Review: Fire Cider Herbal Tonic

Fire Cider is a sort of traditional herbal folk remedy. If you listen to herbal medicine enthusiasts, you'll come away thinking that a daily dose of the stuff will turn you into superman.  A quick Google search will reveal a bunch of recipes for whipping up a batch or two...or, if you live close to the hill towns of Western Massachusetts, you can get it from Shire City Herbals in Pittsfield.  The bottle pictured at right is from Shire City. I bought it at The Big E from a pleasant young man who had set up shop on a rainy Thursday night right outside the Massachusetts Building at the fair.

He was offering small samples of Fire Cider in little plastic cups. I sniffed at it tentatively and it seemed safe enough, so I tossed it back like a boss.

It was an experience.

You see, Fire Cider is based on organic apple cider vinegar, in which various aromatic and allegedly medicinal herbs have been steeped. Like horseradish, garlic, and hot peppers.  Shire City also adds honey, which helps take the sharpest edges off of the vinegar.

Anyway, that little shot kicked me in the face, but at the same time I kind of liked it. I have an affinity for strong flavors, but I also could recognize that this stuff has potential for kitchen use as well (more on that later.) I bought two bottles.

As a medicine or a tonic or a panacea, I'm undecided. I'll be honest, I don't put a whole lot of belief in many herbal remedies. It's not that I don't think any of them work - I know that a lot of them do - it's just that I'm really leery of the almost fanatical enthusiasm that true devotees often display, especially on line. It reminds me of Frank Zappa's Cosmik Debris

The mystery man got nervous
And he fidget around a bit
He reached in the pocket of his mystery robe
And he whipped out a shaving kit
Now I thought it was a razor
And a can of foaming goo
But he told me right then when the top popped open
There was nothin’ his box won’t do
With the oil of aphrodite,
and the dust of the grand wazoo
He said you might not believe this, little fella
But it’ll cure your asthma too

I will say one thing about the possible medicinal properties of Fire Cider: I had a nasty sore throat and took a shot of the stuff, and it totally kicked that sore throat's ass, like a good folk remedy should - just like the common lemon-and-honey home remedy I'm sure everybody's heard about.

But not surprisingly, I'm more impressed with the culinary uses I've found for Fire Cider.

It makes a great basis for a barbecue mop. Very tasty, especially with the horseradish and ginger in there.

A jigger of Fire Cider in a vinaigrette salad dressing really kicks it up a couple of notches.

It's really good in cole slaw dressing - just a splash really wakes it up.

I've only started experimenting with Fire Cider, and I expect I'm going to find a bunch of other ways to use it. I doubt I'm going to toss back a shot of it every day as a preventative tonic, but you never know. I'm open-minded enough about it that when flu season starts up in earnest, I might just start tossing down a daily dose.

Link:

Shire City Herbals' website is www.firecider.com

Review: Pride of Szeged Rib Rub

I can not remember a time in my life when the word "paprika" was not virtually synonymous in my kitchen with the tall red-and-white tins, imported from Hungary, containing Pride of Szeged brand paprika. Both my mother and Maryanne's always had a tin of it in the kitchen - in the refrigerator door in case it "spoiled" before it could all be used - and when we got married, we kept up the tradition. Well, not the part about the refrigerator. There's never any question of our paprika going stale - we use it up far too quickly to worry about that.

Over the years, the Pride of Szeged brand has expanded to include other products, all of which are seemingly packaged in the same sort of traditional tall spice tin (for while other companies, including those in the US, have long since turned to cheap plastic bottles, Pride of Szeged continues to use lithographed spice tins with pretty much the same graphic design that they've always had.) There are rubs for beef, pork, chicken, and fish, as well as something they call "Pisa," which is a pretty damn delightful oregano-heavy Italian seasoning.

Yesterday, I found myself with three racks of ribs and no rub to season them with. Worse, I was short a few ingredients in the pantry, so I couldn't just make up a batch from scratch. Maryanne, Lynnafred, and I headed out to the supermarket to pick up what we needed, but those plans were immediately abandoned when we passed down the spice aisle and found a full selection of Pride of Szeged, including Rib Rub. The ingredients looked good and simple (Salt, Paprika, Garlic, Mustard, Sugar, Spices) and although I couldn't bust a tin open and give it a sniff, my lifelong reliance on Pride of Szeged as the House Paprika helped me decide to give it a try.

