Sal de Pasilla Oaxaqueño

This salt is from Oaxaca. Specifically from the Sierra Mixe, the high country in the north of the state where the chile pasilla mixe is grown and smoke-dried in the same wood-fired chambers that have been used for generations. Without that chile, you do not have this salt. You have something else.

Understand the chile first. The pasilla you find in most US supermarkets is chile pasilla negro from central Mexico, a long wrinkled chile that is dried but not smoked. It is a fine chile for mole and adobo. It is not pasilla oaxaqueño. The Oaxacan version, also called pasilla mixe, is shorter, fatter, deeply wrinkled, and carries the flavor of woodsmoke baked into its skin. Open one and you should smell raisin, tobacco, and a campfire all at once. If you do not, you have the wrong chile and no amount of toasting will fix it.

The technique is straightforward and the technique is everything. Toast the chiles briefly on a comal until the smoky oils release. Cool them completely. Grind them, ideally on a metate, with a few toasted seeds and a touch of oregano de Oaxaca. Mix with good sea salt. That is the recipe. The depth comes from sourcing, not from steps.

My mother did not know this salt. She was from Jalisco. I learned it from a senora named Doña Eufemia at a tlayuda stand near the Mercado 20 de Noviembre, who kept a small clay jar of it next to her comal and dusted it on grilled cecina the moment the meat hit the plate. She told me her mother ground it on a metate that had been in the family for four generations. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and within Oaxaca, every cook has her own version of this salt.