Spicy salt is my new favorite thing to make with hot peppers. It's an easy recipe for Carolina reapers, ghost peppers, scorpions, as well as milder peppers like habaneros. If you ever find yourself in possession of extremely hot peppers and don't want to make hot sauce, this is an easy, addictive way to use them. Today we'll go over the finer points of making your own.
I have a few friends that like to grow super hot peppers, and in the fall I usually get some when they discover how hot they are. This year it was chocolate Carolina reapers, ghost peppers and fatalii peppers.
I didn't feel like making hot sauce, and after the rave reviews I got from making ramp salt, I thought I'd try the same method with the peppers.
It's one of the easiest recipes you'll ever make, but there's a few important things to consider about the type of peppers and salt to use.
Chef's Tips
Super hot peppers are developed for a high Scoville rating, and not necessarily for flavor, like the Carolina reapers below.
Some places sell spicy salt made with one type of super hot pepper that can be only hot and lack aroma, although ghost peppers have a great balance of heat and fruitiness that's shockingly good. I think the art is to balance heat, aroma and color.
As super hot peppers often lack flavor, blending them with something like fruity habaneros or fatalii peppers adds a great citrus aroma. To adjust the color, you can add a few mild red jalapeno or Fresno peppers.
The infographic below shows different characteristics you might consider. With the vast amount of heirloom hot pepper seeds on the market, there's no end to how creative you can be.
Fermented Hot Pepper Salt
I often ferment super hot peppers by vacuum sealing with 1-2% of their weight in salt when I'm busy so I can work with them on my terms. You can substitute them in the recipe and they work just as well as fresh.
Salt
I like kosher salt or sea salt here. Diamond kosher and Morton kosher will solidify into chunks and need to broken up after drying. Coarse sea salt will stay loose.
Coarse kosher salt and Morton kosher salt are my favorite. If you want to use a fancy salt, coarse French sea salt like sel gris is good too.
How to Make Reaper or Ghost Pepper Salt
You can use fresh or frozen hot peppers. Wearing gloves, remove the stems from each pepper. I like to cut the peppers up with a scissor since a cutting board will need to be thoroughly scrubbed and washed afterward.
Add the salt to the food processor and blend until the peppers are finely ground. It's good to open a window or turn on a fan as the peppers can make you sneeze.
Once the salt and peppers are pureed until you can't see any visible pieces of pepper, spread the salt on a baking sheet lined with parchment.
It will dry naturally at room temperature over the course of a day or two. Using a dehydrator will take a few hours, but you'll want to dry it outside or in the garage.
Once the salt is completely dried, put it in a visibly labeled container. It will last at a very long time, but keeping it refrigerated will hold the aroma and heat the longest.
Be mindful about the consistency of the salt. Larger pieces of chili can get stuck in your throat and take a while to leave. Sift the salt through a flour sifter or a colander if you need. I had to sift the salt pictured below after drying.
How To Use It
Just a pinch of spicy salt will make anything it touches wonderfully hot, including your fingers. Hot pepper salt is much easier to work with than fresh hot peppers, but it's still good to be mindful not to rub your eyes and other sensitive parts of your body.
That said, everyone I've given it to takes a pinch of salt with their fingers to season food, but newcomers and the accident prone can gently dip foods into it like a condiment as demonstrated with the Brussels sprouts below.
As the capsaicin is dispersed into the salt, it's much easier to control the heat than with fresh super hot peppers. As a flavored salt skeptic, I've found it much more useful than I expected. It's also an easy way to build your heat tolerance.
Keep a small jar at the table and add a pinch to whatever you like. That said, it's good to remember capsaicin is very potent in liquid, so be careful adding it soups and broths. I've been putting it on everything for weeks now, here's a few examples:
- Roasted and baked potatoes
- Pizza
- Condiments and spicy sauces
- Marinades and brines
- Sprinkle on meat, fish, chicken and pork at the table
- Vegetables and cooked greens
- Soft cheeses
- Hot chili popcorn
- Spicy margarita salt rim (partial rim of the glass)
Related Posts
Hot Carolina Reaper or Ghost Pepper Salt
Equipment
- 1 Food processor or dehydrator
- 1 Large baking sheet
- 1 latex gloves
- 1 Quart mason jar
- 1 Scissors optional
Ingredients
- 1-2 oz Super hot peppers (~6 peppers) Carolina reapers, scorpion peppers, ghost peppers, etc
- 1 oz Aromatic, fruity hot peppers (~6 peppers) habanero, scotch bonnet, fatalii, or similar
- 1 lb Coarse kosher salt or Morton kosher salt
Instructions
- Wearing gloves, remove the stems from the peppers.
- Cut the peppers into pieces with the scissors letting them fall directly into the food processor.
