Sal de Chapulín

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Cast iron comal or heavy skillet
• •Volcanic stone metate, or a basalt molcajete as a second choice
• •Microplane or fine-rasp zester
• •Clean glass jar with tight-fitting lid for storage

Instructions

1. 1

   Toast the chapulines

   Heat a dry comal over medium-low. Spread the chapulines in a single layer and toast them for three to four minutes, shaking the comal often. They are already cured and lightly toasted from the mercado, but you want them dry and crisp enough to crumble between your fingers. The kitchen will smell faintly of smoke and lime. Pull them off the moment the legs snap clean. Burned chapulines turn the salt bitter.

   Buy your chapulines from a vendor who sells them by weight, not from a sealed plastic bag at a souvenir shop. The ones from the Mercado Benito Juárez or 20 de Noviembre in Oaxaca City are cured the same morning. The size matters too. The small ones, chapulines chicos, have the cleanest flavor.
2. 2

   Toast the chiles and garlic

   On the same comal, toast the chile de árbol for about 20 seconds per side. They turn from dull red to deep brick red and the kitchen sharpens with that nose-tickling smell of toasted árbol. Move them off. Add the peeled garlic cloves whole and let them blacken in spots, turning them every minute, until the skin chars and the inside softens. Five minutes total. The char is what gives this salt its bottom note.

3. 3

   Dry the lime zest

   Zest the limones criollos onto a small plate. Let the zest sit at room temperature for ten minutes while everything else cools. You want the surface moisture to evaporate so the zest grinds down clean instead of clumping into the salt. This is a small step that most home cooks skip. Skip it and your salt will cake within a week.

4. 4

   Grind on the metate or molcajete

   Begin with the chiles, garlic, and oregano on the metate. Grind in long strokes until you have a coarse paste. Add the chapulines and grind again. They will break down into a rust-colored powder with little flecks of leg and wing still visible. Now the salt and the lime zest go in. Grind everything together until the salt turns pale orange-red and the texture is uniform but still gritty. If you do not have a metate, a heavy molcajete will get you most of the way there. A spice grinder works too, in short pulses, but the texture is flatter. The metate gives you the layered crush that makes Oaxacan condiments taste the way they do.

   No me vengas con atajos. A food processor will turn this into dust and bury the chapulín under salt. Pulse if you must, but stop while the texture still has structure.
5. 5

   Cure and store

   Spread the finished salt on a clean dry plate or sheet pan and leave it at room temperature for two to three hours. The garlic and lime are still releasing moisture. Letting them air-cure prevents clumping. Once the salt feels dry between your fingers, transfer it to a clean glass jar with a tight lid. It keeps for two months at room temperature without losing its sharpness, longer in the refrigerator.

6. 6

   Serve at the Oaxacan table

   Sprinkle on jícama batons, mango spears, cucumber, or pineapple. Rim a glass with lime and dip it into the salt for a mezcalita. Serve a small dish of it next to a copita of mezcal and let people pinch with their fingers. Asi se hace y punto.

Chef Tips

• •Chapulines should come from a vendor who can tell you what village they were collected in. Santa María Zoquitlán and the alfalfa fields around Zimatlán produce the cleanest ones. If your only option is a vacuum-sealed bag from a specialty shop outside Mexico, fine, but check the date and smell them. They should smell like toasted lime, not like a closet.
• •If you cannot find chapulines at all, do not substitute. Make sal de gusano with dried maguey worms, or make a chile-lime salt without the insect. A substitution here is not a compromise. It is a different recipe.
• •Sal de mar from Salinas del Istmo, the salt flats on the Pacific side of Oaxaca, has a mineral quality that gives this salt its backbone. Maldon and other flake salts are too clean. If you have to use commercial sea salt, choose a coarse unrefined one and accept that the salt will be one note quieter.
• •The chile de árbol can be doubled if you want real heat, or swapped half-and-half with chile pasilla mixe for a smokier salt. The pasilla mixe is the smoked pasilla from the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca and is not the pasilla you find in most US markets. Read the label carefully.

Advance Preparation

• •Sal de chapulín keeps two months at room temperature in a sealed glass jar, and up to four months refrigerated. Make a double batch and gift small jars to anyone who has tried to convince you that Mexican food is just tacos and margaritas.
• •If the salt clumps after a few weeks, it is because moisture got in. Spread it on a sheet pan, dry it in a 200F oven for ten minutes, cool completely, and re-jar.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 16g)