Homemade Celery Salt
from http://www.101cookbooks.com/

Homemade celery salt far superior to the store-bought kind. The celery flavor really comes through with clean, green, grassy notes. It is absolutely worth the effort. If you make some each time you buy a bunch of celery, you end up with a bottomless jar of celery-spiked salt.

Here's the catch though. You have to find celery with leaves still intact. You'll likely have more luck at farmers' markets. Also, leaves hide. You'll find more and more as you work your way from outside stalks to inside ones.

There are many uses for celery salt: to rim a glass for a Bloody Mary, sprinkled on top of all manner of eggs, soups and salads or on fresh sliced tomatoes. It's also good on buttered corn-on-the cob, on macaroni salad, even egg salad sandwiches.

Celery salt can be made with a number of different types of salt, but the flaky, whispers of Maldon sea salt works the best. The shards are similar in size to the crumbled celery leaves, which works nicely. With some of the finer sea salts, you get more separation. Which is not what you want.

Leaves from one bunch of celery
flaky sea salt

Pick the leaves from each celery stalk, leaving the stems behind. The outer leaves tend to be dark green and hearty, the inner leaves pale green and tender. I use them all.

Rinse the leaves with cold water in a strainer, then shake off as much of the water as you can. At this point you want to dry the leaves as much as possible, so they toast (not steam) when you cook them. Gently pat them dry in a clean dish towel, or paper towels. Once dry you have two options for toasting the leaves.

1) If I have a lot of leaves, I arrange them in a single layer on a baking sheet, then bake in a 350F / 180C oven for about 5-7 minutes. Bake until dehydrated and crispy, but not browned.

2) If I have fewer leaves, or just don't feel like heating the oven, I'll throw them in a large skillet. Single layer if possible, over medium-low heat. Again, you want to barely toast them, not brown the leaves much.

In either case, when you're done cooking. Remove from heat and let the leaves cool completely. They'll crisp up even more at this point. When cool, use your fingers to crumble the leaves completely, discarding any leaves that aren't crispy.

Combine equal parts celery leaves and salt in a jar, and either stir or shake to distribute the celery leaves evenly throughout.

OR (store bought celery salt is finely ground)

Celery Seed: Mix 4 tablespoons sea salt with 2 tablespoons ground celery seed for quick and easy celery salt.

Dried Celery Leaves: Add twice the volume of salt; if you have 1/2 cup dried leaves, add 1 cup fine sea salt. Mix thoroughly. Place the mixture in the work bowl of a food processor and process until thoroughly combined and finely ground. If the salt mixture feels at all damp, spread it out on a rimmed baking sheet and let dry completely. Store in a glass jar with a tight-fitting lid.