This Chinese Salt & Pepper Seasoning can be used to re-create your favourite Chinese restaurant & takeaway dishes or is also delicious sprinkled over meat, fish or tofu!
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Making this Chinese Salt & Pepper seasoning is really simple. It's full of flavour, made with basic store cupboard ingredients, and can be used to jazz up plenty of dishes and you want to know the best thing about making your own spice blend? No MSG!
Monosodium Glutamate or MSG as it is more widely known, is a flavour enhancer that is commonly added to Chinese food, along with canned soups and lots of other processed foods.
Some people can have a reaction to MSG and after consuming a food containing it, can feel nauseous, and experience headaches along with fatigue and other symptoms.
So, great news if this is you, as none of my Asian-inspired recipes like this crispy shredded chicken contain MSG either. This spice mix is also free from nuts, dairy, gluten & egg too!
Jump to:
🤔 What is Salt & Pepper Seasoning?
You may think salt and pepper seasoning is just sea salt and black pepper, right? This spice mix is so much more than that!
True, it does contain salt and pepper, but this homemade salt & pepper mixture also consists of a blend of other spices, like Chinese 5 spice, garlic powder & ginger, which when they all come together create the most amazing flavour.
Salt & pepper seasoning is a Chinese takeaway favourite across the UK and most famously is used to create "salt & pepper chips" (which if you haven't tried, you need to!)
🥘 What You'll Need To Make It
After lots of testing, I have found the following mix of ingredients makes THE BEST (bold I know!) tasting salt & pepper seasoning.
- Sea salt
- Black pepper
- Chilli flakes
- Chinese 5 spice
- Garlic powder
- Ground ginger
- Caster sugar
✏️ How To Make Chinese Salt & Pepper Seasoning
This has to be the easiest recipe ever, you simply measure out the ingredients, mix them together in a bowl and you are done!
🥡 How To Store
Store your salt & pepper seasoning in sealed spice jars. You can either wash out an old spice jar and once it is fully dry, fill it with your seasoning mix or treat yourself to these fancy spice jars.
Just be sure that whatever container you use is airtight.
If you are making a huge batch (this is the best way - then it will always be there when you need it) you can use an airtight Tupperware container.
Your spice mix will keep for up to a year as long as it's in a sealed container. Just give it a shake before each use to make sure all the flavours stay evenly mixed.
⚡ Variations
If you are a big fan of heat, add another teaspoon of chilli flakes!
💬 Recipe FAQs
You will find yourself cooking with this seasoning a lot! Check out my salt & pepper chips recipe, which is the most famous way to use this seasoning.
You can also coat chicken, fish, tofu or meat with this delicious spice mix. It's also great tossed through some roasted vegetables before cooking.
Use it instead of the Chinese 5 spice in this slow cooker pork belly slices recipe.
Why not make some salt & pepper chicken wings! Just coat the wings in the seasoning, bake in the oven at 180˚C for 30 minutes and serve alongside this "no egg" special fried rice.
Authentic Chinese 5 spice consists of star anise, cloves, cinnamon and fennel seeds. I know that's only 4! The last ingredient is a bit tricky as it is up for debate whether you use black peppercorns or Sichuan peppercorns to be truly authentic, but if you use either of these you will still acquire that aromatic flavour.
Sea salt gives a nice texture and flavour, but if you don't have any, regular table salt works just fine too.
⚡ Other Asian Recipes You Will Love
If you loved this recipe, please leave me a 5🌟 rating or comment below. I really do appreciate it. 😊
📖 Recipe
Chinese Salt and Pepper Seasoning Recipe
Equipment
- Spice jar for storage
Ingredients
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper crushed
- 1 teaspoon chilli flakes
- ½ teaspoon Chinese 5 spice
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon caster sugar
Instructions
- Measure all the ingredients.
- Add to a bowl and mix well.
- Use immediately or store in an airtight container.
Notes
Claire Smith says
Tastes beautiful 😋
Lauren Woodger says
Glad you love it! 🙂
Lynda Robson says
was sooooooooooooooo good
Lauren Woodger says
Glad you loved it! 🙂
Sevi says
was skeptical - after all, MSG is the magic ingredient... but this is really, really good! I think if I hadn't used the hottest chilli flakes known to humankind it might've been better (because then I could use a bit more), but actually this just means I'm not getting too much sodium. genuinely seems just like takeaway Chinese to me. made a massive batch of veggie stir fry with just a teaspoon and the flavour comes through beautifully. I did add more garlic (because mine is too hot to add enough to get the garlic flavour), but I also love my garlic lol
Lauren Woodger says
This is such a lovely comment, made my day, thank you! 🙂
Tee says
Appreciate the recipe as I was looking for a substitute for sichuan pepper salt because I didn't have that spice in my pantry. Howwwwwever, I did have all the spices for this recipe 🙂
I would say that next time I'll half the 5-spice amount, otherwise was perfect for making a dipping sauce for Cambodian-style chicken wings
Lauren Woodger says
Thanks for your lovely comment 🙂