12 Best Store-Bought Pot Roast Seasoning Packets, According To Reviews

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Store-bought pot roast seasoning packets are not only a handy seasoning shortcut, but trying some of the ones reviewers like most may have you deciding you need them every time. One nice thing about these seasoning packets is that you don't have to consult a recipe or your memory to figure out which spices you need. Plus, there's no need to keep a large spice cabinet full of ingredients or try to figure out what ingredients to add to upgrade your pot roast this time.

With the right seasoning packet, making a roast suddenly becomes almost foolproof and something you might decide to make more regularly. You just pour it over your pot roast and veggies, add water, and let the spice mix work its magic while you cook your pot roast low and slow. Not only do some of these serve as a seasoning, but some have ingredients that also help create a gravy for the roast. Some are good enough that people panic when they can't find them because they're accustomed to using them to make a weekly roast. 

There are quite a few pot roast seasonings out there, but not all of them are created equal. These are the 12 that were the most popular and had the highest customer reviews. So, we feel fairly confident that you could try any of these pot roast seasoning packets and be happy with the results, since they represent the best available.

Crockery Gourmet might not be a name brand you know, but it makes an excellent seasoning mix that lots of people use for their pot roasts. And while you might not easily find Crockery Gourmet Seasoning Mix for Beef on grocery store shelves, it's available online. It is a little pricey, with a 3-pack coming in at just under $20. Still, some people swear by it and love it enough to pay the higher price because it's so different from the other pot roast seasoning mixes they've tried.

Many reviewers stocked up on this product after it disappeared from their local grocery stores, worrying that it may not be around much longer. One even bought a year's supply of 50 packets, which tells you just how addicted some people are to this brand.

So, what makes this seasoning different? Largely, it's the addition of tomato powder, red beets, paprika, and beef fat. Some of the other ingredients are ones that you see more often, like sugar, onion powder, and garlic powder. To make a pot roast, you simply put this in your crockpot with meat, veggies, and water, and cook everything low and slow.

Crockpot's Savory Pot Roast Seasoning Mix is much easier to find at grocery stores and is far cheaper. Being from the Crockpot brand itself, it's a no-brainer to grab when you're planning to slow-cook a pot roast in your Crockpot. However, it certainly works for other pot-roast-cooking methods as well.

Fans of the mix say it tastes like homemade gravy. This makes such a delicious gravy that reviewers talk about making mashed potatoes separately just to have with the gravy. It's another mix that has people putting pot roast on the menu on repeat every week. They also mention using it for pork roasts as well as beef roasts. 

This one has flavorings like brown sugar, garlic, dried beef stock, and other spices to give a pot roast the little extra lift it needs. It also has thickening ingredients like cornstarch and wheat flour that help create a gravy for the pot roast. It cooks with your roast, veggies, and water low and slow for hours to help infuse it with flavor.

Great Value stands up well to all the name-brand pot roast seasoning mixes just fine, coming in among the highest-rated mixes. Customers who have tried other pricier brands often come back to Great Value Pot Roast Seasoning Mix because it costs just over a dollar but tastes just as good as the more expensive name brands.

This is a great option if you're looking for a seasoning mix that creates a thick sauce that is dark and strong. You won't need to add any other seasonings to your roast besides this. Home cooks say they're always getting compliments when they use this mix. Some like the flavor enough that they use it for other meat dishes as well –- even burgers.

In addition to expected ingredients like garlic powder and onion powder, it also contains soy sauce and vegetable stock. The flavorful vegetable stock is made from carrots, onions, and celery. Additional ingredients that give it flavor include brown sugar, beef fat, and beef stock. The ingredients ultimately serve to make a flavorful gravy for your pot roast. The seasoning mix just needs to be reconstituted with a cup of water before pouring it over your roast and veggies and slow-cooking it for a few hours.

Kinder's Sunday Pot Roast stew seasoning for slow cooking is a best seller in some stores like Walmart. If you've tried Kinder's seasonings before, you know that they mainly tend to be highly rated. We especially like that the ingredient list is more familiar and natural than most, without lots of chemicals and preservatives. Plus, you can often find it for under $2 per packet. So, it's certainly budget-friendly.

Once home cooks use this to make pot roast, they often decide that they can't be without it again. Thus, some end up hoarding multiple packets of it lest it disappear. They love it for how much flavor it adds to their pot roast and how good the gravy is over mashed potatoes. Some also enjoy the product's mix of spices.

