...Other than salt and pepper
For me it's cumin. It's one of the few spices I buy in bulk and actually use up my supply.
In the winter it may lean towards cardamom thanks to copious amounts of chia.
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2025
166 points (99.4% liked)
Cooking
8959 readers
462 users here now
Welcome to LW Cooking, a community for discussing all things related to food and cooking! We want this to be a place for members to feel safe to discuss and share everything they love about the culinary arts. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow!
Taken a nice photo of your creation? We highly encourage sharing with our friends over at !foodporn@lemmy.world.
Posts in this community must be food/cooking related. Recipes for dishes you've made and post picture of are encouraged but are not a requirement. Posts of food you are enjoyed or just think like food are welcomed as well.
Posts can optionally be tagged. We would like the use and number of tags to grow organically. Feel free to use a tag that isn't listed if you think it makes sense to do so. We encourage using tags to help organize and make browsing easier, but you don't have to use them if you don't want to.
TAGS:
- [QUESTION] - For questions about cooking.
- [RECIPE} - Share a recipe of your own, or link one.
- [MEME] - Food related meme or funny post.
- [DISCUSSION] - For general culinary discussion.
- [TIP] - Helpful cooking tips.
FORMAT:
[QUESTION] What are your favorite spices to use in soups?
Other Cooking Communities:
!bbq@lemmy.world - Lemmy.world's home for BBQ.
!foodporn@lemmy.world - Showcasing your best culinary creations.
!sousvide@lemmy.world - All things sous vide precision cooking.
!koreanfood@lemmy.world - Celebrating Korean cuisine!
While posting and commenting in this community, you must abide by the Lemmy.World Terms of Service: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
- Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
- Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
- Shitposts and memes are allowed until they prove to be a problem.
Failure to follow these guidelines will result in your post/comment being removed and/or more severe actions. All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. We ask that the users report any comment or post that violates the rules, and to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Some top ones for me: MSG, Chicken Bouillon, Smoked Paprika, Thyme, Garlic powder, and finally, controversially, bay leaves.
MSG goes in basically anything. If it gets salt and pepper it's probably also getting MSG for me. I do a lot of chicken, and whenever I do I'm almost always adding some chicken bouillon to add some flavor to it. I really love Thyme, and find myself just adding it somewhat randomly to things. Smoked Paprika is a perfect flavor that's so unique, I add it to anything I want to have a bit of a kick, like chili, ect. Not that it's like spicy or anything, just it adds a little something to those dishes that you can't really get elsewhere. Garlic powder is an all around great utility, and I tend to "dump" this stuff on things.
Last but not least, Bay leaves. I swear, I'm like the #1 consumer of these things. I throw them in anything. Anything savory with a decent sauce/soupy base is PERFECT to add a bay leaf to. If you use em often you can really taste the difference, since fresh bay leaves really pack a punch in flavor.
nah i'm with you a soup without laurel is not a soup, it's bathwater
"Controversially bay leaves" has me dying
I also add bay leaves to everything. I found my local co op has them in the bull spice section, they are so freaking fresh.
people say they dont taste like anything so its a bit of a controversial subject.
Theres a huge conspiracy post from years ago about them that had me dying laughing when someone shared it with me, so here for you and anyone who many not have read it.
https://medium.com/the-awl/the-vast-bay-leaf-conspiracy-f9903ddbb520
People sleep on bay leaves. You really can taste the difference. The experiment I did was to make the standard Kraft blue box mac and cheese, but I added bay. Since I know mac and cheese the bay flavor stood out. It's just an herb flavor and I use it in any liquid that I'm also using any other herb.
you really need (reasonably) fresh bay leaves tho. They lose flavor fast. If they're (Reasonably) fresh you can smell what it tastes like.
i was going to say, they can't be too fresh. we've got some laurel trees in our yard and we made that mistake. once.
The dried bay leaves are pointless. You can freeze them though. I keep mine in the freezer.
I buy dry in bulk so it ends up being maybe $0.38 for 100 or so. I put 4-7 in most any soup, stew or the like.
What do you use MSG for? You really use it in everything?
Yeah! It's like salt but for savory things. There's a pretty good chance that if I'm cooking with salt and pepper, I'm making something savory, and in those cases MSG improves the flavor of it basically always.
For example: I frequently air fry broccoli. As a base, I toss it in olive oil, salt, pepper, and MSG. If I want it spicy, I'll add red pepper flakes. Sometimes I substitute salt for season salt for a different vibe. Other times I add garlic powder, or make a balsamic glaze for them. No matter what it's prolly gonna have salt, pepper, and MSG.
It also goes really well on meat in general. Some cuts of beef don't really need it cause they're super savory to begin with, but especially some of the cheaper cuts that aren't as flavorful.
Another big one is chicken breast. Thighs have more flavor, but when it comes to texture, I like the chicken breast meat better, so in order to boost that savory chicken flavor, I'll add MSG.
It's really hard to describe it, MSG is literally just like, pure savory. It's not quite a salt replacement, tho i could see someone calling it salty, but it really boosts that savory/umami flavor.
Honestly the only time I don't add pure MSG is when I'm cooking with things that have it included already. A lot of asian food has MSG in ingredients like fish sauce and oyster sauce, it's totally possible to boost the MSG content of a dish without sprinkling msg onto it.
Complete seasoning is one of my favorites and it has msg