The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Three ways to spice things up
Here are three suggestions on spices — for sprinkling, already in a breading mix, or in candy.
Spice blends
Chef Hans Rueffert of Jasper recently created a line of five spice blends, making it easy to infuse new flavors into your cooking. We tried two of them. Honey Buzz was an instant hit, so delicious smelling that we just wanted to spoon it up right from the jar. It’s a mix of honey powder, smoked paprika, salt, orange peel, garlic-dried chile peppers and more. The combination of sweet with smoke, and a little hit of heat, is pretty irresistible. Not wanting to wait until we were ready to start cooking, we sprinkled ours at first on cottage cheese, and then on avocado toast. It turned out to be great for seasoning grilled chicken, as well. The second blend we tried was Out of the Blue, a mix of coarse sea salt, lavender, coriander and white pepper that immediately made us think of herbes de Provence. Rueffert created this blend as a tribute to a favorite gourmet shop with the same name in Blue Ridge. He suggested using it as a finishing salt on steaks, or roasted vegetables. Our testers liked it on popcorn, too.
$12 per 6- or 7.5-ounce jar. Available at the Old Mulehouse, 2 N. Main St., Jasper, or at hanscooks.com/spices.
Fish and chicken breading mix
Lefty’s Barbecue Restaurant in Waldorf, Maryland, has been around since 1989. It was founded by Walter “Lefty” Nash Sr., who grew up in Washington, Ga., where he learned to cook barbecue from his father. The restaurant serves hickory-smoked barbecue that garners rave reviews, but its fried chicken and fried whiting also are customer favorites — so popular, that the restaurant sells its breading mixture, so you can use it at home. It’s a combination of wheat and corn flours, with plenty of spice, including garlic, onion, paprika and lemon. And, it’s easy to use. Whisk the mix with water, to make a creamy sauce; dip your pieces of fish or chicken into the wet mixture; then, dredge them in dry mix and bake, deep fry or air fry. The result is crisp and well-seasoned, with very little work on your part. Lefty’s also sells its mild and hot hickory-sweet barbecue sauces, and, soon, you’ll be able to purchase the restaurant’s delicious, garlicky all-purpose seasoning blend.
$5.99 per 16-ounce package of Fish n’ Chicken Mix, $5.99 per 18-ounce bottle of barbecue sauce. Available at Amazon and leftyspices.com.
Hard candy with chile-lime seasoning
Fruit, chile, lime, salt — if that’s a combination that tantalizes your taste buds, Tamalitoz, from Austin-based Sugarox, is something you need in your life. Striped with natural colorings on the outside, packed with chile-lime-salt seasoning on the inside, the handmade candies come in 10 flavors, every one of which immediately became a favorite: watermelon, cucumber, mango, tamarind, pineapple, cherry, blood orange, green apple, peach and cranberry. We no sooner would open a bag, and the arguing would begin over who got to finish it. We loved that each inch-long piece of candy provided a different experience. Some pieces are packed with the spicy seasoning, and some just have a hint. Videos posted by Sugarox on Facebook show the making of the candy, and you can see how the twists and folds of the process mean some bits of candy have more filling than others. It’s fascinating.
$3.99 per 4-ounce package. Available at El Ponce in Atlanta and Lolli and Pops in Alpharetta, and at tamalitoz.com.