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About
About HeiferDust: A Family Seasoning Tradition Since 1920
HeiferDust is a family seasoning brand with roots going back to the early 1920s. What started as a homemade blend used to make Sunday pot roast taste better eventually became a collection of seasonings made for everyday cooking, grilling, smoking, seafood and more.
Our original blend is HeiferDust All Purpose Seasoning, joined today by our Creole Butter Seasoning and Blackened Seasoning. Each blend is made to add flavor without covering up the food underneath it.
Put Some HeiferDust On It.
What Can You Use HeiferDust Seasoning On?
HeiferDust seasonings can be used on steak, chicken, pork, seafood, fish, oysters, wild game, vegetables, french fries, baked potatoes and plenty more. Use them at the table, on the grill, as a dry rub or as part of a marinade.
We make three different blends, each with its own flavor profile.
HeiferDust All Purpose Seasoning
HeiferDust All Purpose Seasoning is our original family blend. Its roots go back to the early 1920s, when our Paw Paw began experimenting with spices to make ordinary meals taste better.
We keep the complete recipe to ourselves, but the familiar flavors include salt, garlic, black pepper, paprika and a touch of cayenne, along with other ingredients that bring the blend together.
The goal has always been balance. It has enough flavor to make a difference without overpowering steak, chicken, pork, seafood or vegetables.
Use it like an everyday seasoning, as a dry rub, or as the starting point for your own recipe. If you’re smoking brisket, for example, you can add extra granulated garlic, brown sugar or other flavors and make it your own.
HeiferDust Creole Butter Seasoning
Our Creole Butter Seasoning is not the typical red, paprika-heavy Creole blend. We wanted something smoother, with buttery flavor, a light garlic note and a clean hint of lemon.
We reduced the sodium by 25% compared with our original formulation and avoided the heavy red color found in many traditional Creole seasonings.
Creole Butter works especially well on:
- Steak
- Grilled chicken and pork
- Shrimp, oysters, fish and other seafood
- Corn on the cob
- Okra, zucchini, squash, asparagus and other vegetables
- Popcorn
This blend contains a small amount of MSG to help round out the flavor after reducing the sodium. It is also gluten-free.
HeiferDust Blackened Seasoning
HeiferDust Blackened Seasoning was created for fish, seafood, steak and other foods that benefit from bold flavor and a good seared crust.
The blend has plenty of ground pepper flavor, but it isn’t hot. One thing that makes it different is a hint of lemon. It doesn’t make the food taste strongly of lemon; it simply gives the finished seasoning a brighter flavor.
How Do You Use HeiferDust Blackened Seasoning?
Lightly coat the fish or meat with melted butter or oil, season it on both sides, and cook it in a hot, well-seasoned cast iron skillet. Traditional blackening produces quite a bit of smoke, so it is best done outdoors or in a properly ventilated cooking area.
Cooking time depends on the thickness and type of food, so use internal temperature rather than cooking time alone to determine when meat and poultry are done. Poultry should reach 165°F. Whole cuts of pork should reach 145°F and rest for at least three minutes.
Why Does HeiferDust Taste Different?
We don’t make seasoning to hide the flavor of good food. We make it to complement it.
Salt, garlic, pepper and the other spices work together as the food cooks. Heat, moisture and fat help distribute those flavors across the surface of the food, creating a more balanced bite.
That’s the idea behind every HeiferDust blend: bold enough to matter, balanced enough to let the food still taste like food.
The History of HeiferDust
HeiferDust started as a family recipe long before it became a label.
Our Paw Paw, H. T. duPerier, was born in New Iberia, Louisiana, in 1899. That’s where the “1899” you see on the HeiferDust label comes from.
The seasoning itself traces back to the early 1920s, when Paw Paw began tinkering with spices to make Sunday pot roast taste better.
H. T. duPerier, Sr. with his daughters. Captain Troy’s mother is on the right and Aunt Betty is on the left.
Paw Paw spent his working years with the Texas Bread Company, known for Tasty Bread, eventually serving as general manager. By the time many of his grandchildren came along, he was retired, so we knew him mostly as the Paw Paw who told stories.
He talked about growing up around New Iberia, later years in Beaumont and Houston, and the family’s Louisiana history. He told us that his great-grandfather helped incorporate New Iberia in 1835 and that the family donated land where St. Peter’s Catholic Church stands today.
He also had a way of making ordinary life sound legendary. As a teenager, he worked for Hughes Tool Company and used to laugh while telling stories about occasionally picking up and dropping off a young Howard Hughes.
Where Did the Name HeiferDust Come From?
By 1964, Paw Paw was 65 years old, surrounded by his three adult children and a growing collection of grandchildren.
He didn’t curse around us. When the house got loud and the kids got rowdy, he’d sometimes switch to Cajun French. We usually didn’t know exactly what he was saying, but we knew from his tone whether he was serious or amused.
He also gave the grandkids Cajun-sounding nicknames like Boof La Bow, T-Boog, Za-Fran, Pachee and Mon-wee — spelled here the way they sounded to us.
And when the kids were running their mouths at full speed, he’d lean back and say:
“Aw… heifer dust.”
Years later, I tried to figure out where the expression originated. I found references to “heifer-dust” as older slang meaning something along the lines of nonsense or rubbish. I also remembered hearing the expression used on the television western The High Chaparral.
Wherever Paw Paw first heard it, the phrase stuck with me because it fit him perfectly — a funny, affectionate way of calling out a little chaos.
And that’s how HeiferDust got its name.
From Sunday Pot Roast to HeiferDust
The recipe began with a simple idea: take good food and make it taste even better.
What started as a homemade seasoning for family cooking eventually became HeiferDust All Purpose Seasoning. From there came our other blends, but the philosophy hasn’t changed much in more than a century.
Good food. Balanced seasoning. A real family story. And a name nobody seems to forget.
Questions About HeiferDust
Is HeiferDust a brand or a type of seasoning?
HeiferDust is our brand name. HeiferDust All Purpose, HeiferDust Creole Butter and HeiferDust Blackened are individual seasoning blends sold under the HeiferDust brand.
What is the original HeiferDust seasoning?
HeiferDust All Purpose Seasoning is the original family blend. Its history traces back to the early 1920s and a seasoning mixture H. T. duPerier developed for family cooking.
What foods can I use HeiferDust on?
HeiferDust can be used on steak, chicken, pork, fish, shrimp, oysters, wild game, vegetables, potatoes and many other foods. Different HeiferDust blends are suited to different cooking styles and flavor preferences.
Does HeiferDust only make seasonings for beef?
No. Despite the name, HeiferDust seasonings are used on everything from steak and pork to fish, shrimp, oysters, chicken and vegetables.