Orange Citrus Salt

This Orange Citrus Salt is easy to prepare and tastes great sprinkled over chicken, fish, dips, and roasted vegetables.

I hadn’t done any preserving in a while so when a friend told me about the Food in Jars mastery challenge, I decided this would be a great way for me to jump back into the canning scene.  I missed the January challenge due to my schedule, so I’m hopping on board with the February salt preserving challenge.

The whole idea behind this yearlong challenge is to help participants expand their skills while creating something that we can use. That sounded like a reasonable goal to me.

Several years ago, I participated in the Tigress Can Jam.  We learned how to can or pickle a different fruit or vegetable each month. That was a rewarding experience and helped me to break out of the fruit-only canning that I had done up to that point. I’m looking forward to participating in the Food in Jars Mastery challenge each month (when possible) to master some other preserving techniques.

For this month’s salt-preserving challenge, we had the choice of using different salt-preserving techniques. I chose to make citrus salt because I had a bunch of oranges and salt and this seemed like the logical path to take. Plus, it’s really easy.

Just zest a bunch of oranges or whatever citrus you have on hand. Instead of oranges, feel free to use lemons, limes, or grapefruits.

I used a microplane to zest ten oranges while I was watching TV one night which went by fast. Amazing, zesting all of those oranges only yielded about 2/3 cup of zest.

The next step is to mix the citrus zest with an equal amount of coarse or flaky sea salt (I used coarse sea salt). Then you spread the mixture out on a plate or parchment-lined baking sheet and let it air dry for a day or two.  Your house will smell fabulous for the next few days.  I let my orange salt dry for several days on the kitchen table and every time I walked into the kitchen, I got a whiff of citrus. It was very soothing.

After the zest/salt mixture is completely dry, place it in an airtight container and then enjoy it sprinkled over chicken, fish, dips, and roasted vegetables. I’m thinking this citrus salt could also be used in bread by substituting it for regular salt. That’s on my list of projects to try.

 

Happy Preserving!

Cathy