen noodles (I like to add these to my eggs)
3. Kikkoman Panko Bread Crumbs
4. Tabasco brand Sriracha
5. Tabasco brand OG pepper sauce (for things that are mostly liquid)
6. Mayonnaise made with olive oil

As you can probably tell, I'm a bit lazy when it comes to spicing up my foods, but I'm willing to try some new things.

I like putting hot sauce on my burrito.

Salt (sea salt especially)
Pepper (peppercorns in a grinder)
Olive oil (extra virgin)
Garlic Powder (McCormick brand)
Minced onions (brings out flavor with general cooking)
Chives (for potatoes)
Plain Greek yogurt (alternative to sour cream)

I like to add Four Loko to most of my food.

Tabasco Tabasco Tabasco Tabasco Tabasco Tabasco Tabasco!!!

I like to put tomato sauce and hot sauce on my pasta.

What I use really depends on what I make. Like I made goulash tonight, and wouldn't think of putting gochujang in it. But here's what I tend to use most often:

* Black pepper. LOTS of black pepper.
* Salt
* MSG (the "Accent" brand stuff)
* El Yucateco hot sauce (any of them, but I usually do the habanero ones)
* Gochujang
* Blair's Ultra Death Sauce
* Red chili powder like you get in the Latin American food isle
* Cumin (goes especially well with chili powder)
* Dried red chili seeds
* Basil
* Oregano
* Marjoram
* Garlic, lots and lots of garlic
* Coriander
* Ginger
* Soy sauce
* Mirin
* White pepper
* Dried chopped onion, sometimes turned to powder using a mortar and pestle.

I actually hate Tabasco sauce since I don't like hot sauces that vinegar-y. But other than the hot sauces listed above, I don't use many condiments.

Fresh garlic on everything
Lemon and Pepper seasoning salt
Italian seasoning
Pepper
Salt

Cholula hot sauce. Dump it on your food, eat it from a spoon, and if you live in the US, stockpile it soon before Donny boy makes it 20% more expensive (and maybe stockpile Mexican Coca-Cola, that stuff is heaven)

sriracha (a.k.a. rooster sauce)

ketchup. that's the only thing i ever use. everything else is bad.

roadworx said:

ketchup. that's the only thing i ever use. everything else is bad.

Same with me.

Just add ketchup until it tastes good.

Crushed red pepper is my favorite seasoning. It goes well on pizza, and various chowders.

TheCupboard said:

sriracha (a.k.a. rooster sauce)

I drank sriracha flavored beer, and it was amazing.

It's pretty good on just about everything and thankfully does not have MSG. I'm also sort of obsessed with hot sauce and I tend to buy one or two sampler packs through out the year. Last one I got was a Garlic-O-Holic set that had three different sauces that had varying levels of garlic in them.

If you like hot sauces and live in the states: https://www.mohotta.com/ is my go to site for ordering hot sauce. I have been ordering through them for a couple of years and never had an issue.

Gothic Box said:

Cholula hot sauce. Dump it on your food, eat it from a spoon, and if you live in the US, stockpile it soon before Donny boy makes it 20% more expensive (and maybe stockpile Mexican Coca-Cola, that stuff is heaven)

Back in my Job Corps days I went through bottle after bottle of the stuff and Tapatio. Most of us in the program ate a lot of Ramen noodles when the bad cooks where on kitchen duty. Because I couldn't use the seasoning packed, I would cook the noodles, dump the water and bury the noodles in Tapatio or Chalula. Most of the time I used so much hot sauce that the noodles where floating in it and stained red.

A little context.

I like the Mad Dog 357 Hot Sauce. Far from the hottest, but the flavour is very nice, and a few drops is more than enough to spice up most meals (or render them inedible, depending on your point of view). Also, the bottle clogs less than other hot sauces I've tried - so it is generally possible to get a drop.

Fulgrim said:

Back in my Job Corps days I went through bottle after bottle of the stuff and Tapatio. Most of us in the program ate a lot of Ramen noodles when the bad cooks where on kitchen duty. Because I couldn't use the seasoning packed, I would cook the noodles, dump the water and bury the noodles in Tapatio or Chalula. Most of the time I used so much hot sauce that the noodles where floating in it and stained red.

I gotta try that sometime, it sounds great.

Situational. I am not a fan of spicy foods and will turn things sweet where possible.

Commonly used
- Granulated garlic powder (not actual garlic powder)
- whole oregano leaves crushed by hand, usually home-grown unless i run out
- basil varieties, usually sweet, dried and crushed by hand, home-grown

That's applied to most things I'm making, bread, potatoes, pizza dough, stews (though sometimes i sub out basil for thyme in stews), but otherwise this is my favourite combination.

