15 Best Walmart Seasonings For Grilling

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Walmart really is your one-stop shop for outdoor cooking essentials. For starters, you can pick up a grill (either gas or charcoal, both are great for steak). If you want to smoke a brisket, it has backyard grill smokers and hickory wood chips (the best type of wood for smoking brisket). Meanwhile, the grocery section holds all the meat and vegetables you could wish for. Walmart is not only an unexpectedly great place to buy high-quality ground beef, it also has plenty of plant-based patties such as the ones made by Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. The aisles also hold numerous options for cookout sides and condiments, but don't forget to pick up some seasonings. Anything you throw on the grill is going to taste 200% better with a sprinkling of spice.

The following seasoning blends are all popular with Walmart shoppers. Some are meant for beef, some for pork, and some for chicken, but each one is versatile enough that it can be used with other meats and non-meat items. These products range across the flavor spectrum — some are sweet, some are spicy, and some are fruity. Cajun, Korean, and Mexican flavor inspirations can also be found on the list. No matter which spice mix you pick you can hardly go wrong, as each has the potential to make your dinner a winner.

Rib Rack BBQ Rub is a flavorful, versatile blend that combines salt and sugar with garlic, onion powder, and paprika. Walmart customers have reported using it with all of the "big three" (beef, pork, and chicken). This seasoning mix is also gluten-free and made with natural ingredients (ground rice hulls are used instead of silicon dioxide to keep the ingredients from caking, for example). A 5.5-ounce jar sells for $4.96.

Grill Mates Bourbon & Oak Seasoning will bring a taste of booze and smoke to your meat — or vegetables, for that matter, since it would taste just as great on an ear of corn as it would on a pork chop. Besides the bourbon and oak smoke flavoring, other ingredients include black pepper, brown sugar, chili peppers, garlic, molasses, onion, paprika, and sea salt. This seasoning comes in 3.37-ounce jars priced at $1.97.

If grilled chicken is what's for dinner, you might want to scoop up a 10.7-ounce jar of Fire & Smoke Society Chica Licka Bam Bam Chicken Rub for $6.98. Despite the silly name, this is a seriously tasty spice blend combining the flavors of black pepper, cayenne, garlic, paprika, and thyme. That last herb is what makes it chicken-specific, although it's also great for turkey if your grilling ambitions extend that far. (It also works for poultry roasting once barbecue season is done.)

Chef Merito's spice blend is bilingual. In English, it goes by the name Steak & Meat Seasoning, while in Spanish it's Sazonador para Carne Asada & Bistec. It also has the ultimate celebrity endorsement which comes not from an individual, but an entire team: Chef Merito is the official carne asada seasoning of MLB's Los Angeles Dodgers. While the label has a recipe for the Latin American grilled beef dish known as carne asada, it's not the only thing you can do with this seasoning. Walmart customers say this blend of black pepper, citric acid, onion, paprika, salt, and sugar is great on chicken, pork, and even venison. 

Chicago may not have a namesake cut of beef a la New York strip steak nor are you likely to see Chicago Roadhouses popping up in suburban strip malls. Nonetheless, the Windy City spent nearly a century as the center of American meatpacking, so it knows its way around a steak. There's no specific Chicago-style spice combination used for steaks, but Weber Chicago Steak Seasoning envisions the city's signature flavor as a big, bold blend of dill seed, garlic, mustard seed, red pepper, and salt. A 5.5-ounce shaker of this seasoning sells for $3.97.

What even is cowboy butter? According to The Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond (who names everything cowboy this and that), it's a type of compound butter flavored with garlic, green onions, lemon zest, and red pepper. Kinder's Cowboy Butter Seasoning costs $4.98 for 6.4 ounces and includes all of those elements along with Dijon mustard and paprika. Unlike in a compound butter, though, all ingredients are in dried form so they can be sprinkled over burgers, chicken thighs, asparagus, or anything else you've thrown on the grill.

The tangy sweetness of black cherries combine surprisingly well with the smoky heat from chipotle peppers. Kinder's Black Cherry Chipotle Rub & Seasoning includes real black cherry juice and tart cherry powder, and makes a good thing even better by adding brown sugar, garlic, onion, paprika, and sea salt for a seasoning that hits all the flavor notes except bitter (nobody wants bitter barbecue). At Walmart, you can get a 6-ounce jar for $9.00.