I rubbed each rack of ribs generously with the spice blend and let it sit for about an hour as I got the smokehouse preheated and ready. When the box had heated up to about 250 F and the smoke generator was pumping out a good stream of hickory smoke, I put the ribs in for the long, slow cooking time that would turn them into tender delicacies. It took about three hours.

I was very happy with the results. The Pride of Szeged Rib Rub is flavorful and enhances the pork without covering up the flavor - a nice mustard flavor, not too spicy despite the paprika, and not too sweet despite the sugar. At first taste, it does seem to be a bit heavy on the salt, but after an application of good barbecue sauce and some crisping time on a hot grill, the saltiness also blends into the overall flavor and comes into balance.

It's fairly economical as well. The five-ounce tin I bought was more than enough to liberally coat all three full racks of ribs with enough left over to do a couple more, for a little less than four dollars. I'm saving the rest to mix with some Bell's poultry seasoning and apply to a bone-in pork loin roast. I bet it will be awesome.

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Walkerswood Jerk Seasoning

I've tried a lot of Jamaican-style jerk seasonings in search of something really authentic, without too much luck. But recently, my friend Roger discovered Walkerswood Traditional Jamaican Jerk Seaoning, and I think my search is at an end.

Unlike so many other jerk seasonings out there, Walkerswood is a paste made up of hot peppers, scallions, black pepper, onions, salt, allspice, nutmeg, cane sugar, and thyme. It's made in and imported from Jamaica, and it's the most authentic jerk seasoning I've found.

It's easy to use - just rub some into the meat and let it sit a few hours (though overnight is best) before grilling or roasting. I've used it on chicken and pork so far, and it's AWESOME. (I'm considering making some beef jerky with it to see how it turns out.)

Walkerswood also understands that not everyone has a high tolerance for hot and spicy food., so they make a mild version that has the same authentic jerk ingredients with a little less hot pepper added to the blend. Don't get me wrong - Walkerswood idea of "mild" still might ring your bells if you are a complete pepper wuss, but it does have quite a bit less kick than the hot and spicy stuff.

Availability varies depending on where you live. I had never noticed it at all until just a little while ago, when Roger brought some back for me from a recent out-of-state trip. Since I've actually started looking for it, I've found it in a couple of ethnic markets (like Food Zone International on Belmont Avenue in Springfield MA) and supermarkets (I think ShopRite carries it in Enfield CT.) If you're a fan of jerk cooking, it's well worth the search.

Fresh Horseradish

Every year, I make my own prepared horseradish and give bottles of it to family and friends to enjoy with their Easter and Passover meals.  It's a tradition my mother handed down to me.  In the mid-1990's, I wrote up my technique and posted it to the Fidonet COOKING echo (a sort of international messaging system for cooking enthusiasts that predates the internet.) Since then, these instructions, like many of the other recipes I've shared electronically over the years, have been scraped by bots and stolen and added into recipe archives all over the internet and beyond, usually with my name and location stripped from it.  In fact, only website other than my own has actual permission to archive and distribute my recipe, and that is Bert Christensen's Weird And Different Recipes, a website well worth browsing if you're looking to cook something...unusual.

Anyway, the genie is out of the bottle, and I doubt I will ever be able to get my bylines back onto the bootlegged copies of my horseradish recipe that are floating around in cyberspace.  But I can, however, print the recipe right here, so everyone can know that those instructions are mine, developed and written my me.  And if you ever see them anywhere but here or over to Bert's Place, you're seeing ganked content.

Fresh horseradish root.  Yes, I know what it looks like.  I have a 12-year-old's sense of humor.

Dave's Horseradish

Horseradish roots
Vinegar
Kosher salt

Every Spring, for the Easter/Passover season, I make gallons of prepared horseradish for my family and friends. My horseradish has a reputation for being the strongest kickass root available. Anyone, though, can make root that can stand up to mine...if you use my instructions.

Selecting the root: Bring a small knife with you to the supermarket. Pick up every root you're considering buying and give it a squeeze. If it's limp, feels fleshy or flaccid, or wrinkled, forget it. Select only fresh roots that feel rather heavy for their size and are as hard as wood. Use the knife to pare off a thin bit of the root and pop it in your mouth. Bite down on it. If it makes your lip and tongue go numb and tingly, it's good. Don't buy it if it's weak, or if it leaves a bitter quinine aftertaste (the bitterness will be magnified by grinding.)

