Copycat Old Bay Seasoning. A No Sodium Version
Copycat Old Bay Seasoning. A No Sodium Version! A careful blend of herbs and spices meant to compliment a seafood boil, but can be used as a seasoning for everything from french fries to smoked fish dip.
Although we have tons of seafood here in Newfoundland, many of our traditional ways of preparing it are pretty bland. Fresh fish and shellfish always stand on their own virtues and merit.
Fresh pan fried cod is not to be scoffed at, nor is simple boiled and devoured crab, lobster, mussels or shrimp. A great beer battered seafood platter with scallops , shrimp and fresh cod is one of my takeout favorites in m neighbourhood too.
Throw some extra tartar sauce in the bag at the fish and chips shop and you'll get no complaints from me. It's a real treat and a great comfort food meal too.
But what about amping up the flavour with herb spice and spicy hit!?
My travels brought great flavour.
Regular readers will know plenty about my love of road trips and food discoveries along the way. Our social media followers over the past 20 years have come along on quite a few of them.
They've been on the road with us from the Northeast US in NYC and Boston, to a road trip on the French Riviera. Readers have been treated to a visual feast of what we've eaten from Venice Italy to Venice Beach California!
Meandering the highways and byways of the southern US has always been at the top of my list though. My love of southern cooking and especially BBQ has lead me to drive every mile from the Florida Keys to the beaches of San Diego.
A favourite stop along the way has always been New Orleans. That melting pot of Cajun French and southern cooking is one of the best food cities in the world.
Copycat Old Bay Seasoning, my first encounter with the real thing.
If you've never had a Louisiana Seafood boil, it is as much an experience as a meal. My first time, was there in New Orleans.
With the table covered in newspapers a big pot of steaming crawfish, corn, potatoes, crab, shrimp and sausage was thrown the length if the table for everyone to dive in!
It did remind me of the crab boils in our backyard as a kid, but the flavour was so much more intense. That came from an unshy amount Old Bay Seasoning in the water.
More seasoning was sprinkled over the whole lot as well. It was just heavenly.
Getting those herbs and spices right.
Old Bay is said to have 18 herbs and spices in it's closely guarded recipe mix. I guess they just had to outdo the Colonel!
Many copycat recipes online seem to have the same basic dozen or so ingredients and some have even more basic versions with fewer.
One if the things I did notice was the lack of onion or garlic flavour added, which seemed odd for a spice mix but many folks add these t a seafood boil anyway so I guess there's logic in that.
I went with 15 for the most complex flavour and included one rarely found in many of those I read online. My memory tells me there was slight dill flavour in there as well which makes perfect sense with seafood, so I threw some if that in my mix too!
A couple of batches and a little tweaking later, I settled on this mix which hit all the right notes for me.
I'll be adding some to our next family crab boil and see what the family think. I also need to try it in a smoked fish dip like they love in Florida and along the gulf coast.
It seemed to top every fish dip we tried from Clearwater to Galveston on one road trip. It is insidensible to many southern cooks and might just become so for you too!
Love seafood?
If you're looking for more great ideas like this, check out this collection of 20 of Our Favourite Seafood Dinners.
Like this Copycat Old Bay Seasoning recipe?
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Copycat Old Bay Seasoning. A No Sodium Version.
Copycat Old Bay Seasoning. A No Sodium Version! A careful blend of herbs and spices meant to compliment a seafood boil, but can be used as a seasoning for everything from french fries to smoked fish dip.
Ingredients
- 8 large dried bay leaves (Or 10-12 smaller leaves)
- 1 tablespoon celery seed
- 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
- 1 tablespoon sweet paprika
- 1 tablespoon ground dry mustard
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon dill seed
- 1 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon ground allspice
- ½ teaspoon ground cardamom
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
- ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes (more or less to taste)
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
Instructions
- Grind all of the herbs and spices together until a uniform consistency.
- I use a dedicated coffee grinder that I use inly for spice blends, but a blender or food frocesor works well. A mortar and pestle can be used to grind the leaves and seeds if making it by hand.
Notes
While this is a salt free version, you can always add salt if you like, especially if using it as a shake on seasoning for seafood, fries, vegetables etc.
In tasting the original version, I found it very high in salt. ¼ teaspoon of the original brand has 210 mg salt, so by estimate the original could be ¼ to ⅓ salt of total volume. That's quite a lot.
This recipe makes about ½ cup without salt, so if adding salt as a seasoning, I would use no more than 1 tablespoon salt. This would equate to about ⅛th if the overall volume and still far less than the commercial brand.
Nutrition Information
Yield
25Serving Size
1 tspAmount Per Serving Calories 10Total Fat 0gSaturated Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 0gSodium 0mgCarbohydrates 2gFiber 1gSugar 0gProtein 0g
The nutritional information provided is automatically calculated by third party software and is meant as a guideline only. Exact accuracy is not guaranteed. For recipes where all ingredients may not be used entirely, such as those with coatings on meats, or with sauces or dressings for example, calorie & nutritional values per serving will likely be somewhat lower than indicated.
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