Celery Salt

Last night while unloading the celery from the dehydrator, it seemed like a good time to do a little experiment making celery salt. When I was refreshing my memory on dehydrating the celery, I had seen several comments on making celery salt from the dried celery. I wanted to see how it would turn out.

To make celery salt this way, you combine ground celery with salt. Doh, eh? My grinder takes 3 tablespoons of "spice" as a maximum to grind well. That ended up being about 1 tray from the dehydrator. I ground that to a fine powder and added 1/2 teaspoon salt.

In the top photo, you can see how much celery was on one dehydrator tray. The little pile of celery on the left is three tablespoons. You can see my grinder with three tablespoonsful in it.

The end result was far different from store-bought celery salt. First, the color was much lighter.  Second, it was a finer grind. Third, I controlled the salt content; thus, it was far less salty. Fourth, it didn't have as much celery flavor.

In the bottom photo, the spoon on the right is a commercial celery salt. The spoon on the left and the bowl contain my ground dried celery

I was unhappy with losing the robust celery flavor and wonder if using some celery seed with it would impart more celery flavor. I actually liked the lighter color. I'm unsure about the more powdery texture and will have to wait until I use it to decide if that matters.

If anyone with experience in doing this would like to jump in with their opinions, please feel free to comment below.  If you're viewing this on the home page, you can comment by clicking on the word "comment" where it shows how many there are. If you click on the title of the blog post, you will go to a page with only this post, and there is a link to click on to "Post a Comment."

Dehydrating Celery

Since celery was at such a good price during Thanksgiving, I took the opportunity to stock up on it for my dried foods storage. There are as many different ways to dehydrate celery on the internet as there are to cook chili.

While doing this batch, I saw quite a few websites that talked about grinding the celery and mixing with salt to make celery salt. That's something I'd like to try in the future. I need to get a new grinder for spices before I can, though.


Edited 12/18/11 to add permalink to celery salt post:
http://jolagayle.blogspot.com/2011/12/celery-salt.html

After trying a few different methods, this is the one I've settled on as liking the best. It gives the best color, although it takes a longer amount of time.

1. Wash celery well.
2. Cut off leaves and wide root ends
3. Slice celery into 1/4" slices (crosswise)*
4. Put slices into bowl of cold water if processing a lot.**
5. Just before loading dehydrator, soak celery in 6 cups of water with 1 tablespoon of baking soda for 5 minutes.***
6. Drain and load dehydrator trays.
7. Dry at 110°F  until celery breaks easily, 16-18 hours. 

*This is the size with which I like to cook. I've seen directions for 1" slices and have considered doing that for putting under roasting meats; however, I've not done it so far.

**How much you process depends on the size of the celery, your stamina and dehydrator. It took 3 bunches of medium celery to fill 6 trays for my Nesco dehydrator.

***Do this in batches if you don't have a huge bowl.