Preparation: Set up a table in front of a window. Open up the window and set up a fan to blow air OUT the window. Horseradish fumes are crippling and you will NOT be able to do this without pulling the fumes out the window. By exhausting air out rather than blowing in, you can even do this on a chilly night when you might otherwise not want a window open.

On the window table put your food processor. If you can run your processor with both the shredding blade in the top and the puree knives in the bottom, great. Set it up that way. If not, you'll have two steps (grating and pureeing) instead of one. Next to the processor, still in front of the window, put a large bowl. That's where the ground root will go. Close at hand (maybe on the kitchen table) put the jars where the root will be packed, a large bottle of vinegar, and your salt.

Step 1: Wash and peel. Put all the roots into the sink and start running a thin stream of cold water. Get them all wet and let them sit a few minutes to soften the dirt on them. With a stiff bristle brush, give them a good scrubbing under the stream of water. When they're clean, use a veggie peeler to pare off the brown skin and green tops (if they have green tops. You can cut the top inch off the root, leaving the greens alone, if you like, and plant them in your backyard if you want to grow your own.) Do the peeling under the running water, also. Keeping the water drizzling over the root while you peel carries off some of the volatile chemical, saving your life while you work in the sink.

Step 2: Grate and Grind. Bring the peeled roots over to the window table and turn the fan and your food processor on. Feed them down the chute to the grating wheel. The top wheel will grate the root, and the bottom knives will do the fine chopping (if you can't run both knives in your machine at once, you will have to grate each bowl full of root, then put the chopping knife in to finish separately.) As the root gets finer and finer, it will begin sticking to the sides and bottom of the bowl. Slowly, and with the processor still running, pour in vinegar to get a thick but not sticky consistency. Continue to whirl in the bottom knives for several minutes, until the root bits are very very fine. Stop the processor and dump the processor bowl into the large bowl. Repeat these steps until all the roots are grated, ground, and in the large bowl. Remember to keep the fan on all this time! When all the roots have been processed, rinse the processor knives and bowl with cold running water. Wash them as necessary. Put the processor away or aside. You'll need the space on the table in front of the fan to pack the jars.

Step 3: Seasoning. You've still got that fan running, right? Leave the bowl in front of the fan. The grated root in the bowl should not be too dry. Stir in enough vinegar to give a smooth consistency. Taste a little bit of the puree (be careful! This is likely to be the strongest horseradish you've ever tasted.) If you think it needs salt, add some Kosher salt or canning salt. I usually add about half a teaspoon per quart.

Step 4: Packing. Use a ladle and a canning funnel to fill pint jars with the prepared horseradish. Fill the jars up, cap them off, and put them in the fridge. Do not process the jars. Keep them refrigerated. You may turn off the fan after all the jars are full and after all implements have been rinsed. The horseradish will maintain full potency for a couple of weeks (I make mine no more than a week or so before Easter) but will still be pretty damn strong for a month or two. Use it before it turns brown.

Cleaning up: Most of your tools (the bowls, ladle, etc) will require little more than a good rinse with cold water first (to neutralize and dilute any horseradish fumes) then hot water, since you aren't cutting any greasy fat.

That's it; that's how to make horseradish.

Goya Sazon Liquido

If your local supermarket sells Goya's Sazon Liquido, you won't be able to miss it. Packaged in a tall plastic bottle with a long squeeze nozzle, it towers above the other seasoning and hot sauces on the shelf. Because I enjoy a variety of different hot sauces and seasoning blends in my cooking, Sazon Liquido immediately caught my eye - I'd never seen it before, and figured it might be a new product. Also, the "HOT - PICANTE" label sparked my curiosity, so I picked a bottle up.

The ingredients list includes tomatoes, green and red chile peppers, dehydrated jalapeno peppers, salt, MSG, and some spices - pretty standard fare for a seasoning and hot sauce.

Unfortunately, the only flavor element that comes through is salt. A lot of salt. And, despite the label, not a single bit of heat.

I was hoping that it would be like Goya's answer to Salsa Lizano (a not-very-hot but extremely flavorful sauce/seasoning made with spices, peppers, and pureed vegetables) but unfortunately the Goya product can't hold a candle to the richer-flavored Salsa Lizano.

