How to make homemade taco seasoning

My latest Pinterest find that I’ve actually tried is a homemade taco seasoning shared by $5 Dinners. Like most of the Pinterest recipes I’ve actually tried (as opposed to the seemingly millions I’ve re-pinned and never looked at again,) I only did it because I happened to be out of that particular item in my kitchen and figured I may as well buy the supplies as buy the pre-made version. To simplify, I purchased one full bottle of each ingredient and emptied them out into a big bowl. Who has time for measuring, right?

To simplify the process, I just used a full container of each spice to save time with measuring, etc.

I dumped all of the homemade taco seasoning ingredients into a bowl and mixed carefully with a rubber scraper.

Homemade Taco Seasoning

Ingredients

1 container chili powder

1 container ground cumin

1 container garlic powder

1 container onion powder

1/4 – 1/2 container crushed red pepper

 (Use same size container of each spice)

Directions

Mix all the spices together and store in an airtight container. To use, add 2 Tbsp of homemade taco seasoning to 1 lb of ground beef (more or less to taste.)

I saved all of my original spice containers so I could dump the taco seasoning mixture back into the same containers. This way, I didn’t have to give up any of my plastic containers to store taco seasoning in. Plus, they are already the perfect size.

The biggest challenge I had was getting the old labels off the spice containers. The spice labels on the big bottles I got from Aldi‘s came right off, but the other two labels wouldn’t budge. I ended up just scratching over the original content label with a sharpie and wrote “taco seasoning” over the pre-existing label. For the others, I made a cute little label to stick on each bottle.

I also just noticed while proofing my blog post that I added the entire container of crushed red pepper instead of just 1/4 to 1/2 (oops!) So, we’ll just see how peppery my version tastes. Remember, I’m a writer, not a cook. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t screw something up every time I try to make something!

The finished product: I’m no Suzie Homemaker, so my homemade taco seasoning bottles aren’t especially pretty. But, they do the job!

I plan to give one bottle of my homemade taco seasoning to my boyfriend and throw the rest into a freezer bag in the freezer to keep it nice and fresh. I haven’t had a chance to make tacos with this seasoning yet, but I can tell you that it smells amazing. It’s so much fresher than those little pre-mixed packets you get at the grocery store and seems like it will be a lot cheaper in the long run too. Can’t wait to try it!

~Mandy Webster

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