September 13, 2011
Homemade Celery Salt
When I read Heidi's July post about her homemade celery salt, I bookmarked it immediately, murmuring to myself how simple and beautiful and clever the idea was.
While I am an enthusiastic consumer of celery root, I don't cook with celery stalks much, and only ever buy it in small quantities to flavor stock. Still, in those cases, I am faced with a fair amount of celery leaves that come with the stalks. I usually just add those to the stockpot along with everything else, but I much, much prefer the idea of turning them into something new altogether.
And it's precisely what Heidi suggests: wash those leaves, dry them until crisp, and crumble them with salt to produce an incredibly fragrant condiment* that you can then use to season eggs and salads (especially tomato or potato salads, or in this herbed couscous salad), to flavor bread (I've made really good little dinner rolls with it), to sprinkle as a finishing salt on soups, bean or lentil stews, to season a tomato or carrot juice... the list is endless.
Being thrifty is one of the traits I'm most looking to develop as a person in general and a cook in particular, and this works doubly in that direction: not only does it make use of the celery leaves one might otherwise discard, but in my take on Heidi's recipe, I'm also suggesting you dry the leaves in the oven while you preheat it for something else, to make the most of the energy it expends.
Such optimization is something I always try to do: whenever I turn on the oven I ask myself whether I have any seeds, nuts, or spices that need toasting, or lemon peel that needs roasting.
Another bonus of this celery salt recipe is that it will also lead you on the track to the crispest celery stalks available, since the health and vibrancy of the leaves are an unmistakable sign of freshness. (The same is true of any vegetable that comes with the leaves still attached: radishes, carrots, kohlrabi, beets, etc.)
Do you make flavored salts yourself? Any favorites you want to tell us about?
* The celery salt you can buy at the store is in fact made by grinding celery seeds with salt, so the texture is different, but the flavor is very similar.
Homemade Celery Salt
- celery leaves plucked from a bunch of celery stalks
- sea salt of your choice (I use unrefined grey salt from Guérande)
Pick the leaves from the celery stalks, keeping only the ones that look healthy and green, discarding the limp and yellowing ones. Rinse and dry well, patting them with a clean dish towel.
Arrange the leaves without crowding on one or several baking sheets, depending on how much you have, and slip into the oven while you're preheating it for another purpose (I was about to bake a tomato tart myself).
Keep an eye on the leaves and remove them from the oven when they're crisp and dried, but not quite browning yet, 5 to 10 minutes. Let cool completely.
Transfer the leaves to a large bowl and crumble them with your (clean) fingers, as finely or coarsely as you prefer. There will be bits that resist crumbling, mostly the tough spines of the bigger leaves; discard those.
Measure the volume of crumbled celery leaves you've obtained, and combine with one to one and a half times the volume of salt.
Transfer to a jar with a tight lid for keeping.
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Permalink | Posted by in Recipe Inside! - Spices & Condiments
Cooking/baking time: 10 min
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Such a great idea! Is that what the celery salt that you buy from the store is made of?
If you check the bottom of the post, I've included a note about store-bought celery salt and how it's made!
Yes, I made it with fresh espelette we bought last year in Paris.
I love thrifty, and I love how fresh celery tastes. I'll be this salt is so fragrant! Eager to try your recipe, Clotilde!
Fergus Henderson has a recipe in "The Whole Beast" for celery salt that uses celery root.
It's very tasty, though it made more celery salt than I could possibly use.
Sounds intriguing, I'll check it out! Perhaps the extra celery salt can be given away as a food/host(ess) gift?
I like to make oregano-lime and rosemary-lemon salt...planning to do sundried tomato-basil next...followed by this celery salt once I get some celery in my CSA box!
I, too, should like to be thrifty. However, I also like fancy foodstuffs. It's a conflict :)
We use sichuan pepper salt a lot at my work. Our favourite thing at the moment is a slice of kiwifruit drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sichuan pepper salt. Sounds a bit peculiar but it is unbelievably tasty and refreshing.
That sounds incredible, I must try this asap!
But, Clotilde, celery leaves are for Bloody Mary!
Celery salt is, too! :)
Seriously brilliant!
I've never made flavoured salts before but its def on my to do list. I'd love to play with the salty sweet and maybe do it that way. Goo in theory though haha
Great idea! Love celery so I'll try it soon! Re other salt mixes... I haven't made any myself but I have a Jamie Oliver chile salt mill! Chile flakes w/ coarse salt, that should be fairly straightforward to make...
c'est superbe !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love this! Thank you for sharing. I have a line of salt boxes in my kitchen with different blends I play with. One has dried fresh dill and salt. One has dried ground peanut salt. One has esplette salt. One has lemon rind salt. One a melange of ground pink green black peppers salt. So I am going to add yours....:))
I also think it is important to be thrifty and I love these kinds of tips to help. I am lookig forward to making celery salt.
What a great idea! I very much like spiced salts and making celery salt by yourself sounds like a lot of fun.