I'm probably missing the point of Sazon Liquido; I thought the vegetables and aromatics in it would make it more versatile, but to me it just tastes like liquid salt, and I just don't have an application for it in my kitchen. I ended up giving the bottle to an Hispanic friend at work. She'd never heard of it either, but told me she'd probably use it instead of salt in stewed dishes like her fricase.
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Seasonings Part Four: Pork Salt

We all have our little kitchen "secrets" - little things we do or seasonings we use that make our dishes unique. My mom's beef stew is a great example of that. I could never get my beef stew to taste as good as my mom's, no matter what I did. So one day, I asked her how she made her stew gravy so damn delicious.

"Stir in a couple of tablespoons of ketchup after you thicken it," she told me. "Nothing improves gravy like a hint of tomato."

She's right. Tomato is indeed a key component of awesome gravy. I nearly always include a tomato or two in with the "aromatics" when I make a non-poultry broth, stew, soup, or pot roast. If I'm in a hurry, though, I'll use canned tomatoes, ketchup, or a dab of tomato paste. If you've never tried it you should.

My own little secret is for pork. I keep a shaker of what my family calls "Pork Salt" by the stove, and use it as kind of a universal pigmeat seasoning. Roast, chops, ribs, whatever - it's a "base seasoning" for me that seems to bring out the best flavors of the meat, even if I'm later going to use the pork for chili verde, in a spaghetti sauce, or with barbecue sauce. I always use some Pork Salt for at least the initial browning.

Pork Salt
Makes about 1¼ cups.

1 cup salt
2 tablespoons Bell's Seasoning*
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1 tablespoon powdered sage
1 tablespoon powdered thyme
1 teaspoon ground coriander

Mix all ingredients together in a jar or spice bottle with a shaker lid.

If the different spices and salt separate into layers because of non-uniform grain sizes, you can pulse them in a spice grinder or work them over with a mortar and pestle before putting them into the shaker.

Experiment with the blend to achieve your own favorite taste. Adding a bit of allspice and some powdered habanero pepper gives it a "jerk" taste. Or you could try adding cumin, chipotle powder and some powdered dried ancho peppers to give your seasoning a southwest flavor.

Link:

*Bell's Seasoning is a New England-made poultry seasoning; they've been around since 1867, and as long as I can remember my family's kitchens have had a box of Bell's in the cupboard ready for use. If you can't find it near you, there are links on Bell's website that will let you mail order it (or you can use your own favorite poultry seasoning blend. But I bet Bell's is better. LOL, alliteration.)

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Not All Ideas Are Good Ideas

Whether at the stove or at the table, my family likes freshly-ground seasonings. Peppercorns, allspice, nutmeg, coriander seed - no matter what it is, it tastes better when it's ground at the time of use (not to mention that whole spices have a longer shelf life than pre-ground ones.)

Good high-quality peppermills are available in just about any store for around $25 or so, but they're also easy to find (and a lot less expensive) at rummage sales, thrift stores, and estate or yard sales. I've picked up quite a few very nice peppermills for a dollar or less each that way.

Last year, I bought a mill with a clear lucite body and steel grinding plates. I liked the idea of a clear body, because I could fill it with an unusual mix that would be immediately visible to anyone picking it up. I filled it up with a blend of crushed red pepper flakes and very coarse sea salt. The combination was great - salt with a hot pepper kick - and was pretty popular for awhile before the novelty wore off and the mill found its way into kind of a seasoning rotation and, eventually, into the spice cupboard where it was more or less forgotten.

I remembered it a week ago and brought it out to add a little zip to my scrambled eggs - and added instead a coating of filthy-tasting slag; it was like having a mouthful of crunchy rotting tin. And when I flipped the peppermill over to check it, it was easy to see why. Summers in New England are tropical in their humidity, and salt gathers moisture. Sitting in the spice cupboard over last summer had given the crushed salt trapped in and on the plates plenty of time to collect moisture from the air and rot the metal. I hadn't actually ground any salt or red pepper onto my eggs at all - I had just broken free the rotted, fused plates and scraped the rust into my food.

Lesson learned: Any mills I buy for salt blends will have nylon grinding plates from now on.

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Seasonings Part Three: Maggi Seasoning, My Secret Ingredient

I have a secret ingredient that I use in my soups, stews, gravies, and sauces: Maggi Seasoning, grey-market-imported from Switzerland. This particular Swiss version of Maggi contains an ingredient no other Maggi Seasoning has: extract of lovage (an herb related to celery.) As awesome as slowly-simmered homemade soup is, Swiss Maggi makes it even more awesome.

