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Upgrade your meals from eh to epicurean with a few deft shakes of a jar.
Jamaican jerk seasoning can transport your palate to the Caribbean with its earthy, sweet, and scorching blend, typically consisting of thyme, allspice, sugar, scotch bonnet peppers, garlic, and salt, among other spices. It’s great on any cut of chicken and mixed into ground turkey for burgers or meatballs.
I’ve been pumping all sorts of seasoning blends so far, but it’s also important to have some quality individual spices stocked, especially for baking. You can choose from cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, or pumpkin pie spice, depending on your preference (or hey, go for all of ‘em, I don’t own you).
My thoughts are these: Cinnamon is the easy choice because not only is it great in sweets, but also savory dishes like chili and pho. (Cloves, allspice, and nutmeg also work well in baking but have fewer uses on the savory side, so save those for when you’ve committed to building up your spice collection.) If you really want to go all out, pick up some pumpkin pie spice, which combines ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger and allspice into the perfect ratio for way more than than just its namesake dish.
Get cinnamon from Amazon for $3.02 or Jet for $2.70 and pumpkin pie spice from Amazon for $3.02 or Jet for $4.27.
This throwback blend of coarse salt and pepper with garlic, paprika, cayenne pepper, and other spices is all you need to amplify the taste of beefy burgers and steaks. It also does a great job at transforming vegetarian food by adding a hefty dose of that oh-so-coveted umami flavor.
The only jar I’m calling out by brand name is this savory blend that makes scrambled eggs sing, sour cream– and yogurt-based dips dance, and potato chips and popcorn party. That’s because it combines salt with freeze-dried shallots, chives, garlic, onion, and green peppercorns, creating a flavor capable of elevating anything edible (and probably even anything nonedible).
Get it from Amazon for $6.49+.
If you plan on baking, you’d better be well-stocked on the sweet stuff — not to mention how important it is for enhancing the flavor profiles of savory stuff like marinara, barbecue, and potsticker sauces, chili, and spice rubs for grilled meats and tofu. The aspiring baker should stock up on granulated sugar, confectioners (powdered) sugar, and brown sugar, both the light and dark varieties, which are both comprised of sugar and molasses, with dark containing more. Light is the default brown sugar in baking recipes, so only use dark brown sugar in recipes when specified, unless you prefer a stronger molasses flavor.
Get granulated sugar from Jet for $3.98, confectioners sugar from Jet for $3.98, light brown sugar from Jet for $3.97, and dark brown sugar from Jet for $3.11.