This past weekend I spent some time restocking our spice drawer, and it made me realize how many of our go-to, “easy weeknight” dinners and breakfasts depend heavily on having a pre-mixed (or pre-purchased) spice blend ready and waiting in the pantry. I thought you might enjoy seeing a few of our family favorites.

1. Trader Joe’s Chile Lime Seasoning Blend

I reach for this simple and inexpensive blend often, for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. It’s great on everything from roasted chickpeas to scrambled eggs to grilled meats. It’s a real hero when I use it—as I often do—to turn a can of black beans into an instant side dish. Add to taste, microwave for a minute, and done.

While we all enjoy the flavor around here, sometimes I use it to add a dash of color to pretty up a dish, like I did the other night when we had make-your-own-burrito-bowls for dinner and I added a few shakes to the pile of cooked shredded chicken. That pile of chicken didn’t necessarily need to be pretty, but it took me all of four seconds to do it so why not?

2. Trader Joe’s Everything But the Bagel Sesame Seasoning Blend

Sara has waxed poetic about this cult classic before: check out her post called A Pinch of perfection, a shower of mess: a love letter to Everything But the Bagel Seasoning. I enjoy this more than anyone else in our family, and use it most often on hardboiled eggs for breakfast and cottage cheese for a snack.

3. Family Meal Fish Taco recipe ( NYT Cooking gift link)

We love Sam Sifton’s fish taco recipe (linked above), but now keep this blend on hand and use not only for fish and shrimp tacos but any number of things that might benefit from a blend that’s heavy on chile powder, garlic powder, and paprika. I might use this more often for roasted chickpeas than for fish tacos! (I use Jenny Rosenstrach’s roasted chickpeas as inspiration, but use a lot less olive oil, and the air fryer instead of the stovetop.)

4. Ras al hanout

We use this for just one thing, but it’s one of our very favorites: the Moroccan Spiced Chicken over Couscous from Fresh Off the Grid. That recipe may be from a camping blog, but we make it all the time at home, not just in the great outdoors. I’m sure we could enjoy branching out and putting this blend to use in new ways—if you have ideas, please share in comments!

5. Blackened chicken seasoning (NYT Cooking gift link)

The newest addition to our spice drawer is a winner! All six of us have loved it from the first time we made it and fight (affectionately, of course) over the leftovers. In a recent Links I Love post, I shared how the first night we had this recipe over a creamy lemon-garlic linguine (another NYT Cooking gift link).

Now whenever it’s time to mix up a batch, I double or triple the recipe so we can keep some on hand. The seasoning is interesting on its own, but not so distinctive you can’t use leftover seasoned chicken in a variety of dishes like one of our frequent-of-late dinners in bowls. The recipe shared above is technically for sautéed chicken breasts, but you can make just the spice mix; you can also modify the recipe by grilling the chicken as we’ve been doing all summer long.

What are your go-to spices and seasoning blends? Please tell us in comments!

P.S. 10 delightful cookbooks for reading, cooking, and gifting and 20 interesting recipes to make for dinner with boneless skinless chicken breasts.