Maggi is made by the Nestle Company, and they tailor many of their products to appeal to mysteriously-defined arbitrary demographics. Right now, in my kitchen, I have four bottles of Maggi Seasoning. Each of them is from a different country, and every single one of them tastes different from the others. The bottle at right is a 500ml bottle of Swiss Maggi. The lovage extract in it makes the flavor rich, deep, and more complex than many of the other Maggis in my cupboard. A few shakes of it in a pot of chicken soup awakens a dimension of flavor which is otherwise unavailable.

This is the Maggi I find most commonly in American supermarkets and Asian markets here in the US. It tastes a lot like soy sauce, although there's no soy in it - just wheat gluten, wheat bran, yeast extract, and MSG. It's lighter in color than the other Maggi sauces. I don't like it as much as I do the euro versions, though it has it's place. Because it has a lighter taste than most standard soy sauces, I use it to season stir-fries and fried rice.

Some friends traveling to Germany brought back a couple bottles of the German Maggi version for me, thinking it would be the same as the Swiss product I'd been using. The flavor was close - very close - to the Swiss, but not the same (saltier for one thing) and there isn't any lovage extract on the ingredient list. It's my second favorite Maggi.

This version is made in Poland. The ingredient list on the label shows salt, MSG, glucose, yeast extract, and artificial flavorings. The flavor of this variety is less soy-like than the American product, more hearty and "browner," kind of like a half-way compromise between the saltier German variety and the lovage-flavored Swiss product. It's particularly good in beef and pork gravies and as a seasoning in onion soup.

Links:

My Love For Maggi Seasoning Sauce - a blog post on Eat Drink & Be Merry featuring an extensive selection of Maggi sauces from different areas.

The Swiss Food Store - Here you can buy the original Maggi, the one with the lovage extract, and you can enjoy using the same secret ingredient I do. They also have a wide selection of other Swiss foods.

Links to other Dave's Cupboard posts in the Seasonings category:

Part One: Seasoned Salts
Part Two: Bacon Salt Without the Hype

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Patum Peperium - The Gentleman's Relish

So, last week I was running down Helen's British One Hundred and tripped over No. 33, Patum Peperium or Gentleman's Relish. I'd never heard of it before, so I did a little research and found that it's a sort of anchovy paste rumored to be excellent on hot toast.

I can't even begin to tell you how delicious that sounded.

By the end of the day, I had located a large handful of online merchants who carried the stuff, including one who sold it not only in the widely-available plastic container but also in the classic glass container (elegant black, with gold lettering no less.) So I placed the order and had a jar of Patum Peperium in my hands in three days.

Ooooh, I was psyched. I put a slice of bread in the toaster and sat down at the kitchen table with my new treasure. Inside the gorgeous glass jar was a thick portion of nondescript brown paste which smelled slightly fishy, slightly fermenty, and a bit like very old milk. The smell was strong enough to summon my dog, Zim, who sat at my feet and gazed up at me with big, liquid eyes, begging for just the slightest taste of this new and stinky treat!

First, I tried a little dab of it straight out of the jar. Salty and fishy, though not quite as fishy as I expected, a bit herbal, and quite unlike anything I'd ever tried before. I spread some sparingly on a hot slice of toast, and it was truly delicious, just as the jar label promised. The dog agreed. Unfortunately, my wife and daughter do not agree. This is yet another food that no other human in the family will share with me.

Since that first taste, I've been trying it in different ways:

• Spread thinly on a lettuce and tomato sandwich - very good
• Blended with lobster tomalley and cream cheese as a spread - aces!
• Whisked as a seasoning into eggs before scrambling (suggested by the Wikipedia article) - good, but not exceptional.
• Stirred into the gravy of a beef stew - Excellent, really "woke up" the flavor in a way that salt alone wouldn't have done.

I'm reasonably sure that Gentleman's Relish could be used in any situation where one might use anchovy paste, but it's so much better tasting than plain anchovy paste. I plan to keep a supply on hand from now on.

Seasonings Part Two: Bacon Salt Without The Hype

You're reading this page because you have internet access. And because you have internet access, you have almost certainly heard of Bacon Salt, the relatively new variety of seasoning salt that has been all the rage virtually from the moment it was released.

Yes, Bacon Salt. To read the reviews, one would think that this is the most significant culinary development since the discovery of fire. But is it really? Could any flavored salt be worthy of the amount of praise that Bacon Salt has garnered? Or is it just a case of The Emperor's New Salt?

