Homemade Rosemary Salt
with
John Mitzewich
Making your own rosemary salt is an easy and inexpensive way to add a very versatile spice to your pantry. Rosemary salt is especially complimentary on roasted meats, and you can package it creatively as a great gift for the foodie in your family.
Transcript: Homemade Rosemary Salt
Hi, I'm Chef John Mitzewich for About.com. Today I'm going to show you how to make homemade rosemary salt. It's a great thing to have in the pantry and a wonderful gift idea. First of all is making your own gifts being cheap, no it's being "creative" so keep that in mind.Rosemary Salt Ingredients
We need 3 cups of kosher salt, which is that flake style salt. It has a larger grain than regular table salt. There is a little close-up for you. We also need 1 cup of coarse salt, that's what we going to use to grind the rosemary. See how big that is, you can find them both in the store. So we need 1 cup of coarse and 3 cups of regular. There is 1 cup of rosemary leaves.Strip the Rosemary Leaves
Now, how to strip rosemary. Hey, stop giggling. Stripping rosemary is very easy, see how the rosemary grows in this direction? We're going to pull our fingers down the stem in the opposite direction, against the grain, and all those leaves will strip off.Grind the Rosemary and Salt
Add your cup of rosemary to a food processor, and the cup of coarse salt. We're going to pulse on and off, a few seconds at a time just to get it going. Once it starts to kind of come together you can pulse it longer, like 5 or 6 seconds at a time.Once you see that rosemary get smaller and start to integrate, then you can leave in on for longer periods, and then you can just leave it on. Now be careful, we don't want a powder here. What we want is for the coarse salt and the rosemary to be the same size as the kosher salt. And that's exactly what I have right there.
So once that happens, add that mixture to the 3 cups of plain kosher salt, mix it up and you're done.
Package the Rosemary Salt
This makes such a great gift. How easy was that? Remember, you're not cheap, you're creative. Not to mention, even if you don't give this as a gift, which you should, since it saves you a lot of money, this is great for the pantry. It goes on so many things. Here are some creative ways to package it.They sell these magnetic spice containers with the see through top. Very cool, you can put it in that. They also sell these stainless steel shakers, which I really like. You can spoon it in. That makes a great gift, wrap it up and throw a bow on it. One thing, make sure the holes are large enough for the salt to fit though, otherwise its turns into a gag gift.
And there you go. There are your 3 ways; one for you, one for Aunt Betty, and one for Uncle Joe. They are going to love it. It feels like a real gift, so when they open it, they are like "oh, wow this feels like jewelry... oh cool. I got salt." But, no, they are going to love it. I hope you give it a try. Enjoy.
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