Make Your Own Spice Blend Shortcuts

Learn how to save time during dinner prep by creating spice shortcuts for your most commonly used blends.

It’s Quick Win Friday and I’ve got a good one for you today! This quick tip will save you so much time in the kitchen, and it’s a fun, easy project you can involve the kids with, too. You know those go-to meals you cook over and over again? They’re the classic family favorites, the easy weeknight sheet pan combos, and the stock-the-freezer superstars. Since you make them often, what if there were a way to streamline the process? If your recipes use a few spices and seasonings, you can make spice shortcuts!

If you make the same family recipe often and it calls for a bunch of spices, go ahead and combine them into a spice jar for faster cooking. For example, my mom’s spaghetti sauce recipe calls for eight different spices so I just combined a bunch of them together using part-ratios and put them in clean spice jar labeled Spaghetti Sauce. Same goes for my southwest seasoning that goes in taco meat and on roasted veggies.

Instead of measuring out each individual seasoning every time you make the meal, you’ll already have them ready to go in one jar to save yourself time and cleanup. Just be sure to give the jar a good shake before you use it so the seasonings get nice and blended first.

Supplies You Need:

• Empty Spice Jar, cleaned and completely dried.
• Small Kitchen Funnel
• Small Bowl
• Spoon
• Label For Spice Jar

How To Make Kitchen Spice Shortcuts

1. Pull out the recipes for your go-to family meals that contain at least four spices. Go ahead and grab those spices, too, while you’re at it.
2. Open up a clean, dry, empty spice jar and sit a small funnel on top.
3. In a small bowl, add the seasonings based on part-ratios, adding enough that will almost fill the jar. (More on part-ratios in a minute.)
4. Stir the bowl, then carefully pour into the funnel to fill the jar.
5. Label the jar, then update your recipe with the total amount to scoop from the jar next time you cook.

More On Part-Ratios

Let me give you an example of how this process works with my southwest seasoning blend. It calls for 1 teaspoon of garlic powder, half a teaspoon of cumin, and half a teaspoon of chili powder. This converts to 2 parts garlic powder, one part cumin, and one part chili powder.

I know that my spice jars hold about 8 tablespoons, so in a small bowl, I use 4 tablespoons of garlic powder, 2 tablespoons of cumin, and 2 tablespoons of chili powder. This gives me one big blended mix that I can scoop 2 teaspoons of into my recipe, instead of having to measure all three spices.

Of course, the amount of seasoning you add from this jar won’t be exact, but in most recipes, that won’t matter. Just shake up the jar and you’ll get a good enough combination of them all.

Share Your Favorite Spice Blend!

Everybody loves a good recipe swap, so share your favorite spice blend combo below in the comments. And if you have a Cricut machine, here are two fun ways you can label your spice jars to up their pretty-factor. For jars that lay flat, add narrow vinyl labels to the front. And for jars that stand up in a drawer, these lid labels are fast and easy to make. Whether or not you have a Cricut machine, this post teaches you how to store and organize all your spice jars.