Salarium

If you’ll remember from this roast chicken recipe here I recently discovered that you could grind up some rosemary with some rock salt for a fine tasting rub. I also resolved to figure out if that little technique could be extended to other herbs. And, well, after some careful and edible experiments it turns out it can. Pretty much any herb as long as you keep the herbs and salt in roughly equal portions (Adding further tastes like, say, lemon zest or garlic or some other aromatic works great too just keep it to a part equal to everything else.) and that’s no matter how many herbs you use. Just as long as they’re dry because fresh ones tend to make the salt a little soggy.

I’ve done more than a few like the old standby of parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. But tonight I tried a mix of my own using rosemary, cilantro, and mint. About two parts each of rosemary and cilantro to one part mints. Put them in a food processor along with some coarse salt and grind until everything’s the same size more or less. Brushed some oil onto the chicken so the rub adheres and stuck it in the oven to cook. The end result, say, an hour later was a crispy skinned roast chicken with flavorful meat, of course. But that little touch of mint gave it just the right note of sweetness to go along with the savory juices that a good rub helps to trap in and enhance. Especially when you combine the rub with a flavor-infused oil like the garlic butter I used tonight.

Really, it works well with any roast. Poultry, beef, pork, and anything else you might want to stick into the oven under some high heat. And, since I usually have plenty of rub left over I have some taste-infused salt to sprinkle over, well, anything I think it would taste good on like an omelet or some hash browns the next day (with some leftover chicken, of course).