Making my own sauces, other than above...
- vodka in sweet tomato salsa (with home grown tomatoes and peppers)
- honey (because I crave sweetness)

Overall, I'm a dessert kind of person. I make my own "condiments" for them. I also grow the berries I cook with. All of these are great for custards, pies, ice creams, cinnamon rolls, etc.
- raspberry sauce half-boiled in honey
- super thin blackberry syrup
- strawberry/raspberry combo jam
- home made apple butter

dessert seasonings
- cinnamon, I use tons and tons of cinnamon
- nutmeg
- pure maple syrup

MFG38 said:

Just add ketchup until it tastes good.

What foods does this work on? I have a bottle of ketchup that's almost completely full, I can never think of a good reason to use it. Ita good with potatoes (hash browns, or french fries) and sometimes scrambled eggs, but I think it fucks up hot dogs and cheese steaks and steaks. I dont know what else it goes with. If I was on an episode of chopped id be fucked.

Ketchup is good on cheeseburgers (hamburger or turkey) cooked with that Tony Chachere's seasoning. It's also good on chicken nuggets.

yukib1t said:

Ketchup is good on cheeseburgers (hamburger or turkey) cooked with that Tony Chachere's seasoning. It's also good on chicken nuggets.

ketchup is good with pretty much every meat out there. except eggs, people who eat ketchup with their eggs are weird.

Oddly, the only thing I even remotely enjoy ketchup on is French fries, even then I prefer them plain. I'm just not crazy about condiments in general.

Doomkid said:

Oddly, the only thing I even remotely enjoy ketchup on is French fries, even then I prefer them plain. I'm just not crazy about condiments in general.

To be fair, if you go a month or two without adding any condiments to your food, including salt/pepper, a lot of boring foods will strangely start tasting a lot better.

You can actually get all the salt you "need" from the random things you eat everyday, so there's rarely any need to actually add more.

...and I've just convinced myself to be a little bit more boring. Tabasco is still an essential "bad food" condiment, and an effective salt/pepper replacement.

Lots of good suggestions in this thread.

I'll throw in a couple that I've enjoyed. There's a lot of good middle-eastern or oriental stuff worth trying. I got a Moroccan kefta spice from an international shipping group that's pretty good. Great with couscous, quinoa, lamb and chicken. In that same vein, although not a seasoning or condiment exactly, is ghee. Great with Indian cooking and helps make a great chicken tikka masala.

One that I sort of rediscovered recently is white pepper. It gives what I'd describe as a clean, subtle heat and pepperiness and a big contributor to the ever-elusive "umami" flavor. Highly recommended, especially for soups, stews and other dishes that call for earthy aromatics.

You gotta get some of that lemon pepper rub on chicken tenders.

Basco is ok, not bad, but never blows me away. I like the habinero one for tacos.

https://store.davesgourmet.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=75

My personal favorite is Dave's Insanity Sauce. My favorite one by them is Roasted garlic. All of their hot sauces have deep and earthy complex notes with just enough of the vinegar taste so it is not bland. Though I see some more high end hot sauce companies have gotten traction and wish to try other brands.

As for other spices, I'll list some seasonings that you'll get compliments for.
Greek seasoning is amazing on Fries and most fried potatoes.https://greekseasoning.com/

Zatarain's Blackened seasoning is really awesome for chicken and steak. I use it to flavor my steaks almost exclusively and get many compliments.http://www.mccormick.com/zatarains/products/spices-and-seasonings/spices-and-extracts/blackened-seasoning

Jeff foxworthy's fish batter is very good, but if thats not avaiable then Louisiana cajun fish fry is great. https://store.louisianafishfry.com/products/batters-coatings.html

and of course, butter, I cook with butter alot

Hmmmm... so my budget ended up being a little tighter than expected.

Most of my meals end up being pretty much this:

1 Slice of Toast
Salted Butter (Unsalted butter would probably taste just as good)
Garlic Salt (I'll be replacing this with powder soon, because it's just too much salt)

It's surprisingly not all that bad and quite filling. It almost feels like eating junk food. Probably because of the salt overload.

Gonna add slices of American cheese and pepperoni next pay period. It kinda makes me feel like I'm making ghetto pizza.

If you are being for real, you're gonna want to go the route of buying rice in the largest quantity you can afford. It has the most amount of calories of any grain, including breads and corn products

Just skip the white rice it's a trap. It might taste better at first but it can easily be compared to the ingredients they use to make white bread. It's like, at some point, we have to understand whatever the "white" part is, that's the unhealthy part that tastes good.

Black Pepper
Salt
Pickled Shallots
Balsamic Vingear
American Mustard
Ketchup
Fried Onions
Basil
Oregano
Soy Sauce
Five Spice
Sweet Chilli Sauce
Chicken Stock
Ginger
Garlic
Coriander
Garam Masala