Hot Habanero Blend Sample

Salt Summary

Inspired by the flavors and vibrant colors of Mexican cuisine, we balance the heat of several types of chili peppers with Hawaiian Black Lava & Red Alaea salts. We then add organic carrot and cilantro to the mix to round out the taste-profile. Try this spicy blend on crab cakes, chicken tacos, or on a southwestern-style salad.

Click on the tabs above for more application and dish ideas, or to read the complete description of this premium gourmet salt.

Recommended Uses

• Mexican-style seafood marinade (add the blend to lime juice and toss in a ziplock bag with firm fish or shrimp)
• Sprinkle on the top of crab cakes (for extra flavor add bell pepper to a traditional crab cake recipe)
• South of the Border Salad (mix blend with lettuce, diced avocado, green onion, romano cheese, refried beans, a squeeze of lime and a touch of vinegar)
• Mexican-style barbeque sauce or rub
• Tamales (add to dough mixture or cheese filling)
• Rim the glass of a frozen lime margarita
• Sprinkle on baked chicken breast just prior to serving
• Add to cream cheese and generously spoon onto baked potatoes
• Mixed into traditional Mexican rice
• Dust over homemade nachos
• Add to the top of cream of cauliflower soup with a drizzle of olive oil
• Spicy compound butter (combine salt with softened butter and chill for later use on crusty toasted bread or with grilled vegetables)
• Huevos rancheros (combine salt blend with chopped tomatoes and garlic, and puree in blender until smooth. Simmer in sauce pan that includes cooked onions. Fry eggs in a separate pan and plate the cooked eggs over the tomato mixture for serving)

Salt Story

Years of watching Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel have taught us that in nature, brilliant contrasting colors act as a universal caution sign to potential predators. Although our Hot Habanero Blend displays vibrant plumage of burgundy, emerald green and inky-black, we hope this won’t ward off your hunger for this spicy salt! This Hot Habanero Blend was inspired by the intense flavors and vivacious colors found in Mexican cuisine. To capture the essence of Mexican food, our Salt Chef carefully crafted this blend by tempering the screaming heat of the chili peppers we used with a balanced and structured richness contributed by Hawaiian Black and Red Alaea salts. We add several different chili peppers to our blend to create a comprehensive heat profile including ultra-spicy habanero, more mild guajillo, fruity ancho and slightly-sweet mulato. We then use a gastronomic trick borrowed from the best of Mexican cuisine, by adding organic dried cilantro and carrot to our blend, which unifies all of the ingredients to produce an intense but also mature flavor profile.

If you take a close look at the enlarged pictures of this salt (go ahead and click on the photo above…we will happily wait!), you can see an incredible array of vivid colors. One of the benefits of having an actual chef create the Beyond the Shaker blends by hand is that we can do things that would be impossible in a mass production setting. Each of the dried chili peppers used in this blend had to be skillfully chopped by hand in a precise manner to ensure uniform size and preserve each dried chili’s supple texture. The organic cilantro and carrot that we used to integrate the flavors of this blend also were hand chopped by our chef to guarantee their compelling texture. We employ unrefined Hawaiian Black Lava and Red Alaea salts to give our Hot Habanero Blend a satisfying crunch of salinity that extenuates the varied textures of the other ingredients in this salt. Even better, these burgundy and ink-black salts create a gorgeous contrast when mixed with the deep reds of the chili peppers and the green of the dried cilantro.

Our Hot Habanero is very versatile, which allows the home chef to add spicy heat to almost any meal. Sprinkle onto chopped chicken or ground beef for flavor-forward soft tacos. Try it on the rim of a bloody mary or saucy margarita for attention-grabbing flavor and color. Or add this blend to homemade salsa or guacamole for additional heat.

Recipes

• Hot Habanero Chicken Tacos
• Diablo Cream Soup

Premium Ingredients

Hawaiian Black Lava salt, Hawaiian Red Alaea salt, ancho peppers, habanero peppers, mulato peppers, guajillo peppers, organic carrots and organic cilantro.