blog - Queen Bee's Kitchen

Making your own flavored salts is simple, fun and can arm your pantry with easy to grab splashes of flavor. Having recently assembled a veggie platter for a party my sister was having, I was left with a pretty good size pile of the leaves from the tops of the celery stalks after I was done with all of the cleaning and chopping. I was not planning on making anything that week that I could use them in and did not want to just throw all of that flavor away, so I decided to try making some flavored salt. I have made basil salt in the past so I figured this would be just as easy and tasty – it was! Here is how you can make it:

Pre-heat the oven to 300 degrees.
Rinse the celery leaves, blot with a towel and then air dry; get as much water off as possible.
Line a baking sheet with the leaves and place the pan(s) in the oven for 8-10 minutes – until the leaves are crispy, but not brown.
After the leaves have cooled, place in a bowl and crumble with your fingers. You optimally want tiny leaf-like looking pieces, so don’t crumble so much that they turn into dust. Take out any overly large pieces or pieces that just won’t seem to crumble.
Add in your salt. Use approximately 2 parts salt, to one part celery leaves. Then gently, using your fingertips, mix the salt into the celery leaves. You want the pieces to be bigger so you can crumble the salt and celery leaves together when you are ready to use them – it will combine the flavors beautifully ans realease the flavor from the celerey leaves.
Store the salt in an airtight container or glass jar with a seal.

If you have a lot of leaves, use two trays so they are not too crowded – they will dry more evenly this way. And it also helps, if you have a lot of leaves, to place the smaller leaves on one pan and the larger on another; that way you can take out the smaller leaves first so they don’t over cook. I used a Murray River Flake Salt, the large flaky salt crystals worked well with the celery flakes – so if you can, try to get your hands on some flaky salt. You can enjoy this salt on a variety of things: chicken, eggs, sprinkled on top of soup, vegetables – absolutely delicious on corn-on-the-cob! Enjoy!

These colorful carrots that come in pale yellow, yellow, red, and purple are usually referred to as Rainbow Crunch Carrots. While many of these colors may seem unusual for us, the very first carrots that were grown in Afghanistan nearly 1,000 years ago were purple and yellow, not orange. They did not become orange until sometime in the 1500’s when Dutch carrot growers cross-bred pale yellow carrots with red carrots in honor of the House of Orange, the Dutch Royal Family.¹ While they all have the basic carrot taste and texture, each color has its own slightly unique taste. In comparison to your run-of-the mill orange carrot the pale yellow and yellow have a milder flavor, while in contrast the purple has an earthier flavor and the red has a very sweet, almost sweet potato-“ish” flavor and a slightly softer texture as well. A quick way to bring out these simple, yet interesting flavors is as easy as oven-roasting the carrots with some olive oil, salt and pepper for about 25 minutes at 400°. When cooked together the flavors of each of the brightly colored beauties plays off of each other to create a tasty, unique, and fun dish. Enjoy.

Fun Food Facts: Carrots!

● Did you know that there is a Carrot Museum in the United Kingdom? Ok it’s a virtual museum, but still…

● Red carrots have extra lycopene, which is also found in tomatoes and is believed to lower blood pressure and help to reduce the risk of some cancers.²

● China is the world’s top carrot producer.²

● The World’s Heaviest Carrot recorded in 1998 was 18.985 lbs!³ See World Record page here

Links:

http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/index.html

http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/record.html

Sources

1 – http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/25-facts-about-carrots.html

2- http://www.slashfood.com/2006/10/05/brighten-up-with-rainbow-carrots/

3- http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/index.html