Name: Red Wine Flavored Salt with Rosemary
Prep time: 1 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 46 min
Ingredients: 12 oz coarse salt; 6 oz red wine; 1 bunch of rosemary

Tomorrow is Ferragosto. Which means that like many Italians, I will head to the mountains with friends and relatives to grill some meat on a barbecue. And I’ll bring with me my freshly made wine flavored salt.

It’s such a simple recipe, and it’s a perfect way to give a new spin to any kind of pork meat.

Here’s how to make it at home.

Which herbs can be used to make flavored salt?

There are many types of flavored salt, but the process is the same for all of them.

Most are made from the herbs we usually use to season meat: sage, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, oregano, or bay leaves.

Other people also use basil, parsley, or cilantro, but I do not recommend it. This recipe involves drying in the oven, and herbs such as parsley and basil lose most of their flavor in this process.

For this recipe, I decided to use only rosemary.

And what about the wine?

You don’t have to spend a fortune when choosing which kind of wine to use, of course. But you shouldn’t go with the cooking wine they sell in bricks either.

Choose a good red wine that you would normally drink with your favorite second course.

I went for a simple bottle of Rosso Piceno DOC because it’s good without costing too much, and because it’s produced in the nearby areas. Feel free to do the same and go with your favorite local red wine.

A full-bodied wine with a high alcohol content will give your salt a bright color. On the other hand, if you want it to be of a lighter pink color, choose a medium-bodied wine with about 6% alcohol content.

Method

Step 1: Put the coarse salt in a bowl and pour the red wine over it. You can find the exact ratio in the recipe card below. Let it sit there for at least 1 hour. Toward the end of the waiting time, start preheating the oven to 290° F, in fan mode.

Step 2: While you wait, wash the rosemary well, pat dry it with a kitchen towel, then separate the leaves from their stems and chop them fine.

Step 3: When the first hour has passed, take a sieve, cover it with a clean kitchen towel and use it to drain the salt.

Step 4: Move the salt on a wide oven tray covered with greaseproof paper. Add the chopped rosemary, mix a little, and then spread everything evenly over the entire surface of the tray with a spatula.

Step 5: Bake in fan mode at 290° F for 45 minutes. It is important to dry your flavored salt well. If it still feels a little moist at the end, continue to bake for another 10 minutes, or as long as needed.

Your red wine flavored salt is ready. Now all you have to do is let it rest for a while at room temperature, then place it in a sterilized jar or airtight container.

How long does homemade flavored salt last?

If dried properly, your flavored salt can be stored for up to a year.

That’s why it’s important to bake it. When using just herbs and salt, many people skip that part. But unless you’re using perfectly dried herbs, the flavored salts obtained this way don’t usually last more than 3 weeks.

Why let it ruin so quickly, when you could make lots of it in advance an keep it for months, with just 45 minutes of baking?

How to use it

As I was saying before, this wine flavored salt is perfect for any kind of pork meat but you can use it to rub chicken or fish as well.

If you crush it well, you can use it also on any recipe with mashed or roasted potatoes.

Finally, you can obviously use it to salt pasta water before cooking, but I’ve never tried this option, so I don’t know how it will impact the taste of the pasta.

Recipe card

Ferragosto used to be a Catholic holiday, celebrating the ascension of the Virgin Mary to Heaven. Now, it’s become a more profane tradition, but a delicious tradition nonetheless.

People in Italy set their ferie months in advance, so that they can be free on that day and hang out with their family and friends, enjoying good food and maybe watching the fireworks at midnight.

I don’t know if you’re going to celebrate it, but whatever will be the occasion for your next barbecue in the open, I hope you try this flavored salt recipe, and that you like it.