Spruce salt, May twig salt, spruce tip salt! Here is my aromatic, fragrant herbal salt made from young spruce tips. Fresh and spicy from the forest kitchen.
To prepare thissalt, young spruce tips must be collected in late spring and early summer.
Spruce salt – my delicious forest salt
Spruce salt contains delicious forest aroma, which is why I also like to call it forest salt. Slightly ethereal, spicy-smelling, which goes surprisingly well with many dishes. I like to use it with vish and vegan meat dishes or as a coating for my vegan cream cheese balls.
Even if you have to harvest the spruce tips seasonally, the salt lasts all year round and is therefore perfect for long-lasting, regional cuisine. A pretty jar of spruce salt is also great as a small gift from the kitchen!
Spruce salt – very easy with just 2 ingredients!
My homemade, aromatic salt is very easy to make with just 2 ingredients and a little patience. All you need is a location with a few spruce trees, nimble hands for collecting the spruce tips and salt. And you should also plan on some waiting time for the drying.
Very easy, with a great, aromatic effect.
Instead of using spruce tips, you can also make fir salt
If you don’t have a spruce forest nearby, the salt can also be made as fir salt from young fir shoots. The taste is very similar and the harvest and production are completely identical. So you can simply use this recipe.
Distinguishing between spruces and firs
You can easily distinguish between spruces and firs because “The spruce stings, the fir doesn’t!” The spruce has slightly sharper needles, the fir has slightly rounded ones.
With this simple mnemonic you can easily distinguish the two conifers from each other. Although it wouldn’t be a problem if you used both trees for this recipe.
Be careful not to confuse it with the poisonous yew
You have to be able to identify the conifers you are collecting from precisely, because there is also a poisonous conifer in our latitudes. Here in Germany, the yew is the only native conifer in which almost all parts are poisonous. You therefore have to be able to clearly rule out this type of conifer when collecting.
When is the best time to harvest spruce tips?
For forest recipes with spruce tips, the young spruce shoots must still be bright green and rather small and soft. The color demarcation makes them very easy to distinguish from the older parts. In addition to savory dishes, you can also use spruce tips to make a sweet, fantastic, vegan spruce tip honey.
Depending on the weather, spruce tips sprout from mid-April to early June.
What do spruce tips taste like?
Spruce tips smell of the essential oils of the spruce, but not as intensely as the wood or older needles. They taste surprisingly lemony, especially after preparation. There is also a sweet note, which is why they are also nice to snack straight from the tree.
Tasty sweet, vegan honey made from spruce tips
If you love the forest kitchen as much as I do, you should definitely also try my recipe for spruce tip honey. A lovely way to make vegan forest honey from spruce tips.
Ingredients for approx. 300 g spruce salt:
60 g spruce tips
300 g coarse sea salt
Preparation:
- Coarsely chop the young spruce shoots, then chop them with the food processor until they are very finely chopped and slightly pulpy.
- Add the coarse sea salt and grind everything. The salt should be well mixed with the spruce tip pulp. There may still be coarse pieces of salt in the mass, but no recognizable pieces of spruce needles. The wild tree salt should now be a strong green and moist throughout.
- Spread the moist, homemade forest flavour salt evenly on a sheet of parchment paper.
- Dry the salt in the dehydrator at 50°C (120°F) for 3-4 hours. If the spruce tip salt still has damp spots, extend the drying time.
As an alternative to the dehydrator, an oven can also be used to dry the salt. To do this, set the oven to 50°C (120°F) convection heat. Dry the spruce tip salt on the middle rack. Clamp a wooden spoon handle into the oven door so that the moist air can escape. - Crumble the dried, homemade aromatic salt into small pieces and store in an airtight container.
Enjoy!
Based on 13 Review(s)
