How a Little Sachet of Peri Peri Rub Saved My Sunday Dinners

14 juin 2026

Nando's Hot Peri Peri Seasoning Rub 25g sachets, pack of 6, arranged on a kitchen surface ready for cooking

I have a confession to make: for years I was a terrible home cook. Not in the sense that I couldn't follow a recipe — I could manage that fine. The problem was that my food was consistently, reliably, almost impressively bland. I'd follow the instructions, use the right quantities, and produce something that was technically correct but tasted like it had been assembled rather than cooked. My friends were polite about it. My family less so.

The issue, I eventually worked out, was seasoning. Not salt and pepper — I had those covered. It was the deeper, more complex flavour that I couldn't seem to replicate. The kind of flavour that makes you go back for a second helping without quite knowing why. I'd been chasing that for a long time before I found it in a small 25g sachet.

The Problem I Was Trying to Solve

I grew up eating food with real heat and real depth — my mum is Ghanaian and my dad spent years living in Mozambique, so the food in our house was never short on flavour. When I moved out and started cooking for myself, I found I couldn't replicate it. I tried various spice blends, various marinades, various techniques I'd watched on YouTube at midnight. Some were fine. None of them had that particular combination of heat, citrus, and earthiness that I was looking for.

Peri peri was always the flavour I kept coming back to. I'd eat it at restaurants and think: this is it, this is what I want to be making at home. But every time I tried to build it from scratch — bird's eye chillies, lemon, garlic, paprika, the works — something was always slightly off. Too sharp, or too one-dimensional, or just not quite right in a way I couldn't diagnose.

Why I Tried the Nando's Seasoning Rub

I'll be honest: I was slightly sceptical. Nando's is a restaurant chain, and restaurant-branded products have a reputation for being a pale imitation of the real thing — a way to sell nostalgia rather than actual flavour. But a colleague brought some into work after a barbecue and the chicken she'd made with it was genuinely excellent. I asked what she'd used and she showed me the sachet.

The Nando's Hot Peri Peri Seasoning Rub comes in 25g sachets, and the pack of 6 made sense for me — I cook most evenings and I knew if it was good I'd go through it quickly. The Hot variant was the obvious choice. I don't want mild. I want to feel it.

First Cook — Chicken Thighs, Simple as Possible

I wanted to test it properly, so I kept the first cook simple: bone-in chicken thighs, the rub, a bit of olive oil, and nothing else. I mixed the sachet with enough oil to make a paste, coated the thighs thoroughly, and left them to marinate for a couple of hours before roasting.

The smell when they went into the oven was immediately promising. That combination of chilli heat and something deeper — the paprika, the herbs, whatever else is in there — filled the kitchen in a way that made me genuinely hungry rather than just aware that food was cooking. There's a difference, and it matters.

The result was the best chicken I'd cooked at home. Not the best I'd ever eaten — I'm not going to overstate it — but genuinely, properly good. The heat built slowly rather than hitting immediately and fading. The skin was properly seasoned all the way through rather than just on the surface. My flatmate, who had been making politely noncommittal noises about my cooking for two years, asked if there was any left.

How It Changed My Cooking

The Nando's rub has become a fixture in my kitchen in a way that very few products manage. I use it on chicken most often, but I've also tried it on prawns (excellent), on roasted vegetables (surprisingly good), and mixed into a yoghurt marinade for lamb (genuinely outstanding). The 25g sachet is the right size for a full meal for two to three people — enough to season properly without being wasteful.

The pack of 6 means I always have some in the cupboard, which matters more than it sounds. The worst thing about discovering a product you love is running out of it at the wrong moment. Having six sachets means I can cook with it freely without rationing.

My Sunday dinners in particular have been transformed. What used to be a slightly anxious exercise in hoping something would turn out okay is now something I actually look forward to. I know the rub will do its job. I just have to not overcook the protein.

A Note on the Heat Level

Hot means hot. This isn't a gentle warmth — it's a proper, building heat that lingers. If you're cooking for people who are sensitive to spice, the standard or mild variants might be a better starting point. For me, it's exactly right. The heat is present throughout the meal rather than just at the first bite, which is how I think chilli heat should work.