At the risk of incurring the wrath of the Internet, I will tell you this: Bacon Salt is good, but it ain't All That.

I bought all three varieties of Bacon Salt to taste and compare. I tried them on vegetables, meat, and potatoes, and here are my impressions:

• Original Bacon Salt - The Original flavor is not very good. It tastes mostly like putting a drop of salty Liquid Smoke on the food, though there are "bacony" undertones (which are most likely provided by the "natural and artificial flavors" listed on the label.) If only it tasted more like bacon and less like really cheap barbecue-flavor potato chips. I am not impressed.
• Peppered - Peppery overtones are spicy but lack the fruity character of freshly ground black pepper. Thankfully, the pepper dominates the obnoxious "bottled smoke" flavor, making this variety of Bacon Salt somewhat better than "Original."
• Hickory - An authentic but quite mild hickory smoke flavor combined with a dose of sweetness in the salt. Of all three varieties, I find this one to taste the least like an old ashtray and most like bacon (which is to say, "Still not really like bacon at all.")

For the most part, Bacon Salt is a middle-of-the-road smoke-flavored seasoning salt. The makers achieve the illusion of bacon flavor through the heavy use of natural and artificial smoke flavorings along with other ingredients such as whey, garlic powder, and glutamates (not necessarily in MSG, but in hydrolyzed proteins.) I believe it owes its success primarily due to the current popularity of the internet bacon meme and not because the product itself is of particularly high quality.

In my own kitchen, Bacon Salt is going to find rather limited use. I use my smoker quite a bit, and I enjoy the flavors and characteristics that real, burning-wood smoke gives to food, but I really dislike the nasty bong-water taste of Liquid Smoke and other shake-it-out-of-a-bottle "smoke" products. Bacon Salt does not taste like "bacon" to me, it just tastes like artificially-flavored salt, because the flavor of well-crafted bacon is more than just salt and smoke and lactose and garlic powder. It's an amusing curiosity, useful in a limited way when I want a kind of smoky flavor in something without firing up the grill, but when these bottles are finally used up I doubt I'll be buying them again.

Still, I can understand the appeal of a seasoning that promises to make "everything taste like bacon" and while I don't think the promise was intentionally broken, I think it is just too big a pledge to be successfully delivered.

Seasonings Part One: Seasoned Salts

I'm right in the middle of designing a new spice cupboard for our kitchen. When we bought our old 1920's house, it had never been updated - seriously, never, as in the hot water heater was still in its original place in the kitchen - and we have a walk-in pantry but no cabinets at all.

At any rate, the first thing to do before designing a storage area is determine how much stuff you need to store. And as I took inventory of my herbs and spices and seasonings, I was amazed at how many interesting flavors I've bought and (for the most part) used over the years. Some of them were delicious and became part of my regular repertoire. Others were more nasty and got abandoned. But I thought a review of various seasonings would make for an interesting series of articles and perhaps start some discussion about what we like and dislike in the way of flavorings.

Special note: All of the seasonings in these reviews are ones I've actually used. I'm not a spokesman for any company, and I'm not famous enough to get free review samples of anything, so everything I review on this blog I buy in retail stores just like anyone else. Also, some people are sensitive to MSG, so I will mention it in my notes when any of the seasonings contains glutamates.

And so today, I start out my "Seasonings" arc with a type of product we're all familiar with: Seasoned Salts.

My daughter has enjoyed Spike since she was five years old, and I always have some on hand - a shaker bottle of it on the table, and a bulk box in the pantry ready to refill the shaker. It has a rich and complex savory flavor that is quite unlike anything else on the market, and when you see the list of ingredients you'll know why:

Salt and sea salt crystals, special high flavor yeast, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, mellow toasted onion, onion powder, orange powder, soy flour, celery leaf powder, celery root powder, garlic powder, dill, kelp, Indian curry, horseradish, ripe white pepper, orange and lemon peel, summer savory, mustard flower, sweet green and red peppers, parsley flakes, tarragon, rosehips, saffron, mushroom powder, parsley powder, spinach powder, tomato powder, sweet Hungarian paprika, celery powder, cayenne pepper, plus a delightful herbal bouquet of the best Greek oregano, French sweet basil, French marjoram, French rosemary, and Spanish thyme.

That's quite a number of herbs and seasonings for a table sprinkle, but it is much more flavorful than salt and pepper alone, and does wonderful things to very bland foods like scrambled eggs. Special note: although Spike contains no MSG, it does include "hydrolyzed vegetable protein" which is a glutamate.

