Featuring a not-so-common herb, this summer savory garlic salt is absolutely delicious sprinkled on fresh sliced tomatoes or lightly steamed green beans.
My friend Teri religiously listens to The Splendid Table on NPR radio. Knowing I’m always looking for fun and easy recipes using the fresh herbs we find in our farm share box, she recommended a Splendid Table broadcast about Sally Schneider’s Tuscan Herb Salt. This summer savory garlic salt is a riff on Ms. Schneider’s Tuscan herb salt.
Summer savory garlic salt is super easy to make. You pulse the garlic in a food processor, and then mix in the salt and fresh summer savory herbs. Transfer onto a baking sheet and let dry a few days in open air. Use it to season vegetables, eggs, pasta, or whatever you want. Follow this easy method to make any flavor herb salt you wish.
A little bit about salt that you’ll find in my pantry:
- I use Kosher Flake Real Salt. For its sweet taste (as opposed to bitter), its slight pink color, and calico flecks of brown and grey from the extra minerals, Real Salt is the best! Real Salt is mined in Redmond Utah, in the center of this state. It comes to us unrefined, with more than 60 trace minerals intact. It is not processed by heat nor does it come from a huge industrial plant that makes sodium chloride mainly for fertilizer and de-icing.
- I have some specialty“ finishing” salts too. Like Australian Murray River flake salt, which is fantastic on fresh vegetables. To dress up potatoes and eggs, I like to sprinkle them with black truffle salt.
- Is all salt–table salt, kosher salt, flake salt, rock salt and sea salt nothing more than NaCl, sodium chloride? Technically and chemically yes, salt is salt, but I’d like to convince you that when it comes to seasoning with, and enjoying it, there is much more to salt.
Learn more about salt:
- In his beautifully illustrated book, Salted: A Manifesto on the World’s Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes (affiliate link), Bitterman explains how and why and to appreciate salt’s diversity, especially when it comes to the kitchen. He details the craft and history of salt, with sidebars about our sense of taste, and the science of salt. He discusses salt’s relationship to our body, and the iodization of salt.
- Years ago I was lucky to attend a salt tasting workshop with “selmelier”Mark Bitterman. I learned how geography, environment (terroir), and production methods affect salt’s crystal shape, its flavor, color, and mineral makeup. We sampled more than 20 salts, including a Japanese flaked salt that’s evaporated over fire. In miniscule pinches, We got to try a fine delicate grey salt skimmed from the sea and then evaporated by the sun, and a pink rock salt mined in Pakistan.
- Learn for yourself. Choose a few of the salts suggested in Bitterman’s book and try them on something simple, like potatoes.
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Summer Savory and Garlic Salt
Ingredients
- 1 clove garlic , peeled
- 2 teaspoons plus 4 teaspoons larger flake salt (like kosher)
- ½ cup fresh summer savory leaves
Instructions
- Drop the garlic and the first 2 teaspoons of the salt into the work bowl of a food processor while the food processor is running. Process until the garlic is uniformly chopped.
- Add the summer savory leaves and pulse until the leaves are well chopped.
- Transfer to a baking sheet and mix in the remaining salt.
- Let the pan sit out for a few days until the herbs and garlic are obviously dry.
- Store in a jar.
Lovely. You know, I really didn’t know this about salt until fairly recently. I have fallen in love with a red salt from Hawaii that someone brought to me. It has a way of making the other flavors pop. Great recipe. · 21 August, 2012
I raise fresh herbs on my tiny farm, and this recipe gives me lots of ideas for lovely things to make with them! In fact I have some winter savory right now that I’m going to make into an herbal/garlic salt. Love Redmond salts, too! · 21 February, 2022
Thank you Amy. I’m so glad you found this recipe to give you ideas! It’s one of those obscure ones on my blog that I almost forget is there. · 25 February, 2022
Thanks for this, I have some winter savory that I picked up from a garden centre because I was looking for some “different” herbs but I wasn’t sure what I was going to use it for. This is a great idea that I’ll use for a bunch of different herbs that I have growing now! · 4 June, 2022
Thank you Kendra! Such a great use of all types of herbs. Enjoy! · 6 June, 2022