If you have started checking labels for gluten, the spice cupboard is one of the sneakier corners of the kitchen. Searching for gluten free seasoning UK shoppers can trust usually returns two extremes: blogs that wave everything through because "spices are naturally gluten-free", and forums that treat every jar as a hazard. The truth sits in the middle, and it fits on one label. This guide shows you exactly where gluten hides in seasoning blends, what UK labelling law forces manufacturers to tell you, and how to read any ingredients list in under thirty seconds so you can buy with confidence rather than guesswork.
One thing this guide will not do is make blanket promises. The only source of truth for any product, ours included, is the ingredients list printed on the jar in front of you. We will show you how to read it properly.
Where gluten actually hides in seasoning blends
Pure herbs and spices, by their nature, are made from plants that contain no gluten: paprika is ground pepper pods, thyme is a dried herb, garlic granules are dried garlic. The risk almost never comes from the spice itself. It comes from what gets added when spices become blends and mixes:
- Wheat flour as a bulking agent. Cheap blends sometimes stretch expensive spices with flour. This is the classic offender in bargain seasoning mixes.
- Wheat starch as an anti-clumping carrier. Used to keep powders free-flowing in some products.
- Barley malt extract. Adds sweetness and colour to some savoury mixes and BBQ-style rubs. Barley is a gluten grain, and it catches people out because it does not contain the word "wheat".
- Soy sauce powder. Traditional soy sauce is brewed with wheat, so powdered forms in stir-fry and takeaway-style mixes can carry it.
- Hydrolysed wheat protein. A savoury flavour booster in some seasoning products.
- Rusk and breadcrumb. Found in coating mixes and some meat rubs designed to crisp.
- Stock cubes and gravy granules. Not technically seasoning blends, but they live on the same shelf and are among the most common places wheat flour appears in savoury cooking.
Notice what that list is: additives and carriers, not spices. Which is why the label check below works so well.
Gluten free seasoning UK label check: 30 seconds, three steps
UK food labelling law does most of the work for you, if you know what it requires. Under the rules enforced by the Food Standards Agency, prepacked food sold in the UK must declare 14 major allergens, and cereals containing gluten (wheat, rye, barley and oats) must be emphasised within the ingredients list itself, usually in bold. That gives you a fast, reliable routine:
- Step 1: Scan the ingredients list for bold text. If wheat, barley, rye or oats are in the product, UK law says they must stand out in the list. No bold cereals in the ingredients means no gluten-containing ingredients were deliberately added.
- Step 2: Read any "may contain" statement. This is a voluntary cross-contamination warning about the factory environment, not an ingredient. How much weight you give it depends on whether you are avoiding gluten by preference or managing coeliac disease, where stricter caution is right.
- Step 3: Know what the "gluten-free" claim legally means. In the UK, a product may only be labelled "gluten-free" if it contains 20 parts per million of gluten or less. It is a regulated claim, not a marketing phrase. If a product does not carry the claim, that does not automatically mean it contains gluten; it means you go back to steps 1 and 2 and read the list.
Thirty seconds, every jar, every time the recipe changes. Manufacturers reformulate without announcements, supermarkets switch suppliers, and a blend that passed the check last year can be a different product this year. The label on the jar in your hand always outranks the memory of the last one you bought, and it outranks anything a blog told you, including this one.
Single spices vs blends: where to spend your caution
A useful rule of thumb for the spice rack: the shorter the ingredients list, the less there is to check. A jar of pure thyme has one ingredient. A seasoning blend has several, which is exactly why blends are where you apply the 30-second routine. That is not a reason to avoid blends: a good blend is still the fastest way to make everyday cooking taste like you tried. It is simply a reason to read the list once before the first buy, the same way you would with a sauce or a stock.
We publish the full ingredients list for every Costack product on its product page and print it on every label, so you can run the exact three-step check above before you order. Start with the lists on All Purpose Seasoning, Vegetable Seasoning, Dried Thyme and Onion Granules, and check the jar when it arrives. Every ingredient, listed, every time: that is the standard you should hold any spice brand to.
Building a spice rack when you are avoiding gluten
The practical shape of a confident, gluten-aware spice shelf looks like this:
- A base of single herbs and spices. Thyme, garlic granules, onion granules, paprika, black pepper. One-ingredient jars, minimal checking, maximum flexibility.
- One or two checked blends you trust. Run the label routine once, then enjoy the shortcut every night. A balanced all-purpose blend covers meat, fish, rice, eggs and vegetables in one shake.
- Real ingredients over mystery pastes. The fewer processed sauces and sachets in the cooking, the fewer labels to interrogate. Seasoning raw ingredients yourself is the single biggest simplifier.