The ingredient list includes salt and dehydrated garlic and onions, along with other undisclosed spices and natural flavors. The only other ingredients are yeast extract, rice concentrate, and sunflower oil. So, if you're a label reader, this one isn't likely to have you putting the mix back on the shelf. However, the instructions suggest some additions besides just water, meat, and veggies, namely oil, flour, tomato paste, and beef stock. So, yes, it might be a little more work than some others, but the results are absolutely worth it. Although it seems that some people just use the mix without all the suggested extras, like broth, it still turns out delicious.

If you'd like to try something different than your regular pot roast, a popular choice is Knorr Fix Sauerbraten German-style pot roast mix. Sauerbraten is a classic German dish that's definitely worth a try. It's not uncommon for German cooks to add gingersnaps to a traditional sauerbraten gravy toward the end of the cooking process, which explains some of the ingredients you don't see in a typical pot roast seasoning mix.

Some reviewers who have tried a variety of sauerbraten mixes such as this one prefer it best, while others have different favorites. They like that it's rich and makes a great sauce to go over mashed potatoes. Even someone who worked in a German kitchen said it's as good as what their restaurant made.  A typical sauerbraten requires the extra step of marinating the meat for a few days in an ingredient mix that often includes wine and vinegar. While some people still add a little vinegar to this mix and marinate it overnight, it's not necessary here. You can use this for braising your meat on the stovetop, or however you normally make a pot roast.

The ingredient list has some interesting spices you don't tend to see in typical pot roast recipes. This mix from Knorr includes ingredients like tomato powder, celery, onion juice concentrate, paprika, garlic, bay leaves, cloves, and parsley root, along with salt and sugar. Interestingly, it contains palm oil, too.

The highest-rated pot roast seasoning mix on our list is Lindberg Snider porterhouse & roast seasoning. If you haven't heard of it, it's well worth finding to try. We like that it's a simple seasoning mix that comes in a regular spice shaker and that it works on far more than just roasts. The company makes other marinades, sauces, and seasonings, but this is its best seller.

Reviewers may buy this for their steak or roasts, but they often end up using it on other meats and veggies as well because it's such a good blend of flavors that family members and guests rave about. It makes a perfectly seasoned roast. As a bonus, they say it's not overly salty. It's one of those all-in-one seasonings that home cooks can't seem to be without once they've tried it.

This seasoning mix is so simple that it looks like you could probably put it together on your own if you could figure out the proportions. It contains seasonings you'd probably already add to your pot roast, like salt and pepper, as well as garlic and onion. There's also oregano, paprika, celery seed, rosemary, and parsley. Plus, it contains cornmeal for thickening. The only ingredient you might not recognize is silicon dioxide, which prevents clumping and is naturally occurring in many plants.

Another sauerbraten option that has wowed plenty of pot roast lovers is Maggi's German-style sauerbraten pot roast seasoning mix. The ingredient list looks different than the Knorr option, making it worth trying both of them to see which suits your tastes most.

Like the Knorr one, the instructions are for braising the roast, but plenty of people just use the mix in their Crockpot or with other roast cooking methods. Something of note is that reviewers find it less bitter than some other sauerbraten mixes on the market. It also makes a great gravy. It's noteworthy that it appears to have its instructions in English in Amazon previews, but some customers say it comes in German instead.

It has vinegar in the ingredient list, but some people still like to add fresh vinegar to intensify that flavor. Other ingredients include sugar, onion powder, tomato powder, celery powder, bay leaves, thyme, and garlic powder, as well as some unlisted spices. It also has some thickening agents like wheat flour. There's also an interesting alternate pot roast recipe on the package that requires adding shallots, honey, red wine, and cinnamon.

The McCormick Bag 'n Season pot roast cooking and seasoning mix is the only one on our list that includes an oven cooking bag. It also claims to have no artificial flavors. The instructions say it only takes 15 minutes to get it ready for the oven and then only two hours of baking time in the oven. Plus, customers especially like that cleanup is effortless because you just throw away the bag. Despite coming with a bag, it's still under $5.

Not only does the bag help make cleanup and cooking nearly effortless, but home cooks appreciate that it helps everything get done evenly and results in fork-tender meat. The seasoning also infuses everything in the bag with rich and savory flavors.

The ingredient list is full of veggies like onions, bell peppers, and carrots as well as spices like mustard, garlic, thyme, and paprika. It also includes sugar and salt. While there are some ingredients in the mix you wouldn't generally stock in a standard kitchen, the company still declares them all non-artificial. While it doesn't make a thick gravy, you can still add a thickener like cornstarch and end up with gravy anyway. Some people abandon the bag and make their pot roast in an appliance instead of the oven because they like the flavor of the seasoning mix. Some people also use it with pork instead of beef.