Korean barbecue is super popular these days, and Spiceology is all over the K-cue trend with its Kb Korean BBQ All-Purpose Blend. The mixture is made with cayenne, chili peppers, sesame seeds (both black and white), orange zest, and tamari powder. It also includes two seasonings typically not associated with Korean cuisine, so the smoked paprika and maple syrup bring some Spanish-Canadian fusion vibes. This multicultural mix is priced at $16.99 for a 4.4-ounce jar (which does not have a shaker top, so you'll need a spoon).

When seasoning anything savory, you can't go wrong with good old salt, pepper, and garlic. The combo can be shortened to SPG, as in Dan-O's SPG Tri-O All-Purpose Seasoning. Yes, these are the only ingredients, but the garlic appears in multiple forms (dried garlic, roasted garlic, and garlic oil). The secret lies in the proportions, and we can't tell you what they are because Dan-O's doesn't say, but a 4.4-ounce jar of the seasoning can be yours for $5.97.

Heath Riles is a pitmaster who's been competing in barbecue cook-offs since the fall-off-the-bone tender age of 18. He won quite a few of them, too, and is now lending his name and expertise to a line of barbecue seasonings. Among them is a peach rub that's perfect for pork and chicken (it's pretty tasty on beef as well). In addition to its eponymous stone fruit flavoring, Heath Riles Authentic Peach Rub includes brown sugar, garlic, onion, paprika, smoke flavor, and vanilla flavor to enhance the sweetness. A 10-ounce jar is priced at $14.95.

Steak ranchero is a Spanish-influenced Mexican dish that typically involves flank or skirt steak seasoned with a dry rub. Spanglish Asadero Ranchero Steak Seasoning combines ancho chiles with brown sugar, chipotles, espresso powder, garlic, onion, sea salt, and smoke flavoring for a taste that one satisfied Walmart shopper calls "bold, smoky, and slightly spicy — perfect for steak night." A 5.2-ounce jar of this seasoning costs $5.96, and with its decorative sugar skull/La Catrina packaging it's something you won't want to hide at the back of the pantry.

Famous Dave's is a popular barbecue restaurant chain that has diversified into selling pickles, pre-cooked meat, and cornbread mix along with its classic sauces and seasonings. Famous Dave's Rib Rub is a spice blend that's meant to give meat the same flavor that made Dave famous, and it does so by combining standard meat rub ingredients such as garlic, onion, paprika, salt, and sugar with less-standard ones like bell pepper, carrots, lemon juice, mustard, orange peel, and tomatoes. Despite the big name, 5.5-ounce jars of the stuff sell for a modest $4.22.

The most dramatically named mix on this list has to be Fire & Smoke Society Thundering Longhorn Beef Rub. The ingredients are equally bold: black pepper, chili peppers, coffee, cumin, garlic, and oregano. The rub is intended for briskets and burgers, but customers report off-label use in dishes such as chicken, chili, salmon, and Salisbury steak. It comes in generously sized 12.5-ounce jars priced at $6.98.

Can you cook smash burgers on the grill? David Chang says no, but we dare to disagree. As long as you smash them flat before they go on the grates and take extra care when flipping, they should be fine. You'll also want to season them right before smashing and Grill Mates Classic Smash Seasoning would make an excellent choice with its combo of celery seed, garlic, onion, and salt. It not only flavors your burgers but helps them to form the perfect crust. It's okay to use on other grilled foods too, and at $1.97 for a 2.85-ounce bottle, it's cheap enough to allow for culinary experimentation.

Finally, we finish off with Fire & Smoke Society Sweet Preacher Pork Rub. The sweet comes from the brown sugar and molasses, while bay leaves, black pepper, cayenne, cumin, mustard seed, rosemary, and paprika do the preaching. Use it on all your pig-derived products or branch out into cows, chickens, and cabbage. What wouldn't taste better with a little sweet spice? For $6.98 you get 11.9 ounces of this seasoning blend, so you can sprinkle with abandon.