Garlic Salt may be Magic Dust

How deep you dive into off grid cooking is entirely up to you, but embracing the basics like herbs, spices, and seasonings is an easy step to take. Beyond immersion in the art, making your own garlic salt is a great way to save money compared to buying store-bought garlic salt.

Ingredient Selection and Preparation

Salt

There are a lot of varieties of salt out there. One of my favorites is a simple coarse kosher salt. The iodine and anti-caking agents in table salt don’t have much taste, but they do have some taste. Another reason I prefer coarse kosher salt is the size of the crystals and flakes. Table salt has a very fine grain and there is a lot more salt in just a pinch than with the kosher salt. This directly translates to the table salt making it really easy to over salt your dishes.

So what’s the deal with it being kosher salt? Has a rabbi blessed it to literally make it saltbrosia, the salt of the gods? Possibly. The real source of the name is that the size and shape of the salt flakes make it ideal for drawing blood out of meats. Kosher food restrictions prohibit the consumption of blood. So Kosher salts are used in the preparation of kosher meats.

Other types of salt that you can use are sea salt, pink Himalayan salt, Redmond Real Salt, or yes, even plain old table salt. Just keep in mind, the quality of your salt will directly impact the quality of your garlic salt.

Granulated Garlic

Granulated Garlic. Not garlic powder, not minced garlic, but granulated garlic. I prefer granulated garlic in most of my seasoning mixes. Granulated garlic is less likely to clump than garlic powder is. It mixes more evenly with other spices, and doesn’t release its flavor as rapidly as garlic powders.

If you’ve never looked at the two spices next to each other here’s a quick physical description of the differences. The main difference is texture. Both are made from dehydrated garlic. Garlic powder is going to resemble flour in its texture and granulated garlic is going to resemble corn meal.

While you can buy your granulated garlic at the store and stock your deep pantry with it, why not make your own? To learn the ins and outs of making granulated garlic shock out our recipe for that.

Granulated Sugar

The reality is you can probably leave this out. Sugar is in the recipe for a couple of reasons: The first is it’s a flavor enhancer. The second it also acts as an anti-caking agent to help keep your seasoning from clumping up. So, use whatever kind of sugar you want. The final choice really doesn’t matter.

Dried Parsley Flakes

You can make your own dried parsley or buy it at the store. Around here we grow our own Italian Flat Parsley, specifically Giant of Italy variety. I then dehydrate it in my solar herb drier. Every now and then Michigan gets some cloudy and high humidity days. When we get some of these I’ll go back on grid for my food preparation and preservation and use my good old Nesco GardenMaster dehydrator.