Homemade Old Bay Style Seasoning

Updated: Dec 21st 2018 • Published: Sep 23rd 2015 • 25 Comments

3.89 from 17 votes

Homemade Old Bay Style Seasoning. A wonderful mix of herbs and spices, perfect for crab, shrimp, chicken and so so much more.

This post really shouldn't be a post at all! Really this post is a series of disasters, that should have lead to me admitting defeat, parting with some money and buying something pre-prepared. But that goes against everything I love about cooking: making it yourself, making it your way, changing it to suit your tastes and knowing what you are eating. (It doesn't have to be sin free but if I am eating 2 tablespoons of sugar then I want to know about it! 😉 )

Over the last year I have posted recipes for plenty of homemade products:

Don't run away. Please...I know....Homemade this, homemade that.....blur blur blur. Don't worry, I am normal. Even typing the list made me think about those quizzes that pop-up on Facebook. You know the ones I mean the "What sort of Mum are you?" quizzes, where there are 5 pictures of stereotype mothers and you have to answer stupid questions to see where you lie on the 'Mother scale'. Seriously I hate them. I fill them in with different answers to see if I can come up as each mum. Yup I don't think there is a category for me 😉

Don't worry I regularly turn up for school drop off with a hat on, because pressing snooze 10 times means you don't have time for a shower. (There was something to be said for the time when I didn't have hair and I didn't have to worry about such matters!!!)

I have even pulled a maxi dress over my PJ's to go and pick the boys UP from school!!!!! I spilt soup over my jeans at lunchtime and PJ's are just so comfy!!! I have since, discarded the pink and white polka dot PJ's in favour of black yoga pant style ones. Throw some trainers on, put your hair in a headband and you look like you have been stretching and pilate-ing with those hip cool people. (I just had to look up how to spell pilates!)

Somewhere about 20 minutes ago, what I really wanted to say was, I make homemade because I enjoy it and I like doing it. But if buying it works for you then follow the link at the bottom and buy it pre-prepared, it's all good.

If you are one of those people who manages to shower before you do the school run, then you deserve to buy it pre-made. Bonus points if you don't have yesterdays mascara on.

And if you had time to put fresh make up on, then I don't even know what to say to you 😉

So if you are still with me and not hiding from my craziness.............Back to the now infamous Old Bay Seasoning. If you are an American reader then this needs no introduction at all. But for those in my neck of the woods let me explain. Old Bay Seasoning is an American pantry staple. It comes in a yellow can and is synonymous with crab, shrimp and all foods from the Chesapeake Bay area of America.

A few weeks ago, on Facebook, a friend in America posted a picture of some Spiced Shrimp with Old Bay Cocktail sauce. They looked amazing and I got a major hankering. It wouldn't go away so I did a bit of research and found you can't buy Old Bay Seasoning in Australia, so despite the hankering I put the matter to one side.

Then a few days later whilst looking for playgroup Christmas crafts on pinterest, I got distracted by food (I do that a lot!!) and found a recipe for Old Bay Barbecue chicken and then one for Old Bay crab cakes. It was like pinterest was trying to tell me something.

So I decided to make my own homemade version.

Thanks to the power of google I found several lists of ingredients for Old Bay Seasoning, although it turns out the exact ingredients are a secret, but seen as I have never eaten the original it didn't matter to me. I just wanted something good! So I set about making Claire's Old Bay Style Seasoning.

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And here in starts the disaster!!!

After a trip to woollies, a trip to coles, then IGA and then pantry man.....turns out I can't buy ground bay leaves anywhere!!!! So I had a go at grinding my own.

After 10 minutes in my food processor the picture on the left is what I had created......Hmmmm. So I put it on for 10 more minutes but it wasn't doing much good, so I switched it off and removed the lid, before the blades had stopped spinning.

The right picture is what happened. And this was taken after I started to clean up before realising I HAD to share this disaster with you. (See it is up there with yesterday's mascara and wearing PJ's to school)

My spiced prawns were slipping away. Thoughts of sticking bay leaves into a thermomix popped into my head....but the $2000 price tag seemed a bit much just to get ground bay leaves 😉 I could have just flown to America and ordered a plate of shrimps for that money!!!!

So I hit the internet and found an online Australian shop that would ship me ground bay leaf. I also discovered that the same shop make an Old Bay style seasoning blend of their own. If I had found that a week ago I would have eaten my prawns by now!!!!

Anyway, my ground bay has arrived and this morning I knocked up a batch of Claire's Old Bay Style Seasoning. Now I have no idea how authentic it is, I have never tried the original, but I can tell you this seasoning blend is pretty darn yummy!!!!

Spiced prawns are on the menu for today. And after the effort I put in to making this spice blend up I am going to be using it in several recipes!!!!

Starting with a Bloody Mary, because all that effort deserves an alcohol related reward and as yummy as this is, Claire's Old Bay Style Seasoning would be disgusting in a glass of bubbly!

Enjoy and see you tomorrow for the long awaited prawns.

p.s there is a prize for the first person to tell me how many times I have used the word homemade in this post 😉 (Disclaimer it is an imaginary prize x)

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