Praise Allah: Tiger Seasoning!

Before everyone that knows me thinks I've somehow been abducted by aliens or Islamists, this is not a religious rant!  This is simply an expose about one of the best seasoning ingredients that I've come across in my lifetime. 

About the blog title: the incredible seasoning now known as Tiger Seasoning was originally called Praise Allah Seasoning and was originally made in Knoxville, TN.  I found about about this magical seasoning from my younger brother who was attending UT at the time in the latter half of the 1970s.  It came in a decent sized plastic shaker can and the label bore the name, "Praise Allah Seasoning" and had a picture of the Taj Mahal against a purple background on the label. This was just before the insanity happened in Iran with the American Embassy hostage crisis so that things Persian/Middle Eastern were considered exotic or at worst benign.  Unfortunately, this was not to last.  Basically this wonderful locally-produced product that is somewhat reminiscent of a Puerto Rican Adobo seasoning was pretty unique, especially in the spice-deprived Upper South of the 1960s.  Mind you, adobo seasoning from Puerto Rico is nothing like the adobo sauce of Mexico nor the adobo vinegar meat stews of the Philippines.  Even now, very few non-Puerto Ricans know what adobo seasoning is and Praise Allah was a much more balanced combination of flavors than the typical adobo. It basically consists of a combination of salt, dextrose, garlic, oregano, white pepper and MSG and was and still is an incredible seasoning for everything from steaks, hamburgers, pizza, stews, eggs, you name it.  When my brother brought my mother home a shaker can of it home one weekend back then we were entranced by it.  At that time, most folks at least in this area's idea of seasoning consisted of just salt and pepper.  Garlic was an almost unkown ingredient and along with oregano was something those somewhat scary Italians were known to use.  I hope you're getting the picture as to how culinarily and culturally deprived most of us were back then. 

Chinese and Mexican cooking were almost unknown around here then and Italian cooking had made some slight inroads but it was mostly limited to pizza of a dubious quality that was rarely made by real Italians.  I have to thank Pizza Hut and their advertising campaigns that made pizza a legitimate food in the Upper South or otherwise we would've probably had to wait another ten years for it to become so popular among the everyman.   Fortunately, a Sicilian family came to our area about 35 years ago and showed us how pizza and other common Italian foods were supposed to taste.  Chef Boyardee was no longer held in good standing here!

Back to Praise Allah Seasoning: this product had been around Knoxville for many years, even going back to about 1960 when it was considered quite exotic and made by a company called Davis Manufacturing Co. This product was nationally advertised in specialty food magazines at the time and was at least locally well known over the years.  It could even be bought at a couple of local grocery store chains in the 1970s. Then came the problems in Iran with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the imprisonment of the American Embassy personnel.  I wouldn't doubt that the FBI probably tracked some who bought the product especially in the Knoxville, TN area which had a goodly number of students from Iran going to UT during this time.   By this time, anything Middle Eastern was almost a cussword for many Americans and Praise Allah Seasoning almost disappeared. 

We're going to take a trip around the mountain for a bit that I hope you'll appreciate but I won't get offended if you skip to the next paragraph.  I vividly recall the problems many foreign students at UT from the Middle East or South Asia encountered during this time.  I wasn't really aware of how bad things had become until the fateful evening of July 4, 1979.  I was living temporarily with my brother and his flatmate in a quite nice suites-type apartment building in Sequoyah Hills while in training with my Knoxville-based employer.  We found out that night that we had students from Iran living in our building that we'd never met previously.  We first met them that evening after we began firing off volleys of quite large stick rockets down the hill toward the neighboring apartment complex which was in a friendly pyrotechnic competiton with our building.  One of our first rockets misfired and went down onto our pool deck instead of to the neighbors several hundred feet downhill.  Unknown to us at the time, a young Persian woman, her sister and brother in-law were in our pool area.  When this rocket exploded (it wasn't a little bottle rocket either),  it like to have scared those folks to death and they all started screaming and dove into the pool.  Needless to say, we didn't know they were there as it was almost dark.  They thought they were being attacked by American terrorists for being from Iran!  After they quit screaming, we quickly diffused the situation after assuring them that we meant no harm and they then joined us in the festivities of sending down close to a hundred big rockets down on the neighbors.  Of course the neighbors were firing back but we had gravity on our side and their's rarely made it up to our building.  These Persians had been pretty scared of the political situation for some time and had been keeping a very low profile and only came down to the pool late in the evening when no one else was around.  This incident is how my brother's roomate, the late Brent Potts, met his Persian girlfriend Mitra L.  They were a couple for quite some time.  Mitra, her older sister and brother in-law were great people that hated Khomeini early on for a number of reasons and especially since he kept their professional parents from sending them money.  They almost starved for a time as almost no employers would give them jobs after they found out they were from Iran and all eventually found minimum wage employment after a few months.  I moved to NC after a few months and lost touch with them but hope they have done well.   Unfortunately, Brent Potts, who was an experienced scuba diver and the only person I've ever known to own a Lancia, died in a cave diving accident in Florida in August 1990.  Now, back to our topic.

The TryMe brand owned by Reily Foods Co. of New Orleans then assumed ownership of the brand but distribution was still somewhat local. This company owned the Luzianne brand which previously was well known for their coffee with chicory blend and teas.  They changed the product's name to Tiger Seasoning but kept the TryMe brand and off it went to be marketed nationwide which is where it's at today.  Reily/Luzianne had previously bought the Knoxville-based JFG Coffee Company in 1965 and was familiar with the area prior to the Praise Allah acquisition.  Interestingly, there are quite a few recipes online that call for Praise Allah Seasoning and many folks in East Tennessee still call it that, me included if I don't think very hard about it.  I've known it as Praise Allah far longer than Tiger Seasoning.  In any case, it's a fabulous seasoning that should be in every kitchen.  Locally, Food City and Kroger carry it and it's available online from several sources. A great use that's on the label is to blend it with melted butter and brush it on steaks about a minute before they're done. We regularly use it when cooking fresh frozen peas by adding it along with butter after draining them and also in beef stew or on hamburgers.  We also sprinkle it on popcorn.  It's wonderful!