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

Cajun seasoning is a ground seasoning blend sold as a shortcut to the flavors of south Louisiana’s Cajun cooking. Most versions combine salt with red pepper, paprika, garlic and onion; some add black pepper, thyme or celery seed. There is no fixed recipe, and in many commercial blends salt is the largest ingredient. This page covers what goes into it, where the Cajun style comes from, the compounds behind the flavor, and how to buy, store and use the blend.

At a glance

What is in it

No two labels agree exactly. Here is 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.²³⁴ None of them lists white pepper, turmeric or oregano by name, though “spices” on a label can cover ingredients that are not spelled out.

For a homemade version, Cook’s Country publishes a single “Louisiana seasoning” that 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.¹ That one is led by paprika rather than salt.

Cajun vs. Creole seasoning

Cajun and Creole name different people and, in Louisiana, different cooking styles. 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 does not.⁸ For the full comparison, see Creole seasoning and Cajun seasoning vs. Creole seasoning.

On the spice shelf the line is fuzzier. Cook’s Country tests the two as one category.¹ 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.⁵ That is one buyer’s specification for federal purchases, 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.⁹² PepperScale holds to the usual shorthand that Cajun seasoning 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 this does not hold for every jar.⁹

Where Cajun cooking comes from

“Cajun” comes from les Acadiens, the term for French colonists in the Acadia region of Canada.⁸ Britannica describes Cajuns as descendants of French Canadians whom the British drove from the captured colony of Acadia in the 18th century and who settled in the bayou country of southern Louisiana.¹¹ The tourism guide calls the expulsion Le Grand Dérangement, and says the Acadians settled the region now known as Acadiana, across prairies, swamps and coastal marshes.⁸

The same guide says early Cajuns wasted nothing at a hog butchering, or boucherie, which gave rise to boudin (a sausage of pork, rice and seasoning, often with liver) and to tasso and andouille, preserved with salt and smoke.⁸ Most Cajun dishes start with the “holy trinity” of onion, celery and bell pepper, garlic is never far away, and paprika, thyme, filé, parsley and green onions round out the pantry.⁸ It also stresses that Cajun food is well seasoned rather than necessarily spicy: cayenne “is seasoning, not the main event.”⁸

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 began adding Cajun dishes to 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.¹² In 1983 he started a separate company, Magic Seasoning Blends, to sell his spice blends.¹² When the many other packaged Cajun blends first appeared is not documented in any source we found.

Flavor and the compounds behind it

Cajun seasoning tastes salty and peppery first, with garlic and onion behind it and a red-pepper warmth that ranges from mild to hot depending on the brand. That description is ours; the chemistry belongs to the individual ingredients:

No published heat measurement for Cajun seasoning blends was found. How hot a jar is depends on how much red pepper is in it, and the label does not say.

How Cajun seasoning is used

Cook’s Country suggests its Louisiana seasoning for chicken jambalaya, chicken sauce piquant and pork grillades.¹ Britannica describes Prudhomme’s blackened redfish as made by dredging redfish fillets in butter.¹² Beyond those, cooks use Cajun seasoning on chicken, pork, shrimp and fish, in gumbo, jambalaya and dirty rice, in the flour for fried chicken, and as a dry rub for grilled meat. That list is common practice, not a sourced finding. See jambalaya spices and which spices go well with shrimp.

Because so many blends are salt-led, season with the blend first and add salt only after tasting.

Buying and quality

Read the ingredient list, which runs in order of quantity. A blend that starts with salt will season a dish heavily before it adds much heat; one that starts with spices or paprika gives more color and pepper flavor per pinch. Sodium varies twofold between the two salt-first blends above: 310 mg versus 160 mg per quarter teaspoon.²³ For comparison, FDA’s Daily Value for sodium is less than 2,300 mg a day.¹⁵

Storage

Cook’s Country says its homemade blend keeps for a few months.¹ No regulator or standards body we found gives a shelf life for Cajun seasoning. Keep it sealed, away from heat and light; a blend that smells faint when rubbed between the fingers has faded. That advice is common practice, not a measured figure.

Safety

Sodium. For most commercial blends, salt is the nutrient that matters. A teaspoon of the Slap Ya Mama blend is four label servings, or about 1,240 mg of sodium (4 × 310 mg), more than half of FDA’s Daily Value.²¹⁵

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.¹⁶ The abstract does not 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.¹⁷ No survey of these toxins in Cajun blends specifically was found.

Health claims

Widely repeated claims that Cajun seasoning fights inflammation, relieves constipation or lowers cancer risk could not be traced to any study of the blend, and a serving of a fraction of a teaspoon supplies little beyond sodium. This page makes no health claim for the blend.

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.