Louisiana Dries It, Guadeloupe Keeps It Fresh

Ask for Creole seasoning in a British shop and, if they have it at all, you will be handed a small jar of brick-red powder. Paprika, garlic, cayenne, a few dried herbs. It comes from Louisiana, and it is good at what it does.

Say the same words in a kitchen in Guadeloupe and you get something else entirely: a wet green heap on a chopping board. Spring onion, thyme, parsley, garlic, a piece of hot pepper, and lime juice running through all of it. Nothing dried. Nothing in a jar.

Same word, two Creoles. Both are worth knowing, so here is a recipe for the jar, a recipe for the board, and when to reach for each.

What is in Creole seasoning

The Creole seasoning sold in shops is a Louisiana dry blend, from the cooking of New Orleans. The usual base is sweet paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper, black pepper, dried oregano, dried thyme and salt. Many blends add dried basil or white pepper, and some slip in a little bay or rosemary.

Paprika gives the colour, the powders give savoury depth, cayenne brings the heat, and the dried herbs are what make it taste of Creole cooking rather than chilli powder.

It suits the food of that city: seafood, rice dishes, gumbo, jambalaya, anything with tomato in it. I have written about how Louisiana Creole cooking sits next to ours in what Creole food actually is.

Cajun vs Creole seasoning

People use the two names as one, but they are not the same. Cajun seasoning leans on pepper: cayenne, black pepper and often white pepper, with garlic and paprika and fewer dried herbs. It is usually the hotter of the two. Creole seasoning carries more dried herbs (thyme, oregano and basil) and tends to be rounder and milder.

The names point to two different Louisianas. Cajun comes from Acadian. The Acadians were French settlers in what is now Nova Scotia and the land around it, expelled by the British from 1755, and many of them rebuilt their lives in the rural south of Louisiana. Creole cooking belongs to New Orleans, the city.

In practice the jars overlap a lot, so read the ingredients, not the name. Herbs high up the list, and it behaves like Creole. Mostly pepper and salt, and it is Cajun in all but name.

Creole seasoning in the UK

Cajun seasoning is easy to find here: most big supermarkets keep a jar, often their own brand. Creole seasoning is harder. A few supermarkets carry a jar from a specialist spice company, but most of the time it means buying online or from a spice specialist.

My advice: make it. Everything you need is in a British supermarket, it takes five minutes, and you decide the salt and the heat.

What you’ll need

This makes about 12 tablespoons, enough to fill a small jam jar. Use sweet paprika, not smoked. Smoked paprika is lovely, but it pulls the whole blend towards barbecue.

• 3 tbsp sweet paprika
• 2 tbsp garlic granules or garlic powder
• 1½ tbsp onion powder
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 1 tbsp dried thyme
• 2 tsp dried basil
• 2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 to 2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1½ tbsp fine sea salt (leave it out for a salt-free blend)

How I make it

1. Crush the herbs first. Grind the oregano, thyme and basil in a pestle and mortar for thirty seconds, or rub them hard between your palms. Smaller pieces stay mixed instead of settling at the bottom of the jar.

2. Mix everything in a bowl. Add the paprika, garlic, onion powder, black and white pepper, salt and 1 tsp of the cayenne. Stir with a fork, pressing any lumps of garlic powder against the side of the bowl.

3. Taste it the right way. Spices only show you what they are once they meet hot oil. Warm a teaspoon of oil in a small pan, let a good pinch of the blend sizzle in it for ten seconds, then spoon it onto a piece of bread and taste once it has cooled a little. If you want more fire, add the second teaspoon of cayenne now.

4. Jar it and date it. Tip the blend into a clean, dry, airtight jar, write the date on the lid, and keep it in a dark cupboard away from the cooker.

5. Shake before every use. Salt and powders settle at different speeds, so a quick shake keeps every spoonful the same. It is at its best for two to three months, while the paprika still smells of something.

The other Creole: seasoning made fresh in Guadeloupe

In the French Caribbean, Creole cooking does not start from a jar. It starts at the market, with a bunch of herbs tied together: cives, thyme and flat-leaf parsley, sold as a bouquet garni on the stalls. Cives are a bunching onion, Allium fistulosum, softer and greener in flavour than a brown onion, and they go into nearly everything we cook.

Add garlic, a piece of piment, lime and salt, and you have the base of most savoury cooking on the island. In French it is simply the assaisonnement, the seasoning, and once the meat goes in, the marinade.

Meat and fish sit in it for hours before the pot comes out, so by the time you cook, the lime, garlic and herbs have already done their work. That is the real difference between the two Creoles. The Louisiana jar is a coating, shaken on just before cooking. Ours goes on early and has time to soak in.

Here is how I make it, enough for about 1kg of chicken or four good fish steaks.

