The Ultimate Salt Seasoning Blend
Salt is the worst-kept secret to good cooking: this essential ingredient can not only add vital nutrients (hello, electrolytes!) to your food, it can also bring out the rich flavors of every other ingredient. With this in mind, a tasty salt seasoning blend makes for a wonderful addition to any kitchen condiment collection.
To elevate your food's taste, you can add a hearty heap of salt seasoning to a marinade or sprinkle in a small pinch of salt seasoning when the meal’s ready. There are a variety of salt seasonings you can buy in any supermarket, but why not make your own? When you make your own salt seasoning blend, you get to choose exactly what kind of salt and other flavorful ingredients you want to use.
One of my favorite salt seasoning blends includes milk thistle seeds and seaweed. This versatile blend is easy to make and even easier to use.
Nutritive Salt Seasoning Blend
A homemade salt seasoning blend should be a staple in every kitchen: this simple recipe adds vital nutrients and rich flavor to every meal it graces.
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoon milk thistle seeds (ground)
- 3 tablespoon kelp (ground)
- 1 1/2 tablespoon alaria or sea lettuce (ground)
- 3/4 tablespoon bladderwrack (ground)
- 9 tablespoons sea salt
- Place all of your ingredients in a bowl and mix them together either with a spoon or your hands.
- Place the mixture in a small jar. Keep the jar in a convenient spot, so you’ll use it often—maybe near the stove or in your spice rack.
Yield: ~1 cup salt seasoning blend
Herbs in Everyday Life
Incorporating herbs into daily life is much easier if you do things that make it work for you—like cooking with herbs and playing with new flavors, for example.
This Nutritive Salt Seasoning is a great way to do this. Preparing the salt seasoning in advance and having it on your spice rack makes it easy to incorporate it into your meals. My cupboard is filled with herbal infused honeys and vinegars, and other spice blends. I have a jar of dried cactus buds, and another full of bay leaves gathered along the coast, and other jars labeled things like “Herbes De Californie” and “Desert Blend” and “Bee Balm Meat Sauce Blend.”
Herbalism: The Art of Immersion and Connection
This daily life integration of herbs helps us to be both immersed in herbalism and connected to the plants. When it comes to herbalism and wildcrafting (or actually, life as a whole), I think this is what people are often looking for: immersion and connection. It's what I was looking for. I wanted to be intimately connected to the world around me. To understand its cycles, not in a cerebral way like someone who studies it as one would study a butterfly pinned to a table, but to understand it in my body.
To not know where I ended and the world around me began. To be a part of my ecosystem, to know the plants and animals around me and how the cycles of life and nature moved. To have a place in the world. I’d been dabbling in herbs and nutrition before that, working in a health food store, gathering the odd plant that I knew to play with, but I started learning the plants around me in earnest, watching them, gathering them, learning from my own experiences.
How to Learn About Herbs
There’s no quick way to becoming an herbalist. No one course that teaches everything or a magic potion or pill. Immersion and connection is a lifelong process, as it's a relationship with a place and with the tools you’re using. As with any relationship, it requires attention, time and effort. There are things that help, however. One of those things is HerbMentor. HerbMentor is LearningHerbs’ online membership site that offers affordable access to foundational herbal classes. You’ll learn all about wildcrafting, culinary herbalism, and remedy making from renowned herbalists like Rosemary Gladstar, K.P. Khalsa, Shereel Washington, and more. Check out HerbMentor here!
Trying this simple salt blend can be part of your learning as well. Let’s take a look at the benefits of each of the ingredients so you can add that information to your herbal knowledge base.
Milk Thistile (Silybum marianum) Benefits
Milk thistle grows most places as an invasive weed, and you can gather the seed pods in the summer. Then spend an excruciating few days getting the seeds out. I won’t lie: it's a pain to process the seeds, but it's worth it. Milk thistle is one of the best liver supporting herbs out there: nourishing and supporting liver function.
Seaweed Benefits
Seaweed is unbelievably rich in minerals, offering thyroid support through its high levels of iodine and selenium. Plus, it tastes good, and it's another way to use herbs daily without having to remember to take a tincture or make an infusion.
Sea Salt Benefits
Sea salt can help support healthy electrolyte balance. Sea salt contains vital nutrients like sodium, potassium, and magnesium. Together, these minerals contribute to healthy fluid balance and muscle function.
Here are some frequently asked questions about sea salt seasonings…
What are other everyday all-purpose seasoning blends I can make?
If you’re looking for a perfect blend for daily seasoning, start by asking yourself what delicious flavors you enjoy the most. Perhaps you love pepper, so you add some black pepper and white pepper to your seasoning salt—a fantastic classic flavor blend!
If you want a little more kick to your favorite seasoning salt, you can add chili powder. If you want the savory flavors of alliums, try adding onion powder to your favorite seasoning. If you want more herbal flavors, try adding dried thyme, oregano, or parsley to your salt. All of these distinct flavors will make a fantastic addition to your salt blend.
Can I give this salt blend as a gift?
Absolutely! I’ve gotten so many glowing reviews for my salt seasonings, so I love to give them as gifts during the holiday season. People will love all of the time and care you put into crafting them a beautiful seasoning they can use in their kitchens.
Does this salt seasoning have artificial flavors in it?
Nope, there are only natural ingredients in this flavor powerhouse.
How do I use a salt seasoning blend?
To enjoy this flavor enhancer, try cooking with it in your daily meals: with eggs, in stir-fries, in salad dressings, in everyday snacks, and more. This salt blend also makes a wonderful fry seasoning.
The Herbal Remedy Vault has all of our printable recipe cards...
