Salt and pepper are the standard American condiments. I’ll admit that my experience is not as widespread as it could be, but it seems to be almost a requirement in this country that every dinner table have the two on them.
Well, I’m different; I don’t have either on my table. I don’t use either one. Instead I have the two spices that I do use on it: basil leaves and garlic powder.
So anyone else have non-standard condiments/spices out there instead of salt and pepper?
I keep a lot of things on the table - Sriracha, soy sauce and Chinkiang vinegar amongst them. My pepper substitute is shichimi togarashi. But I also have salt and pepper mills.
Old Bay, we like it on eggs and other things.
It depends on the meal.
Honey and butter and cinnamon powder for first meal of the day.
Chutney, pepper, balsamic vinegar, olive oil for the others.
Australian with various cultural influences.
Pretty much just salt and pepper, though Sriracha and Worcester sauce have been there more and more frequently lately. But I should add that I have two kinds of pepper on the table: a pepper grinder for black peppercorns, and a shaker of ground white pepper.
Basil is an herb .
Along with salt and pepper, we keep cajun curl on the table.
A coworker convinced me to try this a while back, and it’s become a standard seasoning for us.
Along with salt and pepper, we keep furikake and shichimi on the table. Can you tell that we love Japanese cooking in this house?
Let’s spice up Cafe Society with this thread!
Red pepper flakes. My wife and I both avoid salt completely (including even low-salt versions of sauces) and we find that a few red pepper flakes will add some zip to lots of foods. Plus, it’s very easy to see exactly how much you are adding.
“Old Bay”?
Enhance, please.
“Crab boil.”
Not here, I season our food while it’s cooking. Salt and pepper only for emergencies, like when I undersalt something, or if the soup needs more pepper, which it often does.
For takeout pizza, I put out oregano, granulated roasted garlic, and crushed red pepper. Then I put them away again.
It’s a ‘seasoning salt’: one of those herb & spice mixes which taste sort of generically savoury. Like “chicken salt” that’s popular in Oz and New Zealand, and the “chip spice” you sometimes find in the UK.
Kosher salt, black pepper, granulated garlic, Ceylon cinnamon, turmeric (TER-mer-ic), and ground ginger are usually on the table. Ground ancho pepper and stevia often make an appearance as well.
Expanding “spice” to mean any kind of condiments or flavor enhancers:
I season when I am cooking, and cooked in seasonings taste better than stuff sprinkled on last-minute, IMO, but because I tend toward mild food, when I have guests over, in addition to salt and black pepper, I put red pepper flakes, Tabasco sauce (or some kind of very hot sauce), soy sauce, garlic powder, balsamic vinegar, and paprika on the table. Also, occasionally, other things that go with what I’m serving.
We also keep sugar on the table all the time. I have had people put sugar on odd things. Usually sugar just goes on fruit (I never put it on fruit, but I’ve had guests do it), and in drinks, but some people put it on carrots and sweet potatoes, squash, and one guy, on peas.
I use Maggi and sometimes Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. My wife sometimes uses Chinkiang vinegar.
Just salt and pepper which are routinely on the table here; plenty of other things make their way off the rack as the situation dictates, but it’s as per the OP’s quoted standard, chez nous. I season while cooking, obviously, but as the rest of the family seem to be unaware that the correct amount of pepper is “an almighty fucking shitload”, it’s worth having it to hand.
Technically I keep no spices on the table. Living alone for most of my adult life I haven’t always bothered having a table. When I have one, it usually ends up dedicated to other things unless I have company. Eating at a table when at home isn’t really my thing. Living alone also means I don’t have any issue tasting while still in the kitchen, frequently right off the serving utensil. I spice right then and there even if I am going to the table.
Things I keep close to hand in the kitchen as a parallel to on the table - black pepper, oregano, and hot sauce. Salt wouldn’t make the table because it’s rare that I add any after cooking.
We have a bottle of Szechuan pepper-salt and a bottle of cinnamon sugar on the table with the salt and pepper.
To add to this, Old Bay is a famous type of seasoning salt from Baltimore that is closely associated with crab boils and seafood in general. Generic or knock-off versions of it are called “Chesapeake Bay seasoning.” It is a mix of salt, herbs, and spices, but it is predominantly known for being very celery seed flavored. (It’s the main ingredient in Old Bay.) So that is partly, for me, what sets it apart from most generic seasoning salts. It’s maybe a bit like if you took Lawry’s seasoning salt and mixed it 50-50 with celery salt.
