Spice Up You Life With Homemade Sea Salt

To make homemade sea salt, just take seawater from a clean source. Try beaches before swimmers arrive or try before you chum it for bait.  Then run it through a fine sieve or clean cheese cloth or use both to catch sand and grit. If you're really particular, you can run sea water through a Brita filter since it won't remove the sea salt. After you filter your seawater, then pour it into a shallow tempered glass baking dish or bowl.

Then choose your evaporation method. You can place your baking dish in an oven at its lowest setting for two or three days or put it on a super sunny window sill for a few weeks. Or you can put it outside on a roof  or yards. Just watch out for birds and soot.

Once the edges are dry and chunky, lightly scrape them from your baking dish to remove and break up the bigger pieces. Then just store your salt in an airtight container. To make your salt more zesty, then try these two recipes:

Lemon Salt 

You'll need 1/2 cup of sea salt, 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice and the zest of one lemon. To start, zest one lemon into the salt. Then add the freshly squeezed lemon juice to the salt. Then spread out your mixture onto a flat, nonreactive heat proof tray. Then place your tray in a window on a sunny day, or on top of the oven or in a dehydrator. It's ready to use when it's completely dry.

Smoked Sea Salt      

For this recipe you'll need 2 cups of apple wood chips and 2 cups of sea salt. First, soak the apple wood chips  in cold water for 1 hour then drain.

Next, prepare  a grill for indirect grilling by putting all the hot coals to one side and leaving a cool side where you can work. Place the applewood chips on the hot coals and adjust the vent to medium heat. ( about 350 F).  Spread the salt in an aluminum foil pie or baking pan. Then place the foil pan on cool area of the grate away from the fire.   

Smoke the salt for at least an hour then remove from the heat.  Next, cool the salt to room temperature and then put it into an airtight container. It will then keep indefinitely.