Accidental Burnt Chili Salt

Folks sometimes ask me if I worry about making sure that the food I serve can live up to the standards that guests would expect of me. I have two responses to this. First is that if you’re the kind of person who’s likely to judge their dinner party host based on the quality of the food rather than the spirit of the company, you probably haven’t been invited to my dinner parties anyway. I maintain a judgment-free kitchen.

More importantly, the main reason I don’t stress is because I’ve made enough mistakes in my career to know that they’re inevitable. What matters is how you roll with them.

In the best situations, a mistake can actually turn out to be a delicious accident in the making.

Are you familiar with the book Beautiful Oops? It’s a wonderful children’s book about the magic of how accidents can inspire creativity. It’s a very Bob Ross, Julia Child, old-school-PBS-type of “no mistakes, only happy little accidents” book that probably would have annoyed jaded teenage me, but is right up father-to-little-ones-me’s alley.* 

*The phrase “Beautiful Oops” has become a verb in our household any time we have an accident that can be turned around, as in: “I dropped the squishy mango so I Beautiful Oopsed it into a smoothie!” or, “of course not, you were Beautiful Oopsed!”

My daughter Alicia and I have been staying with my friends Clay and Katie at their home in Jamaica Plain, outside of Boston. The weather has been far too hot to cook indoors, so the other night we had a cookout. It was a small group—the four of us plus my dad and our friend Rachel—and we kept the food very simple: a Caesar-ish salad (itself a Beautiful Oops of over-coddled eggs and a dressing I ad-libbed with fish sauce; stay tuned for the recipe), a hot coal fire, some beautiful beef, vegetables, salt, pepper, olive oil, lemon, and plenty of herbs from the garden.

As Alicia picked her way through the chives, parsley, rosemary, and thyme, she spotted a couple of ripe Cayenne chilies and asked if could throw them on the grill and eat them. “Of course,” I said. 

“Don’t forget them.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t forget them,” I said as I pulled a couple of steaks and a big pile of asparagus from the grill. I placed the chilies over the embers as they started to cool, then promptly forgot about them while the meat rested.

We continued to neglect them as I carved the meat and vegetables and showered them with the herbs that Alicia had picked and chopped. Nary an image of chilies, their shiny red skins leopard-spotted with black blisters, flickered across the collective transom of our minds as we picked our way through a cutting board overflowing with sliced ribeye and skirt steak. When we reached the zucchini, we paused for a moment to admire their blackened, herb-crusted skins before slicing in (a moment during which a thought for those chilies didn’t make as much as a fleeting appearance). Once we tasted the eggplant, with their smoky char and tender, juicy centers, dripping with the garlic oil we brushed on them with rosemary stalks while they grilled, the chilies’ fates were sealed: Our minds fully distracted, they were doomed to their smoldering demise.

It was only towards the end of round one—a good 30 minutes later—that Alicia remembered the chilies with a start and we leaped up to check the grill.

The two chilies were exactly where we left them, their final form carbonized and frozen in place like fossils. At first I suggested to Alicia that they weren’t scorched, they were "artfully charred." It's not incineration, it's "charcoal chic." But as we picked one up and the dry shell cracked under Alicia’s lightest touch, the truth was clear: They were burnt. A seven-year-old could (and definitely did not hesitate to) tell you that.

The trick about Beautiful Oops-ing a situation is that you need to do it with confidence, with conviction, and above all, with haste. “Beautiful oops!,” I cried, even before I knew what we were going to do. I spotted the bag of Korean sea salt** that Katie had just brought home from H-Mart and grabbed for it as I pulled the chilies, tossed them onto a cutting board, and dropped a fistful of salt on top of them. I gave Alicia a knife so she could chop it all together.

**I mention its provenance only because I’d never considered buying finishing salt at the Korean supermarket, but this salt with its moist, delicate grains was delicious and worth exploring.

We ended up with a pile of smoky, spicy, flavor-packed burnt chili salt. When sprinkled on the sliced grilled meat and vegetables, we all agreed that it made round two far tastier than round one. 

I am positive there are chefs out there serving grilled foods or rimming margaritas with burnt chili sea salt (and if there aren’t, there should be—it’s good!), but this was a new one for me. It’s delicious enough that I’d recommend accidentally burning some chilies yourself in order to make some. All you need is a couple of hot chilies, some smoldering embers, a fistful of salt, and a few good distractions.

Burnt Chili Salt

Ingredients

Two or three hot fresh chilies, such as cayenne, Thai bird, Serrano, or habanero

1/4 cup coarse sea salt

Note: I wouldn’t bother lighting a whole fire just to make this salt. Instead, wait until the next time you cook out and char your chilies then.

1. In the heat of a live fire you just finished with, or over a gas grill set to medium heat, cook the chilies, turning them occasionally, until they are completely blackened and charred and dry, 20 to 30 minutes.

2. Transfer the chilies to a cutting board. Remove and discard the stems. Sprinkle the salt over the chilies. Chop the chilies together with the salt until the bits of chili are no larger than very coarsely ground black pepper. Store in a sealed container. Sprinkle on grilled meats and vegetables.