Cooking spicy with Spice Pioneer

Those of you who know me well, will know how much I love spices. But the thing with spices is getting the balance just right. Seasoned Pioneers sent me some Power Pods to try.

Season Pioneers have been in business since 1999. They offer an extensive and innovative of over 300 authentic spices, chillies, herbs, specialist seasonings and spice blends, including many organic. In 2017 Seasoned Pioneers formed The Spice Pioneer now well known for innovative kits containing 6-8 spices designed to capture tastes of countries from around the world.

Director Matt Webster explains

“We insist on genuine seasonings from the very finest sources and only use traditional production methods. We hand blend and dry-roast all of our spice blends to authentic recipes, with no compromises. The result is an intensity of flavour that makes a real difference to your cooking”.

Spice Pioneer Power Pods

There are five spice mixes in the Power Pods range: Chicken Lollipops, Chilli con Carne, Fajita, Katsu Curry and Peri-Peri Chicken. All you need to do is to add the key ingredient and a few other elements and you have the makings of a great meal in 30-40 minutes. Actually, you don’t need to use meat at all as I discovered when I trialled the Pods.

Think of it this way, when buying your week’s shopping, buy the meat or vegetables as you usually would, then use a pod to make one of your favourite meals. Just read the recipe first to check the ingredients you need. I appreciated the heat indicator, the hotter, the greater number of chillies.

Spice Pods

I tried 3 of the 5 pods for this blog post.

Fajita

Rather than use chicken breast as suggested, I substituted finely chopped mushrooms making this dish vegan. Garlic, onion and peppers were needed too.

The spice mix was delicious with just the right amount of heat (two chillies). I served the mix in taco shells with cheese and fresh tomato.

Chilli con Carne

I used beef mince as suggested. Additional ingredients are pepper, kidney beans and tinned chopped tomatoes. It was very easy to make and very tasty. I realise I left out the suggested tomato puree but it was great without.

Peri-Peri Chicken

This one has the least number of ingredients, just garlic and lime in addition to the meat. It’s also the easiest, just marinade the meat then cook for 6 minutes each side. This was also the hottest of the ones I tried and certainly had a zing (3 chillies).

My Verdict

I love cooking from scratch. With these pods inspiration got just that bit easier and each spice mix was spot on. There was no feeling of compromise.

There’s not a lot of space on the pack for the recipe, but I would love to see some suggestions as to how to make the dish vegetarian or vegan. At £1.95 each pod, they are well worth keeping in the cupboard for a tasty meal any night of the week.

You can buy the Pods direct from The Spice Pioneer. Use code Foodie100EX20% before 31 January for 20% discount. There are also many other kits to choose from.

Follow Spice Pioneer on Twitter and on Instagram.