One of the many must-try pot roast recipes out there is Mississippi pot roast. The recipe for a traditional Mississippi roast involves mixing together a ranch dressing mix, a dry onion soup mix, salt, pepper, butter, and pepperoncini peppers. While you still have to add the butter and peppers to make the roast, everything gets simplified with only one seasoning packet to have to buy and open. A single packet of this McCormick Instant Pot Mississippi Roast mix comes in at under $5, which is about as much as buying all the seasonings separately. However, you don't have to run all over the store looking for all the different mixes.

This is a product that even wins over people who don't usually buy premixed seasonings for their roasts. One neat thing about using this mix is that it has Instant Pot instructions that don't even require the addition of water. The fact that this is an Instant Pot mix means that you get amazing pot roast in under an hour, which is also something reviewers appreciate. However, you can also make it in a slow cooker.

As you can imagine, the ingredient list for this mix reads a bit differently than a lot of the others, especially since it includes buttermilk. There's also garlic, onion, parsley, celery seed, and beef fat to provide lots of added flavor. Reviewers say the flavors are well-balanced and savory, and capable of making roast mouth-wateringly delicious.

The best-selling pot roast seasoning mix we found with the most reviews is McCormick Slow Cooker Savory Pot Roast seasoning mix. With the brand's popularity for its spices and seasoning packets in the U.S., it's no wonder that this one sells well. Beyond brand recognition, though, it's a genuinely great seasoning mix.

Many consider this a must-have seasoning mix for their pantry. Those who use it say the spice blend is perfect and that it has family members (even picky ones) loving it and sometimes even going back for seconds. It doesn't make a thick sauce like some mixes do, but you can always add thickeners if the spice combination works for you and you'd prefer more of a gravy experience.

This is another mix that has some extra ingredients listed that make it stand out from the others. While brown sugar and garlic feature on the ingredient list, the brand also lets you in on the secret of three of its spices: celery seeds, basil, and oregano. Although salt is an added ingredient, reviewers say it's not as salty as some of the others. Adding this seasoning to your liquid along with all your veggies and meat ensures a tasty slow-cooked pot roast experience.

Another versatile mix is Orrington Farms Slow Cookers Tender Pot Roast seasoning mix. This is a mix that many people have been loyal to for years because it makes such a great pot roast that leaves people raving.

Several reviewers say they've had difficulty finding this in their grocery store as they once did and have resorted to buying it online because they love it so much. Fans of this product have found that it also tastes great in other beef dishes such as beef stew, shepherd's pie, and meatloaf.

The directions for this have you making it in a slow cooker with a pot roast and vegetables. It looks like it has a very standard flavor profile, with ingredients like salt, dehydrated and powdered onion, black pepper, and garlic powder. There's beef stock, beef extract, and beef fat for extra umami. Plus, you get both regular sugar and caramelized sugar in the mix. Those who find it salty can just add extra water to dilute it.

Finally, we have an organic mix for those looking for cleaner eating options: Watkins Organic Homestyle Pot Roast Gourmet Seasoning Mix. Beyond being organic, it has some very interesting ingredients that promise a different flavor experience than many others.

There are plenty of reviewers saying it's the best pot roast mix they've ever tried. They enjoy the flavor and how moist it keeps the roast. Some find that it even works well with lower-quality meat. Granted, some still prefer McCormick's or Crockery Gourmet after giving this a try, but with that said, it's really a matter of personal taste.

The instructions have you making the roast in the oven with veggies in a Dutch oven, but you can use it with any roasting method, like a slow cooker. There are several ingredients that stand out to us since they're not in any other mixes on our list, like smoke flavor, tamari powder, mushroom powder, and coffee powder. It also includes ingredients like salt, minced garlic, onion powder, dried garlic, red bell pepper, roast beef flavor, and tomato powder. Plus, there's cornstarch to help thicken the sauce.

To decide which store-bought pot roast seasoning mixes to include in our list, we looked for highly reviewed ones online. We specifically looked for ones that had over 100 reviews to give us a better feel for what people thought about them. Plus, we wanted enough reviews available to ensure we were suggesting truly good products. All the ones on our list have 4.4 stars out of 5 or above. In fact, half have a rating over 4.5 stars. Additionally, over 85% of the reviews for all these products were 4 or 5 stars. In fact, for the majority of them, over 90% of their reviews were 4 or 5 stars. So, these are the best of the best based on customer reviews.