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Quick Tip – Taco Seasoning

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Mexican food is one of my all-time faves (comes with the territory of growing up in Texas and currently living in Arizona…I’ve always been very close to the border!)

It tends to be cheap, quick and easy to make, and delicious!

So I just wanted to peek in today with a quick tip on cheap taco seasoning.

One word: COSTCO!!!!

I mentioned a couple months ago that I buy Taco Seasoning from Costco because its so cheap and I had several commenters mention that they make their own for pennies compared to the store bought stuff. So feast your eyes on this photo….

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That’s $4.29 for a 24 oz jar of seasoning, coming out to .179 cents per ounce. (To be clear, this is not a sale price, either. This is the normal everyday price).

To make my own, the very cheapest seasonings I could find were $1 per 2oz. container. So even if I made my own taco seasoning mix (by buying garlic, chili pepper, etc. and mixing everything together), I’m still coming out way ahead by just buying the Costco taco seasoning.

Those of you who make your own….do you find seasonings somewhere cheaper? Grow (and dehydrate) your own? Other secrets I don’t know about?

If not, then you might be better off just picking it up from Costco, too.

But if I’m wrong and you actually do have taco seasoning cheaper somehow, please let me know in the comments!


10 Comments

  • Reply Cory |

    Someone gave me homemade taco seasoning and it was a lot more potent. But to be honest I didnt prefer it over a store bought. The store bought has thickeners so it is different and I used a lot less of the homemade. So I am guessing in store bought mixes there is quite a lot of filler/thickener. Other pro to making a homemade mix is you know exactly what is in it. Not likely to have an ingrediant you cannot pronounce. But it sure is easy to buy that giant container from costco.

    • Reply Ashley |

      This is DEFINITELY true. Though the Costco one (McCormick brand) doesn’t seem to be too bad. Here’s what it says:

      INGREDIENTS: Spices (including chili peppers, cumin, paprika, oregano), onion, whey (milk), salt, garlic, sugar, potato starch, and natural flavor.

      I’m always a little suspicious of “natural flavor” additives and the potato starch is definitely a filler, but otherwise not too terrible.

  • Reply Ms. Mintly @ MintlyBlog |

    Cool! I did a quick search for the same product at Sam’s (we don’t have Costco… sad!), and there’s a Taco Seasoning under the brand Tone’s, which is $5.29. That’s still $0.22 an ounce, which is still better than making your own, I think??? (Unless, like you mentioned above, someone has figured out where to buy super cheap spices….)

  • Reply Cory |

    My comment was a little disjointed. The ingredients for Ortega (which I am sure is essentially the same as any other store bought): Yellow Corn Flour, Salt, Maltodextrin, Paprika, Spices, Modified Corn Starch, Sugar, Garlic Powder, Citric Acid, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Caramel Color (sulfites).

    So the corn flour and corn starch are thickener/filler I dont see sugar on any of the homemade recipes that I saw. So there are some cheaper ingrediants in store bought.

    • Reply Ashley |

      Yikes! That’s a lot more filler than what there appears to be in the McCormick brand taco seasoning! (I posted the exact ingredients above)

    • Reply Ashley |

      I should check. I buy some stuff bulk from them (nuts, oats), but I haven’t given special attention to the spices available there.

  • Reply scarr |

    I love learning how to make my own spices – many times I need a small amount of x-spice mix. Instead of buying a jar of it, I try to see if I can make it myself and a lot of the times I am able to with the spices I already have.

    HOWEVER – I buy the same taco seasoning at Costco because we go through it like CRAZY and it is just much more cost effective to buy that huge jar. I also get my sugar, salts, peppers and yeast at Costco. I do a lot of home cooking and baking so I go through those ingredients like crazy.

  • Reply Patrick |

    Taco seasoning tastes and smells like it does because of cumin, primarily. So you can make your own from your spice shelf with some cumin, some chili powder, and a thickener (I use corn starch).

So, what do you think ?