Celery

Homemade Celery Salt Is Your Baked Potato's New Best Friend

January  8, 2017

Plain baked potatoes are a solid side dish. Comforting and homey, with a crispy outside and fluffy inside, they’re a simple pleasure that’s pretty perfect just as they are.

Well, nearly perfect. There’s room for a tiny, yet important improvement: a homemade, flavored salt crust.

Your baked potato game is about to improve. Photo by Bobbi Lin

As Amee, the author of today’s recipe, Homemade Celery Salt-Crusted Baked Potatoes, says, simple things become special with “a little extra care.” And in this case, elevating baked potatoes beyond the basic only takes three ingredients (other than the potatoes themselves): celery leaves, salt, and an egg white for adhering the celery salt to the potatoes.

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Amee has you heat the oven to 200 to 220° C (about 400 to 425° F) and then quickly roast the celery leaves just until they are crispy—not browned—before making the celery salt, coating the potatoes, and baking them at the same temperature. Because I am prone to distraction in the kitchen (and have not replaced my kitchen timer that died tragically when it jumped onto a hot burner), I prefer a slightly lower temperature like 350° F, which provides a slightly longer window of time for toasting without burning (and then crank it up for the potatoes), or to toast them in a pan as I learned to do from Heidi Swanson, which forces me to stay put and watch them. Regardless of which method you choose to crisp up your celery leaves, you’re sure to be amazed at how a handful of often discarded leaves can produce such a flavorful salt blend.

Then, once you’ve made, and enjoyed, celery salt-crusted baked potatoes, branch out, a whole new world of baked potatoes has just opened up:

Know of a great recipe hiding in the Food52 archives that uses an overlooked kitchen scrap (anything from commonly discarded produce parts to stale bread to bones and more)?

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Top Comment:
“Salsa Salt- dried lime rinds, tomato ends, cilantro stems, ugly parts of scallion tops, red onion ends. sea salt. Use to finish quesadillas after they come off grill, bloody Mary glass rim, shrimp rub, chicken wing rub. Oh, I could go on....”
— Cheryl S.
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Tell me about it in the comments: I want to know how you're turning what would otherwise be trash into a dish to treasure!

See what other Food52 readers are saying.

  • Cheryl Stair
    Cheryl Stair
  • Rhonda35
    Rhonda35
  • Lindsay-Jean Hard
    Lindsay-Jean Hard
  • AdventureGirl
    AdventureGirl
I like esoteric facts about vegetables. Author of the IACP Award-nominated cookbook, Cooking with Scraps.

4 Comments

Cheryl S. January 8, 2017
Salsa Salt- dried lime rinds, tomato ends, cilantro stems, ugly parts of scallion tops, red onion ends. sea salt. Use to finish quesadillas after they come off grill, bloody Mary glass rim, shrimp rub, chicken wing rub. Oh, I could go on....
 
Lindsay-Jean H. January 9, 2017
That sounds phenomenal!
 
AdventureGirl January 9, 2017
Yes. This does sound phenomenal!!
 
Rhonda35 January 8, 2017
I like this idea! Look forward to giving it a try.