Chile Salt

Chile Salt

I decided to try my hand at making my own Chile Salt. Now, it needs to be repeated that I like spicy food. Oddly enough, I don’t care for hot temperature foods. I’ll regularly make something to eat, go do something in some other room, and come back many minutes later to eat my food once it’s cooled down. But, spicy hot, I’m all over it! Recently, my husband jokingly asked me if I was capable of making anything that wasn’t spicy. So, when I saw spicy chile salt, yep, that just called out to me.

Once the ingredients are completely dry, the flavored salts will pretty much keep at room temperature in an airtight jar indefinitely.

How will you use your Chile Salt? You could rim the glass of a bloody Mary or a margarita. Sprinkle it over corn on the cob. Over avocados for a simple quick guacamole. Simply on chicken, steak, shrimp, or tofu (either before cooking or as a finishing salt). Some people like chile on their fruit… guavas, watermelon, pineapple. Edamame. Any veggie. Over toasted nuts. On eggs at breakfast time. On a juicy sliced tomato with a basil salt… yum!

I’ve given a recipe for this lovely chile salt, but don’t let that limit your imagination and creativity for flavored salts. Here are some grand ideas that I could totally lose a day in the kitchen over. The only thing stopping me from making all these flavors, is that I don’t really use that much salt around here. The idea of high blood pressure and high sodium scares me. But, you could also look at it as a lower sodium salt. I mean, if you have a teaspoon of salt vs. a teaspoon of flavored salt, there’s going to be less sodium in the flavored salt.

Here are some other flavor ideas: lemon (or lemon-pepper), lime, orange, rosemary, parsley, sun-dried tomato, mushroom, garlic, onion, vanilla, the possibilities are pretty endless. Try different colors of chiles, or make one red batch (I used a bright red jalapeno for this batch) and one green batch and give both as Christmas gifts. Some of these you could use already dried items, like dried wild mushrooms blended with salt sounds fab to me! For that matter, use some dried garlic from the spice aisle and blend it with salt – homemade garlic salt!

Chile salt spread out and ready to be dried

This is the Chile Salt before it’s been dried. You could leave it at this stage, and keep it in the fridge.

Do you like chiles, salt, and homemade spices? Check out some of my related posts:

Homemade Chile Powder

The Good, the bad, and the salty (research and information into salt)

Roasted Lemon Peel Powder

Chile Salt Recipe

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Chile Salt

Author Debi

Ingredients

• 1 fresh bright red chile seeded and coarsely chopped
• 1 cup coarse Kosher salt

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 200° F with rack in middle. Line a large baking sheet with a nonstick liner, like a Silpat.
2. Place chile and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until well incorporated. Spread chile salt on the Silpat lined baking sheet. Dry the chile salt in the oven for 30 minutes, stirring after 10 minutes. Without removing the chile salt from the oven, turn the oven off and allow salt to dry overnight in the warm oven.
3. The next day, carefully remove the dried chile salt from the oven, and break up any clumps. Using a funnel, pour salt into pretty jars.

Recipe Notes

Makes 1 cup