Every June, Father's Day has a way of making you stop and reminisce. This year it had me thinking about a question people ask me a lot, in one form or another. Should I just make my own seasoning at home? Or is it worth buying a blend from someone else?
I have a bit of a unique view on this, because I got to watch the whole thing unfold. My dad spent his entire adult life seasoning beef, tasting, adjusting, starting over. I stood in the kitchen with him for a lot of those years before I ever took over Sandhill Ben's myself. So instead of a sales pitch, I want to just tell you what I saw. And let you decide from there.
The Year My Dad Chased a Flavor
Most of my dad's seasoning life was small adjustments. A little more of this, a little less of that, the kind of tweaking that happens over decades without anyone really noticing. But the Cajun blend was different. That one took him a full year, and honestly, it still makes me smile thinking about it.
Here's the funny part. Our family does not like spicy food. Never has. So the idea of my dad, of all people, getting wrapped up in building a Cajun seasoning felt a little out of character.
But he wasn't chasing heat for heat's sake. He was after something he called delayed heat, the kind that creeps up on you slowly instead of hitting all at once, and never gets loud enough to drown out the meat.
To get there, he didn't just start throwing spices together and hoping. He reached out to people who knew more than he did, including folks at the University of Nebraska, just to understand what was really going into seasonings and why. Then he tried things. Over and over, for most of a year, until it was right.
That's the part people don't see when they pick up a bottle. A whole year, just to get one blend to feel the way he wanted it to feel.
A Small Thing That Makes a Big Difference
If you ever decide to mix up your own dry rub at home, there's one ingredient that quietly does more work than people expect. Salt.
It's the backbone of most meat seasoning, and these days a lot of us are being told to ease up on it. So if you're blending your own, it's worth slowing down and thinking about what kind of salt you're using, and how much.
We made the switch to kosher salt years ago, and it changed things in two ways. It brings a noticeably different flavor because of the larger crystals, and it gives the meat a texture you can actually feel when you bite into it. Table salt just doesn't do that.
It's a small detail. But it's the kind of small detail that changes the whole experience of a meal.
What My Dad Did Before He Had His Own Blends
Before he ever built his own seasonings, my dad used to buy the big bottles from the store and mix his own combinations from there. It worked, more or less. But every batch came out a little different from the last.
And there was always that question hanging in the back of your mind. How long had that seasoning been sitting on the shelf? How long had it been in the cabinet before it finally got used? You never really knew.
If you've ever made the same dish two weekends in a row and wondered why it tasted different the second time, that inconsistency is probably why.
Have I Ever Run the Numbers?
I'll be honest with you. I've never actually sat down and worked out whether it's cheaper to buy a bottle of Sandhill Ben's or to buy all the individual spices yourself and blend it at home.
What I can tell you is what I watched my dad go through to get there. Buying spices separately. Mixing. Storing. And still landing on something a little different every time. There's a cost in that too. It just doesn't show up on a receipt.
So, Should You Make Your Own?
Here's my honest answer, and I mean honest. No fluff, no little white lies.
Seasoning is personal. If you love being in the kitchen and you enjoy the process of getting something just right, making your own can be a wonderful thing. It might even become a tradition, something that brings your family together around the table the same way it did for mine.
But if you'd rather start from something already dialed in, whether that's the delayed Cajun heat my dad spent a year chasing, or a blend with less salt that still brings the flavor, that's exactly what we built Sandhill Ben's to be. And if you'd rather skip the year of trial and error my dad, put in and just season your meat the way a Nebraska rancher's family has been doing it for generations, we'd love for you to give Sandhill Ben's a try.
There's no wrong answer here. Either way, the goal is always the same. Enhance the meat. Never cover it.
— Terri Mellor