Making Bland Food More Flavorful

I agree with fresh herbs. Or dried herbs and peppers. I like Mrs. Dash but I'm not fond of the generic one (table blend, I think?). But the garlic & herb, onion & herb and jalapeno & herb all get frequent use at our house. Other brands of no salt seasoning blends are also good. McCormick and Kroger have some good ones.

Also, if you need to reduce salt and miss it you might try potassium chloride which is a common salt substitute.

I use fresh herbs and chili peppers for more flavor... Seems to work..

SuzySunshine99 wrote: »

Citrus zest and/or juice can add a lot of flavor. I love to zest some lemon on my vegetables.

Oh yes! Also this ^

Flavored vinegars can also add flavor. Balsamic is delicious on roasted vegetables.

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it's night and day difference if you brown or caramelize onions before adding them to a recipe, or toast garlic. Yes, you need a little butter or oil to do this, but not as much as most recipes call for. I use a very modest amount. Worth it for the overall flavor profile! Also - roasting veggies brings out their sweetness. tastes completely different than steaming or boiling. You do need to use some fats in cooking to get the mouthfeel and rich flavor. You can also steam veggies and put herbs in the water used for steaming, or use broth to cook veggies.

I have a cupboard full of spices and herbs and I use them all the time in everything.
And yeah, I salt things in moderation.

I also extract flavors into fat: don't just throw onions in a soup, sautee them in some olive oil first. Same with garlic. Many flavor compounds are fat-soluble, meaning that if you cook spices and herbs with fat you'll release more complex flavors. For even more fun, a little bit of alcohol will also extract flavors that you might not get otherwise.

I suggest that you put some respek on it.

lemon/or citrus, balsamic vinegar, onion powder, garlic powder, fresh ground pepper tastes better than store bought ground in my opinion.

Just spend some time online looking at what herbs and spices work well with the foods you are cooking and have some fun experimenting in the kitchen. It is amazing how much difference this can make to a meal.

_inHisGrace wrote: »

For crab or most seafood restaurants use old bay. Not sure what's in it.

I'm not sure if you are using powered onion and garlic but if you use fresh or even roasted as mentioned above, it is way more flavorful.

If you go to Target, there's an Archer Farms brand seasoning called "French Bistro", it's really amazing on fish.

I have a lot of herbs, spices, etc. but for a quick jolt of flavor we love the Mrs. Dash Herb & Garlic spice mix. We also have a mess of Penzey's salt-free herb/spice mixes.

You don't need to eat "bland" food to be low sodium. There's no reason to cut out chili peppers, for example. Lemon juice and zest, lime juice and zest, grated fresh ginger, ... there are a gazillion no-sodium options.

I just wanted to say that while it is true that going away from highly processed foods will tend to make you notice salt more, so you crave slightly less salty foods...that's just salt (and sugar, usually). But there aren't really any other flavors you are going to run into that you will suddenly crave less once you eat more homemade foods.

The homemade foods will STILL taste bland as all get out until you start adding some zing. (this said after I had a diet of less than ten foods for months, due to doctor recommendations - tried some of the 'amazing' foods that my healthy friends loved, and they were STILL horribly bland).

So, this is what I've found.

First - you will typically need to add a lot more of the 'flavoring' ingredients to really get a good flavor. Much more than you'd think you would need, typically. More onions, more garlic, more herbs, and so on. And more than a lot of recipes ask for - bland tasting recipes seriously seem to be REALLY common, sigh.

Second - if you have not yet, go check out Indian grocery stores. You can get HUGE amounts of spices there for good prices. Because in Indian cooking, you actually make very flavorful food with a lot of spices, so the recipes use a lot more of them. I would actually recommend checking out some Indian recipes, if you are interested, even if you don't like indian food - they tend to have good advice for how to bring out the most from your spices.

And on that note, Asian recipes tend to have good advice for how to cook veggies and retain more of the flavor, so they are good for that type of information.

Third - herb gardens are a life saver. Fresh herbs are great, but you have to use such large amounts to get a good flavor (if you aren't using flavored seasoning packets any more), that the price starts rising pretty quickly. herb garden helps with that a lot.