I've made Fergus Henderson's celery salt as well - after the third celery root in the panier bio, I started looking for other things to do with it ;) - and we love it! So much so that we no longer buy the stuff from the store, and wait for celeriac season to start so we can make more! I'm also a big fan of vanilla salt, which I make by scraping vanilla bean into fleur de sel.
I love that idea. WE use a lot of celery seed in things and I think husband will like this as well.
WE do make porcini salt. Run some dried porcini through a food processor or Thermomix until fine and mix with kosher salt. Adds umami to everything!
Hi Clotilde,
I made flavoured salts with matcha tea, red peppercorns, star anise, and turmeric.
The matcha salt is really great with soft-boiled eggs. I use the peppercorn salts often with red meat.
Can't wait to try celery salts. Thanks!
I like celery, but whenever I buy it (rarely), I never end up using it all quickly enough. The leaves are great in stuffing, but since the purchase of celery rarely coincides with making stuffing, this will be a great way to use, and store, the leaves! I'm excited to try.
I was wondering - if I dry the leaves in the oven while it's preheating, is it possible that the oven will get too warm too fast? I have a stove with a double oven - one is a nice small one that I used for most things. And it heats up very quickly. It will reach 350F well within the 10 minute time frame, which I am afraid will be too much for the leaves...
Yes, you definitely have to adjust the process to your own oven and how fast it heats up. Keep a close eye on them, and see how they fare.
I just had a recipe call for this - what an incredibly useful tip.
A salt recipe from my sister-in-law:
6-10 peeled garlic cloves
1 T peppercorns
1 bunch of each, fresh, de-stemmed:
rosemary
thyme
oregano
savory
marjoram
or other herbs of your choice
Chop all in food processor, mix in bowl with 1 kg coarse sea salt. Use with salt grinder. Store in jar; keeps well at room temperature because of the salt.
Makes a very good gift.
Genius! It just makes me wonder of all the salt possibilities out there!! Great review. xo
I've been making lemon zest salt ever since reading about it in Patricia Wells' cookbook Salad as Meal. Love it! I must try celery salt. I usually freeze celery leaves to use later in soups. No reason I can't save some to dry.
I recently experimented with turning oven-dried tomato skins into a powder.
Celery salt is one of our favorite ingredients! Thanks for this recipe!
I like to make lemon salt or lemon sugar to give away as gifts for the holidays. For the lemon salt, I use Maldon sea salt, because I like the way the stickiness of the lemon zest coats the big flakes. It's divine!
These should be words to live by:
"whenever I turn on the oven I ask myself whether I have any seeds, nuts, or spices that need toasting, or lemon peel that needs roasting."
Reminds me that we should be thinking as conservationists all the time, optimizing resources and treating them as precious commodities!
Wow!!! Amaazing! Love your blog! xoxo
Cilantro salt to rim the glass of a scallop margarita. I like the celery salt idea, i will cure some fish with it one day thanks for the inspiration
This looks amazingly easy and delicious! Can't wait to try it!
Great !!! Not ONE mention in the recipe or the 34 comments of the temperature to work with ?? Do all of you just guess and hope for good results ?? How long - other than looking for color so as not to burn the leaves ??
Heidi's recipe states 5 minutes at 180°C / 350°F, but because I suggest using the oven while it's preheating for something else, the temperature setting is not a good indicator -- the color and aspect of the leaves are.
Enjoyed reading all the posts, great ideas. I've used Lovage (herb) for years in soups and stews, dry the leaves in dehydratator, and use leaves in with salt for a wonderful celery flavor. Actually strong than the celery leaves so you don't need as much to flavor soups, eggs, etc.
This looks great to use in a bloody mary! I just did a bacon infused vodka and will have to add this to my list. Thanks for posting!
Hi there,Perhaps it's weird, but I love putting lemon pepper or celery salt on cottage cheese (on the subject of your most recent post: it's a perfect lunch for one, if you put it in a tomato!)
Thanks for the recipe,
Katherine
Not weird at all.
I did it as a kid and I still use celery salt on cottage cheese on my warm bagel.YUMM
This is a great idea that I must try out. My usual salt mix is sage, parsley, thyme and rosemary. It's great for Mediterranean recipes.
What a great idea! I recently I made a turkey gravy with celery flavorings. I used dried celery seeds. Wish I had your recipe during that time, it would have been great!
Hi and thank you! I will make this in a little while so I can dry the leaves while I preheat my oven for the bread I am making.
Reading the comments reminded me of the salted herbs my mom, my grandmother, and I used to make. I'll start again now! :-)
Finely cut any herb leftover, including parsley, celery leaves, chives, etc. - no need to dry them.
Use a jar with a tight lid. Start with a layer of herbs and alternate with a layer of salt to cover the herbs, etc. You don't have to fill the jar in one shot - just add to it as you have leftover herbs.
Store in the refrigerator... The salt acts as a preservative so it keeps.
Excellent for making broth, adding to soups, to roasts, roasted veggies, etc.
If you find them too salty, you can rinse them before using them, then try to add less salt in the future. :-)
What an interesting technique -- I'll give it a try, thanks!