• 6 spring onions, finely chopped (or a bunch of cives, if you can find them)
• A small bunch of chives (about 10g), finely snipped
• 1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves (from about 8 sprigs)
• A small handful of flat-leaf parsley (about 15g), finely chopped
• 4 garlic cloves
• ½ scotch bonnet, seeds and white membrane removed, very finely chopped
• Juice of 2 limes
• 1 tsp fine salt
• ½ tsp ground black pepper
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil

Crush the garlic to a paste with the salt under the flat of a knife. Chop the spring onions, chives, thyme and parsley as fine as your patience allows, by hand, because a blender bruises the herbs into green soup. Mix in the scotch bonnet, lime juice, pepper and oil, and it is ready.

Rub it into chicken and leave it in the fridge for a few hours, or overnight if you can. Fish needs far less: thirty minutes, two hours at most, or the lime starts to firm the flesh before it ever sees heat.

About the pepper: back home many cooks use a piment végétarien, a mild seasoning pepper with the perfume of a scotch bonnet and little of its fire. They are hard to find in Britain, so I cut the seeds and white membrane out of half a scotch bonnet, which is where most of the heat lives. You keep the fruit and lose most of the burn. More on that pepper in my scotch bonnet guide.

From seasoning to sauce chien

Take three spoonfuls of this seasoning, add more lime, a splash of oil and a few spoons of just-boiled water, and stir. Now you are very close to sauce chien, the sauce we spoon over grilled fish in Guadeloupe. The hot water wakes the herbs up. Its story, and its strange name, are here.

What to cook with each

The Louisiana blend is a coating spice, and a tablespoon seasons about 500g of food. Toss it through raw prawns with a little oil before they hit a hot pan. Rub it into chicken thighs before roasting, dust it over potato wedges, or stir it into a pot of rice with peppers and sausage. Most blends carry salt, so taste before you add more.

The fresh Guadeloupe seasoning is where a dish starts. It is the first step of my chicken fricassée, where the chicken sits in garlic, thyme, spring onion and parsley before it meets the pot. The same instinct is behind the lime and garlic marinade in my poulet colombo and the seasoned fish in court-bouillon.

Swapping one for the other does not really work. A dry blend cannot do what lime and fresh herbs do over a few hours, and a wet green seasoning will never give a pan-fried prawn its crust.

When there is no time to chop

Some evenings you are not going to chop a bunch of spring onions. That is when I reach for my Caribbean Sauce Creole. It is mostly onion, with green chilli, vinegar, oil, salt and white pepper: the soft onion and chilli layer of our cooking, already done for you. Two spoonfuls with lime and garlic make a quick marinade for chicken or fish, and a few in a stew save you the twenty minutes it takes to soften onions properly.

It is not the green herb seasoning, and I will not pretend it is. Let the jar do the onion and chilli, then chop a little fresh thyme, parsley and spring onion over the top.

One thing to know before you buy: it contains barley, which comes in with the vinegar.

Creole seasoning substitutes

For the Louisiana blend. Cajun seasoning with a pinch each of dried thyme and oregano gets you most of the way. Or, for one tablespoon of Creole seasoning, mix 1 tsp sweet paprika, ½ tsp garlic granules, ½ tsp onion powder, ¼ tsp each of dried thyme and oregano, ¼ tsp salt, and a pinch each of cayenne and black pepper.

For the Guadeloupe seasoning. Spring onions with a few chives stand in for cives. Curly parsley will do if the flat-leaf has gone. If you only have dried thyme, use 1 tsp in place of 1 tbsp fresh. With no scotch bonnet in the house, stir a few drops of Caribbean Hot Sauce into the finished seasoning for the heat (it also contains barley).

What has no substitute is the lime. Squeeze real ones.

FAQ

What is in Creole seasoning?

The shop-bought kind is a Louisiana dry blend of paprika, garlic and onion powder, cayenne, black pepper, dried oregano, thyme and salt. In the French Caribbean it means something fresh: cives or spring onion, thyme, parsley, garlic, hot pepper and lime.

Is Creole seasoning the same as Cajun seasoning?

Close relatives, not twins. Cajun is usually heavier on pepper and hotter. Creole carries more dried herbs and tends to be milder. They swap in most recipes, and a pinch of thyme and oregano brings Cajun nearer to Creole.

Is Creole seasoning spicy?

Warm rather than fierce. My homemade blend starts at 1 tsp of cayenne for the whole jar, and you can double that.

Where can I buy Creole seasoning in the UK?

Mostly online or from spice specialists. A few big supermarkets carry a specialist jar, but the usual shelf is Cajun. For the Guadeloupe kind, an ordinary supermarket has everything: spring onions, chives, thyme, parsley, garlic, limes and, in most big stores, scotch bonnets.

How long does homemade Creole seasoning keep?

The dry blend keeps for months but tastes best in the first two or three. The fresh Guadeloupe seasoning lives in the fridge, and with raw garlic in it, use it within two days.

Keep both in your kitchen

A small jar of the red blend in the cupboard for the nights you want a crust and a kick. Spring onions, thyme and limes in the fridge for the days you have time to let the seasoning soak in.

One word, two kitchens, and room for both of them in yours.

JP