Cooking from scratch with checked seasonings is not just safer label-wise; it is cheaper and better-tasting than leaning on the free-from ready-meal aisle, which charges a steep premium for the badge on the box while you do the checking anyway.
Kitchen swaps that quietly remove gluten from everyday cooking
Most of the gluten in home cooking arrives through habits, not spices. Easy swaps that change nothing about flavour:
- Thicken with cornflour instead of wheat flour. Slake a teaspoon in cold water and stir it into simmering sauces, gravies and curries.
- Check your stock. Choose stock products whose labels pass the same three-step check, or make the seasoning do the work and skip the cube entirely.
- Crisp with polenta or rice flour. Dusting chicken or potato wedges before roasting gives the crunch a rusk coating would, without the rusk.
- Watch the soy sauce. Swap standard soy for tamari labelled gluten-free in stir-fries and fried rice.
- Season at the pan. Salt, garlic, onion, herbs and paprika hitting hot oil build the savoury depth people usually lean on gravy granules for.
The free-from aisle trap (and the cheaper route past it)
Here is the pattern supermarkets rely on: the moment a household starts avoiding gluten, the weekly shop drifts toward the free-from aisle, where a badge on the packet adds 30 to 100 per cent to the price of pasta sauces, spice kits and ready meals. Some of those products earn their place. Most of them are solving a problem you can solve at the hob for pennies.
A jar of checked seasoning, a bag of rice, chicken thighs and a tin of tomatoes make a better curry than any free-from kit, at a fraction of the cost, with one label to read instead of five. The economics are the quiet win of cooking this way: label confidence and lower bills come from the same habit, which is fewer processed components and more real ingredients seasoned properly.
A week of dinners that need no special aisle
To make the point concrete, here is a full week where gluten simply never enters the pan, built from ordinary supermarket ingredients:
- Monday: Traybake of chicken thighs, potatoes and peppers with a balanced all-purpose blend.
- Tuesday: Mild curry with rice, thickened by simmering rather than flour.
- Wednesday: Jacket potatoes with cheese and beans, the beans lifted in the pan with garlic and onion granules.
- Thursday: Egg fried rice with tamari and frozen peas, using yesterday's chilled rice.
- Friday: Pan-fried salmon with herb-and-garlic seasoned new potatoes and greens.
- Saturday: Chilli con carne over rice, cornflour-thickened if you like it thicker.
- Sunday: Roast chicken, roasties crisped with a polenta dusting, gravy made from the roasting juices and cornflour.
Nothing on that list is a compromise dinner, nothing came from a specialist aisle, and every seasoning decision was covered by the same 30-second label routine from the top of this page.
When it is more than a preference
If gluten reliably makes you unwell, do not self-diagnose your way through the free-from aisle. Coeliac disease is an autoimmune condition affecting roughly 1 in 100 people, many undiagnosed, and the NHS guidance on coeliac disease is clear on one point worth repeating: keep eating gluten until you have been tested, because cutting it out beforehand can make the test miss the diagnosis. Speak to your GP first, then build the kitchen around the answer. For diagnosed coeliacs, "may contain" warnings and shared factory lines deserve genuine caution, and the charity Coeliac UK maintains detailed food lists worth using alongside labels.
FAQ: gluten and seasoning, answered straight
Are herbs and spices naturally gluten-free?
Pure single herbs and spices are made from plants that contain no gluten. The practical risk sits in multi-ingredient blends and in cross-contamination, which is why the ingredients list and any "may contain" statement are the two things to read.
Does paprika, garlic or onion powder contain gluten?
Not as ingredients: they are dried, ground vegetables and pods. Check the label of the specific brand for added carriers or a "may contain" note, then relax.
What does the bold text in a UK ingredients list mean?
UK allergen rules require the 14 major allergens, including cereals containing gluten, to be emphasised in the ingredients list of prepacked food. Bold wheat means wheat is in the product. No bold cereals means none were deliberately added.
Is "gluten-free" on a label a guarantee?
It is a legally regulated claim: 20 parts per million of gluten or less. For almost everyone avoiding gluten, including coeliacs, products meeting that threshold are considered safe to eat.
Do Costack seasonings contain gluten?
Read the ingredients list on the specific product page and jar, exactly as this guide teaches, because the printed label is always the source of truth. We list every ingredient on every product so the three-step check takes seconds.
Keep going on the label-reading theme: Low-Salt Cooking Without Losing Flavour, Salt vs Seasoning and How Long Do Spices Last? If you are building the shelf from scratch, the No-Fuss Kitchen Starter collects our everyday essentials in one box, with every ingredients list one click away before you buy. Orders over £35 ship free across the UK with Royal Mail.
