Orange and Lemon Salt

This orange lemon salt blend is a bright and flavorful salt blend that will bring your roast chicken, salad, avocado toast or any meals to life with it’s vibrant salty citrus flavor!

I am not a fan of winter. I don’t like being cold and I don’t like the short days. Luckily, I live in San Diego where we complain how cold we are when the temperature drops below 60ºF, or for me below 70ºF. This is the time of the where I count down ’til spring.

One redeeming quality of the winter months is that it is citrus season! It’s God’s way of bringing some sunshine during these dark and gloomy cold months. Ok, some of you really are in freezing temps.

Luckily living in the southern states, we grow oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruits. I love to oven dry citrus fruits when we have a large bounty of lemons or oranges. They make a wonderful addition to this finishing salt.

Ingredients you need

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• Coarse sea salt: You can also use other coarse salt varieties, like pink salt.
• Assorted dried citrus: I used a combination of dried orange, blood orange, lemon and lime slices. You can keep it simple with just one variety or you can mix it up as you like. You can make it yourself (I have full instructions here on how to oven dry lemon slices.) or buy it.
• Freeze dried ginger: This adds some ZING to the blend! Use freeze dried or dehydrated ginger NOT crystalized ginger. Crystalized ginger is made with sugar and will make your salt blend sweet. If you cannot find dried ginger, you can add ¼ to ½ teaspoon of powdered ginger, depending on how much ginger flavor you want in your salt mix.
• Green peppercorns: This is the unripe peppercorn and it has a fruity and mild peppery flavor. You can also use pink peppercorns or regular black varieties.
• Dried rose petals: Rose petals offers color and very mild aroma. Rosewater, offers more aroma.

Step-by-step directions

1. Finely chop citrus slices and put in a small bowl.
2. Add sea salt, ginger, peppercorns and crushed rose petals and stir to combine.
3. Store in an air tight bottle and let ingredients infuse their flavors together until ready to use, using a salt grinder.

What are green peppercorns?

So what’s the deal with green peppercorns? Honestly I didn’t know green peppercorns existed until I learned that they are just unripe peppercorns.

How do all these different peppercorns taste? Here is low down:

• Black peppercorns – the most common variety. The dried fruit of a flowering pepper vine that are sometimes cooked. Has a strong pungent flavor.
• White peppercorns – black peppercorns that are soaked in water to remove the outer skin. They taste the same as black peppercorns, but less pungent.
• Pink peppercorns – taste similar to the black peppercorn, but is a little more mild with a touch of sweetness.
• Green peppercorns – the unripe peppercorn that has a fruity and mild peppery flavor

Expert tips and recipe FAQs

This citrus salt was inspired from what I found at the Spice and Tea Exchange when I was in Orlando, Florida. I was visiting an olive oil shop and the owners were buying my olive oil cookbook to sell in their store.

I saw their beautiful Florida sunshine salt blend and brought one home with me. I fell in love with this salt and decided to recreate it at home.

Some people may think that drying out your citrus slices is too much work. Honestly, it’s super easy and you don’t need a dehydrator. You simply slice up your oranges, lemons, limes or whatever citrus fruits into thin slices and dry them in the oven at a low temperature.

You could use grated or chopped zest from the citrus fruits to make this citrus salt. But you do have to dry them out completely before using them in a salt grinder. Fresh zest is wet and it will plug up your grinder if you try to pass it through.

Also, you won’t have as much flavor as you would if you use dried fruits because the whole fruit is used and not just the zest. Seriously what’s not to love about dried citrus? Aren’t they beautiful?

I chose to use orange, lemon, lime and blood orange in my citrus salt blend. You can adjust the citrus flavor any way you want. If you want a more tart salt, add more lemon and less orange. Or just use a combination of lemon and lime. Highlight your own favorite citrus flavors.

How to use this lemon salt

So now you have this gorgeous and amazing orange lemon salt. What are you going to do with it? Well you can gift it to friends and family!

But in terms of food, you might not know how to use this citrus salt. Well, it is perfect on everything – seriously! I would suggest using it as a finishing salt, at the end of cooking, but you can also use it while you cook.

Try it on fish, chicken, steak, salads, sandwiches and eggs. We love eating cucumbers and tomatoes alone, so sprinkle it on your favorite fruits and vegetables and enjoy. This orange salt blend is incredible on avocados, too, whether by themselves or on avocado toast.

And if you like this citrus salt, try my other homemade seasonings. Grind up sea salt with saffron to make some golden and aromatic saffron salt. I also have a fabulous cowboy steak rub that is perfect for any cut of steak, pork ribs or even grilled chicken.

Orange and Lemon Salt

Laura Bashar | Family Spice

This orange and lemon salt blend is a bright and flavorful salt blend that will bring your roast chicken, salad, avocado toast or any meals to life with it's vibrant salty citrus flavor!

4.50 from 4 votes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Additional Time 4 hours hrs

Total Time 4 hours hrs 15 minutes mins

Course Condiments and Sauces

Cuisine American

Servings 144

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 1 cup coarse sea salt
• 1 large dried orange slice
• 1 dried lemon slice
• 1 dried lime slice
• 1 blood orange slice optional
• 1 TBS freeze dried ginger
• 1 TBS green pepper corns
• 1 teaspoon dried rose petals 1 small bud

Get Recipe Ingredients

Instructions

 

• Finely chop citrus slices and put in a small bowl.
• Add sea salt, ginger, peppercorns and crushed rose petals and stir to combine.
• Store in an air tight bottle and let ingredients infuse their flavors together until ready to use.
• Use a salt grinder to grind whenever you want to add the orange lemon salt to your food.

Notes

You can use zest from the oranges, lemons and limes but the zest needs to completely dry as it will be too wet to pass through a salt grinder.

You can also adjust the citrus flavor to your liking. Add more lemons and less orange, if you prefer to make are more tart lemon salt.

The additional 4 hours added to the recipe is to allow for time to oven dry citrus in the oven, if you have any dried citrus on hand.

Nutrition

Serving: 0.5teaspoon

Keyword citrus salt, lemon salt, orange salt

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Nutrition Disclaimer

Nutritional information is an estimate provided to you as a courtesy. You should calculate the actual nutritional information with the products and brands you are using with your preferred nutritional calculator.

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