Cooking with Gin— Gin Salt

Tasty, I promise.

I guess you’re not really cooking with the gin, but this gin salt will certainly make your dishes more delicious, your pets better behaved and your life, generally, much better.

More realistically, I guess, this salt would make a killer addition to a gin-margarita. Really love gin? Find a way to take the gin jam recipe from earlier, put it in a gin cocktail with the gin infused salt. Triple gin action.

Ingredients:

  • A lot of salt. Like a canister. 3 cups maybe? The salary of a Roman solider for a week.
  • At least a cup of gin
  • Juniper berries, if you’re feeling adventurous or just can’t get enough of that fresh pine flavor.
  • Flat sheet pan
  • A place to let the pan sit
  • Bowl and spoon for mixing
  • Food processor or spice grinder or a lot of elbow grease

Steps:

Maybe two weeks pay, even.

  •  Throw some salt into the bowl. Like, a week’s paycheck for a Roman soldier’s worth.
  • Crush the juniper berries lightly. I use the flat side of the knife. You probably shouldn’t copy me because I live dangerously in the kitchen. The flat bottom of a bowl would also work.
  • Throw those juniper berries into the salt mixture.
  • Add some gin, maybe a quarter cup at a time. Keep adding gin until the salt is the consistency of wet sand that’s not good enough for sand castle making, but isn’t totally dry. It shouldn’t be soupy, it should almost be moldable.
  • Spread the salt out on the pan. Let it dry. I’d advise against cooking this in the oven at a low temp – you want to preserve the aromatics and flavor of the gin. Let it sit overnight and it should be plenty dry in the morning.
  • Plop that salt into your processor (or whatever) and grind it up. With enough elbow grease, you might be able to do this by hand with a mortar/pestle situation, but if you have the processor, I’d use that. Advice: don’t use a regular blender unless you know it can grind rocky salt.
  • Done! You now have some fine juniper flavored salt. Put this on popcorn (if you don’t feel like making the full recipe of gin popcorn), add it to chicken or fish, make gin-margaritas, …anything you do with salt, really.

This salt would be best for finishing – something you add after the main cooking is over. You’ll infuse the dish with the aromatics of the gin of your choice. This is an easy and fun way to use gin! Besides drinking it, of course.