Link: Modern Products Inc., the maker of Spike and other "nutritional" items.

Cavender's All Purpose Greek Seasoning is perhaps the best-tasting seasoned salt I have ever used. It's a blend of salt and twelve other ingredients made for the past 37 years by S-C Seasoning Company, a small family-owned business in Arkansas. I love the stuff, and I have never had any seasoning I like better on grilled/broiled/oven roasted/pan roasted chicken. Don't get me wrong, it's delicious on beef and pork too, but Cavender's is absolute magic on chicken.

Note: The label makes me laugh: "An Ancient Greek Formula." Which contains MSG, because we all know how much the ancient Greeks liked their umami.

Link: S-C's website.

Koniko Chipotle All Purpose Seasoning - Ah, yes, the most overused and overrated of all the current foodie buzzwords: "Chipotle." Sometimes it seems like companies are using the word "chipotle" do describe anything spicy regardless of how it gets that way. But Konriko has developed a chipotle-seasoned salt that is so good, it is one of the newest favorites in the spice rack. Nicely smoky with a decent burn, the salt level is properly proportioned so that adding more of the seasoning brings the chipotle character forward without making the salt unbearable. Konriko did such a good job with this blend that I'm keeping my eye out for some of their other products. I'd like to give more of them a try.

Link: The Konriko website - Conrad Rice Mill, the oldest working rice mill in the U.S.

Knorr Aromat Seasoning is very savory. It's made in Switzerland and can be difficult to find at retail stores in the US (though it is widely available through online stores.) The ingredients list reveals why it is so delicious:

Salt, flavour enhancer, monosodium glutamate, lactose, wheat starch, yeast extract, hydrogenated vegetable oil, onion powder, garlic powder, turmeric, spices.

MSG and yeast extract are high in umami.

Just flipping the top open and giving it a smell can make my mouth water; Aromat has an aroma that is reminiscent of roasting chicken. I find it excellent on steamed vegetables, very good on braised meats, okay on chicken and fish (I like Cavender's better though) and not good at all on eggs.

Link: Knorr's website entrance. Aromat does not appear on the American homepage; in fact, users of Knorr's international products may find their website rather frustrating.

Jane's Krazy Mixed-Up Salt was one of the first seasoned salts I ever bought when first I was learning how to cook. It is a coarsely-ground salt blended with dehydrated herb flakes as well as onion and garlic powder, and is especially good with beef (burgers and steaks) and strong fish like bluefish and swordfish. It's also excellent on salad: Toss the salad with oil and vinegar and then sprinkle with Jane's for great justice. It contains no MSG.

One thing to remember about Jane's: Because it contains flaked herbs, it can lose its flavor if stored for too long. So unless you really like it and plan to use it up quickly, get the smaller container for best taste.

Link: Jane's Krazy website.

McCormick's Season-All is an all-purpose seasoning salt which includes a small amount of chile pepper in the blend. Even with the pepper in the mix, though, it has a quite generic flavor - not surprising considering the very standard ingredients:

SALT, SPICES (INCLUDING CHILI PEPPER, BLACK PEPPER, AND CELERY SEED), ONION, PAPRIKA, MALTODEXTRIN, GARLIC, SILICON DIOXIDE (ADDED TO MAKE FREE FLOWING), AND ANNATTO (COLOR).

My tolerance for chile-fueled spiciness has grown considerably beyond the levels provided by Season-All, so I barely notice the chile in it any more. And although it's not my favorite seasoning, it is an inexpensive and tasty blend which is exceptionally good when used as the seasoning in a batch of Chex Mix.

Link: McCormick's website.

Lawry's Seasoned Salt has a devoted following, and I'm probably going to attract some negative comments when I say that it is the only seasoned salt I ever threw away because I hated it.

Ingredients: salt, sugar, spices (including paprika and turmeric), onion, cornstarch, garlic, tricalcium phosphate (prevents caking), paprika oleoresin (for color), natural flavor, soy lecithin

I don't know - maybe since I've been trying to eliminate refined sugars from my diet I've become more sensitive to them in processed foods, but Lawry's just tastes too sweet to me now. Whenever I used it, it just tasted like a low-quality generic sprinkle that did nothing exceptional for the flavor of my food. So out it went.

Link: Lawry's website.


Tomorrow: Bacon Salt without the Hype.