Carolina Reaper Seasoned Salt Recipe | Spicy, Smoky, Fruity AND Incredibly Delicious

This Carolina reaper seasoned salt recipe is the BOSS of spicy homemade seasoned salt recipes. It has a great depth of flavor from fruity, smoky notes with a delicious hit of spicy that will get your attention really quick.

Ingredients:

5 Carolina reapers

1/4 of a fresh pineapple

9 strawberries

5 cloves garlic

1 shallot

1 tsp dried sage

1 to 1-1/2 c fine sea salt (done in proportion to the finished ground spice)

Tools needed:

Cutting board

Sharp knife

Rubber gloves

Food processor

Spice grinder

Smoker

Charcoal

Oak splits

Measuring cups and spoons

Parchment paper

Rubber spatula

Baking sheet

How to make it:

Such a beautiful pepper that needs to be handled with extreme care.

First, handling Carolina reapers is to be taken with care. Wear nitrile gloves and eye protection. They are extremely hot and the burn you can get from capsaicin is very painful. When making this, the peppers get dried and ground which will release airborne capsaicin powder into the air that will seriously irritate your nose. If you can, make this outside and wear a respirator and eye protection if needed.

Wash the peppers and strawberries under cold running water, let air dry.

Cut the pineapple into small pieces, saving 1/4 of it for the recipe. Fresh pineapple is what you want for this recipe. Canned pineapple may be ok if fresh pineapple is inaccessible. Cut the tops off the strawberries and quarter each berry. Quarter the shallot and rough chop the garlic. The idea here is to have the ingredients broken down somewhat before they get added to the food processor. This will help keep the capsaicin from getting too airborne.

For the reapers, pull stem off to remove and cut peppers in half. Remove the seeds and placenta, saving the seeds if desired. Cut the peppers into rough chop.

Add all ingredients to your food processor and pulse a few times to break up the ingredients. This breakdown of the ingredients I refer to as mash. You may need to scrape the sides of the processor with a rubber spatula between pulses to ensure the mash is getting broken down evenly. The more even the mash is, the more even and quickly it will dry out.

This mash has a delicious aroma to it. Be careful smelling it as it has very potent airborne capsaicin at this point.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using your rubber spatula, carefully spread the mash onto the sheet pan. You should have on gloves while doing this and be very careful not to get any juices on your skin.

Warm up your smoker. I’m using my small offset smoker with lump charcoal being the heat source and oak wood for smoky flavor. I love how these ingredients taste with oak, but you can go with an apple wood if you want to add more fruity notes to the finished product. If you have a pellet smoker, set it to 200 to 225 F. If you don’t have a smoker, this can be done in a dehydrator or your oven. Make sure there is plenty of ventilation in the kitchen if you have to use your oven. This will literally fumigate your house if you don’t take the necessary precautions. Smoke for about 3 hours, rotating the sheet pan every 30-45 minutes and gently mixing the mash to help it dry more evenly and faster. When I first start out smoking, I like to go pretty thick on the smoke. As I need to add more charcoal and wood after the first 45 minutes, I smoke it more clean. I found that the smoke flavor can get lost if you burn clean blue smoke from the very start. This is a fun one to experiment with and you can always adjust to your taste. This will look darker than normal if you’re smoking it, especially if you went thicker on the smoke in the beginning. It is partially from the smoke and partially from the sugars in the mash from the pineapple and strawberries lightly caramelizing. Don’t worry, it is not burnt! If you let it go too long, however, you can definitely burn the pulp since there is a lot of sugars in it from the pineapple and strawberries.

Once the pulp is dried, remove from the smoker (or oven) and let cool to room temperature. This next step you need to take with extreme caution. Grinding up the pulp will send some heavy capsaicin airborne powder into the air that is VERY hot and will irritate your nose, lungs and eyes if you’re not careful. I recommend wearing eye protection, gloves and a respirator that has particulate filters on it. Covering your nose with your shirt will not work! Grind the pulp up into a fine powder and mix with fine sea salt. I like to go 2:1 ratio salt to chili powder. You can go more salty with a 3:1 ratio if desired.

I store this salt in a mason jar with a tight fitting lid with a label that clearly states what the salt is. I recommend keeping this out of reach of children and everyone that is sensitive to capsaicin. This will realistically stay good indefinitely. However, it will have the best flavor if used within 3 months.

This seasoned salt works incredibly well with pork, chicken and salmon. Smoking those stated will give it added bonus awesome flavor. It has a nice fruity, spicy and smoky flavor profile that works very nicely with salmon and pork specifically. I haven’t tried it yet, but I think it would go amazing on some lamb. Perhaps a roasted leg or smoked rack. I want to know if you make this salt and how you use it. Leave me a comment in the box below.

Enjoy!

Logan