Hi Debbie, welcome -

Flavoured Salt......from his book "Jamie's Kitchen".

A flavoured salt is one of the simplest and most basic ways of finishing a dish - it's so easy and tasty, yet hardly anyone does it.  When I was growing up, celery salt seemed very uninspiring, but actually sprinkled over a tomato salad or used to season a beef stew it was gorgeous.  Flavoured salts can actually give some really  fragrant and shocking results to your palate.  Things like Jasmine tea salt have traditionally been used in Japanese and Chinese cooking for flavouring things like tempura.  Even a simple portion of chips/French fries can be taken in a different direction by sprinkling them with flavoured salt - using, for example, Mexican or English herbs to flavour.

There's nothing better than trying things out for yourself, but if you start off with a good mineral salt which is not too strong, and fresh ingredients, you'll get amazing results.  Garlic and citrus, and soft herbs like coriander, mint and basil, will gradually lose the real flavour qualities you are after, i.e. the aroma and freshness, so they are best made to order- but they only take a few seconds, so that's cool.  I prefer to make them as I need them, or a day in advance, so that they'll taste amazing, but if you want to make them ahead of time they'll happily sit on the shelf  for months in an airtight container, though they won't be quite as vibrant.

Get your chosen flavours together and bash them up in a pestle and mortar until you have a powder or pulp  If you are using ginger, lemongrass or fresh chillies, these need to be sliced and warmed in the oven before pounding to dry them out, otherwise they will make the salt wet.
Add 3 times their weight in salt, pound together and then either leave the mixture coarse or pass it through a sieve.  You can also use a food processor.
The moisture in your flavouring will probably cause your salt to dry into a block after a day or two which is fine, because you can just bash it up when you need it..  Alternatively, once the salt has been flavoured you can lay it out on a tray and put in in the oven at its lowest temperature overnight.  Doing this means that the salt will stay granular.

Feel free to make up your own combination of flavours, or try one of the five I've suggested.  As long as the combination works, these salts can complement just about anything - meats, vegetables, fish, savoury pastires....you name it.

Here are a few of my favourite flavourings for salt.

jasmine tea
fennel seed lemon zest and vanilla
lavender rosemary and thyme
lime zest lemongrass chilli and ginger
Szechuan peppercorns chilli and ginger

Cheers!

Did you know you can now buy apple wood and / or maple wood smoked sea salt
also vanilla sea salt and a chili salt?

I found them on ebay, really scrummy 

For additional salt flavors and recipe ideas, check the salts that I hand-craft using Fleur de Sel from the Re Island of France.

www.secretsalts.com

Hi Bengalcat

It would be great to hear more about how you hand craft the salt?

Cheers

Danny