Cajun Seasoning: What’s in It, Where It Comes From, and How to Use It

Check the first ingredient on a jar of Cajun seasoning. In a lot of commercial blends it’s salt, so season with the blend first and add salt only after you taste. The rest of this shaker of south Louisiana flavor is usually red pepper, paprika, garlic and onion, sometimes with black pepper, thyme or celery seed, and there’s no fixed recipe. And don’t expect it to be all heat. Louisiana’s tourism guide says Cajun food is well seasoned, not necessarily spicy: cayenne “is seasoning, not the main event.”¹

At a glance

What is in it

No two labels match exactly. Here’s what three commercial blends and the federal purchasing specification list, in the order given:

Two of the three brands put salt first. The third lists sea salt after the spices and garlic. None of them names white pepper, turmeric or oregano, though “spices” on a label can hide ingredients that aren’t spelled out.

If you’d rather make your own, Cook’s Country publishes a single “Louisiana seasoning” it offers for both Cajun and Creole cooking: 5 tablespoons paprika, 2 tablespoons garlic powder, and 1 tablespoon each of dried thyme, cayenne, celery salt, salt and black pepper.⁸ That one leads with paprika, not salt.

Cajun vs. Creole seasoning

Cajun and Creole name different people and, in Louisiana, different ways of cooking. The Louisiana Office of Tourism’s guide calls Creole cuisine “city food” centered on New Orleans and Cajun cuisine “country food,” and says Creole cooking uses tomatoes while Cajun cooking generally doesn’t.¹ For the full comparison, see Creole seasoning and Cajun seasoning vs. Creole seasoning.

On the spice shelf, the line gets blurry. Cook’s Country tests the two as one category.⁸ The USDA’s purchasing specification does list them differently: its Creole minimum adds black pepper, mustard and lemon peel to salt, paprika, garlic and cayenne, while its Cajun minimum is salt, red pepper, paprika, garlic and onion.² That’s one buyer’s spec for federal purchases, though, not a definition the market follows. Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning, for example, is salt, red pepper, black pepper, chili powder and garlic, close to the Slap Ya Mama Cajun blend above.⁹⁵ PepperScale sticks with the usual shorthand that Cajun is the hotter of the two and Creole the milder, more refined one.¹⁰ The Tony Chachere’s label, with red pepper second, shows that doesn’t hold for every jar.

Where Cajun cooking comes from

“Cajun” comes from les Acadiens, the name for French colonists in the Acadia region of Canada. Cajuns are descendants of French Canadians the British drove out of the captured colony of Acadia in the 18th century, who settled in the bayou country of southern Louisiana. The expulsion is known as Le Grand Dérangement, and the Acadians settled the region now known as Acadiana, across prairies, swamps and coastal marshes.

The same guide says early Cajuns wasted nothing at a hog butchering, or boucherie. That gave rise to boudin (a sausage of pork, rice and seasoning, often with liver) and to tasso and andouille, preserved with salt and smoke. Most Cajun dishes start with the “holy trinity” of onion, celery and bell pepper, garlic is never far off, and paprika, thyme, filé, parsley and green onions round out the pantry. The guide also stresses that Cajun food is well seasoned, not necessarily spicy: cayenne “is seasoning, not the main event.”¹

How Cajun cooking went national. Britannica’s account centers on chef Paul Prudhomme, born near Opelousas, Louisiana. In 1975 he became the first American-born executive chef at Commander’s Palace in New Orleans and started putting Cajun dishes on its menu. His own restaurant, K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen, opened in the French Quarter in 1979 and became known for his blackened redfish, and his food drew national attention. In 1983 he started a separate company, Magic Seasoning Blends, to sell his spice blends.¹¹ None of the sources we found say when all the other packaged Cajun blends first showed up.

Flavor and the compounds behind it

Cajun seasoning tastes salty and peppery up front, with garlic and onion behind it and a red-pepper warmth that runs from mild to hot depending on the brand. The chemistry comes from the individual ingredients:

We couldn’t find a published heat measurement for any Cajun blend. How hot a jar is depends on how much red pepper is in it, and the label won’t tell you.

How Cajun seasoning is used

Cook’s Country suggests its Louisiana seasoning for chicken jambalaya, chicken sauce piquant and pork grillades. Prudhomme’s blackened redfish is made by dredging redfish fillets in butter. Beyond those, it goes on chicken, pork, shrimp and fish, into gumbo, jambalaya and dirty rice, into the flour for fried chicken, and onto grilled meat as a dry rub. See jambalaya spices and which spices go well with shrimp.

So many blends are salt-led that it pays to season with the blend first and add salt only after you taste.

Buying and quality

Read the ingredient list, which runs from most to least. A blend that starts with salt will season a dish heavily before it adds much heat. One that starts with spices or paprika gives you more color and pepper flavor per pinch. Sodium varies by a factor of two between the two salt-first blends above: 310 mg versus 160 mg per quarter teaspoon.⁵⁶ For comparison, FDA’s Daily Value for sodium is less than 2,300 mg a day.¹⁴

Storage

Cook’s Country says its homemade blend keeps for a few months.⁸ We didn’t find a shelf life for Cajun seasoning from any regulator or standards body. Keep it sealed and away from heat and light. If it smells faint when you rub a pinch between your fingers, it’s faded.

Safety

Sodium. For most commercial blends, salt is the nutrient that matters. A teaspoon of Slap Ya Mama is four label servings, or about 1,240 mg of sodium (4 × 310 mg), more than half of FDA’s Daily Value.⁵¹⁴

Lead in spices. A New York City health department review of 1,496 spice samples from 41 countries, collected from 2008 to 2017, found detectable lead in more than half and above 2 parts per million in more than 30%, with higher average levels in spices bought abroad.¹⁵ The abstract doesn’t break the results out by blend.

Mycotoxins in chile spices. The EU sets maximum levels for ochratoxin A and aflatoxins in dried Capsicum spices, including chili powder, cayenne and paprika.¹⁶ We found no survey of these toxins in Cajun blends specifically.

Health claims

You’ll see claims that Cajun seasoning fights inflammation, relieves constipation or lowers cancer risk. We couldn’t trace any of them to a study of the blend, and a fraction of a teaspoon doesn’t supply much besides sodium. We’re not making any health claim for it.

Substitutes and comparisons

• Cajun seasoning substitutes
• Cajun seasoning vs. Creole seasoning
• Creole seasoning, Old Bay seasoning and seasoned salt, other salt-based blends
• All-purpose seasoning

The individual ingredients: paprika, cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper (and white pepper vs. black pepper), thyme and celery salt. For Louisiana’s other signature seasoning, see gumbo filé powder.