Poultry Seasoning - Make Your Own - Frugal Hausfrau (2024)

I don’t know about you, but I don’t use a lot of poultry seasoning – I may add just a smidge to a dish now and then throughout the year, but I always need it around the holidays, especially in my Classic Midwestern Thanksgiving Stuffing. Two teaspoons, every year. I really don’t want to buy a whole container and have it sit, taking up room in my spice cupboard. So I did a bit of investigating and came up with this post on Poultry Seasoning – Make Your Own.

So when I wanted to mix up some Poultry Seasoning, I turned to the net and was quickly overcome with all the options. It’s a serious business this (yep, all this for two teaspoons!) because I want a specific flavor to my stuffing – the same one I’ve had over and over for decades.

About Poultry Seasoning:

While a little deviance from my recipe might be a good thing, it won’t be the same thing, and the herbs & spices in poultry seasoning are strong enough to skew any recipe, even used in small amounts.

I thought I’d share what I’ve learned so everyone can pick and choose for a homemade blend. You can go with a classic or have the options to sally forth and create a“house” blend. Write it down, so your kids don’t ever have to hear, “Good stuffing; almost as good as Mom’s” or “It’s almost right, but something’s missing!” And believe me, they’ll be hearing that long after you’re gone if your family is into sharing and cherishing family recipes.

As a matter of fact, if you read about the history of poultry seasoning, below, you’ll find that even the long-standing old recipes for poultry seasoning have been changed over the years. Making your own is one way to make sure you’ll always have the exact flavor you want. And you might want to make your own poultry seasoning so you can have the freshest tasting poultry seasoning every year, without the added expense of buying a new package when the holidays roll around. It’s likely you have most of the spices already in your pantry if you do much cooking at all. If the recipes are more than you’d like to make, just scale them down.

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The history behind Poultry Seasoning:

For years, poultry seasoning followed a pretty standard formula, one that appeared in very early cookbooks and should be pretty familiar to those who favor Schilling. Not surprisingly, early records of Poultry Seasoning seems to be tied to the Baltimore area, an area home tosome of the earliest published cookbook authors. Ingredients:rubbed sage, marjoram, thyme, nutmeg, and black pepper.

Then an upstart appeared: Bell’s. According to their website, “In 1867, William G. Bell, a Boston inventor, and cook created Bell’s Seasoning. A unique combination of rosemary, oregano, sage, ginger, and marjoram – today’s blend is unchanged from the original recipe.” Isn’t it nice some things, at least, always remain the same!

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Around the midpoint of the last century, the Schilling canisters indicated they weretied to McCormick’s, and McCormick’s current list of ingredients states: thyme, sage, marjoram, rosemary, black pepper, and nutmeg.

The three classic Poultry Seasonings, above, are all pretty similar with the exceptions of rosemary, oregano & pepper, which appear only in some and a swap out of nutmeg & ginger in others. The proportions differ, though, in the main ingredients from one to another.

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Newer Poultry Seasonings:

Many spice companies produce their own house blend. Penzey’s, for instance, describes theirs as a “Sage-rich Southern blend” and lists their ingredients: hand-mixed fromsage, white pepper, bell peppers, lemon peel, savory, rosemary, dill weed, allspice, thyme, marjoram, and ginger.

To further complicate things, many of the big cooking websites, those from television networks, cookbooks, cooking magazines and sites composed of consortiums of chefs whip up their own blends and versions.Some of these include more herbs and spices in addition to or instead of the ones above: celery seed, dried onion, garlic, clove, cayenne, coriander &parsley,just to name a few.

Maybe it’s time to think about making your own signature blend. Any of the recipes, below are a great place to start. If you are like me and make a stuffing or dressing of your own that involves poultry seasoning along with other spices and herbs, it’s a no-brainer to mix up a batch with all those ingredients. Then you won’t be measuring out a lot of stuff every single time. For my dressing, for instance, I’d just need to scale the amount of poultry seasoning, add an equal amount of sage, 1/2 as much of each salt and pepper as sage. Then I’d have my own “mix.”

Note: all the photos for the spice boxes come from eBay.

Do You Need Other Seasoning Blends?

While some people might use poultry seasoning throughout the year, one of the main times so many of us here in the States is Thanksgiving when so many of us make Turkey & Stuffing. And, of course, the same might appear for Christmas, New Year’s or if you’re like me and pick up sales priced turkeys and keep them in my freezer, maybe any time of the year!

But you might be making Pumpkin or Apple Pie or desserts. Check out my page with three recipes, Pumpkin Pie Spice-A Trio of Recipes. Or if you’re looking for an Apple Pie Spice, It’s my own signature blend and you might like it, too. Or maybe you’d like to check out my main menu with all my favorite Spice, Herb and Flavor Packet substitutes?

If you’d like to see more of my spice & herb blends, check out . I’m adding as I go along!

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