Making Your Own Mixes and Recipe Clones

Over the past couple of months I have posted how to make various mixes including homemade stove top stuffing, rice-a-roni clone, shake & bake clone, and poultry seasoning.  I will be sharing several more make your own mix and recipe clones over the upcoming months.  In general homemade mixes:

• give you a convenient, ready to use product for your pantry shelves
• will cost a fraction of the cost of store bought mixes

It is important to realize that your homemade mixes will likely differ in flavour from store bought simply because you are using different ingredients.  An important consideration in flavour is high fructose corn syrup is often added sauces, soups and those types of things so if you don't add corn syrup your recipe clones won't taste exactly the same as store bought.  Many dried mixes contain sugar something I found rather surprising.  If you eliminate the sugar when making a homemade mix it will differ in flavour as well.  For the most part, homemade mixes will taste superior to store bought but it is important to understand that they won't taste exactly the same.  When it comes to seasoning blends (taco seasoning, chili seasoning, poultry seasoning) there can be a wide variation from one manufacturer to another so if you like a particular manufacturer for a certain seasoning blend then adjust your homemade version to taste more like it.  Again like any recipe the recipe for a homemade mix or recipe clone is the starting point.  Tweak as desired.