- Add the salt to the food processor and puree until the peppers are finely ground with no large particles or pieces of skin.
- Spread the salt onto a baking sheet lined with parchment and allow to dry until it's no longer wet. This will take a day or two at room temperature. You can speed up the drying process by using a fan.
- The salt can be dried in around 12 hours in a dehydrator at about 90 F. If you want to do that it's a good idea to dry it in the garage since the aroma will permeate the air.
- When the salt is dry, store it in a labeled container in the refrigerator for long term storage. I like to take out a tablespoon or two at a time to keep in a bowl on the dining room table.
Video
Notes
- I've found 2 oz of super hot peppers totaling around 2-2.5 million Scoville is good for 1 lb of salt. This will be about 1 oz Carolina reapers or 2 oz ghost peppers, along with some habaneros or other fruity peppers for color and aroma.
- My favorite blend so far is half scotch bonnet and half ghost pepper. The citrus aroma and pink color is fantastic.
- For a slightly less spicy salt, halve the peppers with a paring knife and remove the seeds before pureeing.
- This recipe is just a guideline and a place to start. Feel free to use your favorite hot peppers and experiment to make it your own.
Dave
Great recipe for traditional hot salt, I make this all the time from various peppers that I grow. I came across a really crazy unique Carolina reaper salt that you should try http://www.saltandscoville.com its next level instant heat, not as cheap as making yourself but definitely the wildest salt I have ever seen.
Alan Bergo
Hi Dave. I don't make this salt because it's cheap, I make it because the aroma is unbelievable. I sold many jars of this made with reaper and ghost peppers respectively a few months after I posted the recipe and the ghost pepper salt, made with a combo of 2:1 scotch bonnet to ghost peppers was far and away everyone's favorite. The reapers are cool, but their aroma can't compare to ghost peppers imo.
Krista
Have you made chile salt with frozen hot peppers? Friends gave me lots of hot peppers in October, but I didn’t have time to make sauce, so I froze them whole in ziplock bags. If not, do you have suggestions for how to use frozen peppers other than throwing into stews, yucca etc? Looking forward to making this soon with some fresh hots!
Alan Bergo
Hey Krista, you can definitely use frozen peppers here.
Hortense
Hot!
David Griggs
Hello Alan,
I very much enjoy your content. Great attention to detail. I look forward to reading your posts every week.
I would like to point out that capsaisin in the exact of water soluble, it is in fact hydrophobic.
The reason it makes soup so hot, is that it floats to the surface of the liquid and forms a film. This then coats each spoonful, and you mouth.
Water only spreads it around, better off eating something fatty to remove the burn.
Just wondering if this hot salt would make a good compound butter?
Alan Bergo
Thanks David, that's a technical error on my part I should probably rephrase. The message, and it's an important one, is that the effect of capsaicin in liquid is exponentially more powerful than when used with dry ingredients. The same amount of the salt I might put on, say, a serving of spinach could ruin a gallon of soup for some people. It's really incredible how potent even normal chili flakes get in liquid, especially fresh.
As far as compound butter, you could sure add some to unsalted butter in proportions as you would cayenne pepper. I'd probably use it in a smoked paprika or roasted red pepper butter or one flavored with curry. Roasted poblano tinted green with cilantro & some lime juice would be nice too.
Ben Rosen
Probably good also on pizza and certain ice creams .
Alan Bergo
Absolutely pizza, thanks for the reminder. Personally Idk if I could do it on ice cream, maybe really dark chocolate sorbet.
Timothy
Is there a benefit to blending the cut peppers with salt vs blending peppers first then mixing the salt in?
Alan Bergo
Yes, salt is an abrasive and the friction really helps things get finely ground and evenly blended. As the quantities of these super hot peppers are small (1 oz pureed is 2 tbsp) it would also be difficult to do in a blender or a food processor unless you're making large batches of it. 1 pound of super hot peppers would puree well in a food processor, but that would make 8 pounds of salt, or roughly three of the largest boxes you can buy in a grocery store, and even then the peppers would not be as finely ground as when they're ground with the salt.
Chris Larson
I LOVE hot pepper salt. Was gifted a jar of it some years back and discovered it goes great on steaks, eggs, and in soups. Thanks for publishing a recipe so I can make my own!
Alan Bergo
It’s nice to finally have something practical to make with all the crazy peppers that are available now. I love hot sauce but even adding a few super hots to a basic recipe makes me hiccup like crazy.
Laura
Definitely putting this on the “to make” list! What a nice gift idea for foodies. Side note, what scissors are you using, those are beautiful!
Alan Bergo
I was really surprised at how good it was. I’ve brought 4 oz jars to dinners the past couple weeks and people have asked to keep the jar every time. I overnighted ghost peppers from Arkansas this week to make another batch to sell at events this winter. And yes, great gift too.