Homemade Chicken Salt

Well, I bought Brett a fryer as an early Xmas present.  So, today he is busy watching college football and wanted to make a proper Aussie burger (with the lot except NO BEETROOT) with those special, work-intensive thrice-cooked chips (fries to us Yanks). Of course, chips aren't the same without chicken salt just like they use in the corner fish and chips shop, so we went on a mission to find some.

Now, some of you know the terrible sad story of our last attempt to acquire Chicken Salt.  Brett packed it in our suitcase on the trip home from visiting his family in Adelaide and (I am sure you can tell where this is going...), the bottles exploded somewhere over the between South Australia and Pennsylvania and we ruined the luggage, but worst, we lost the precious chicken salt.  :-(

So this time, we were going to leave the shipping to professionals.  We tried our trusty new international food store find, World Market, but they don't carry it.  It wasn't on the shelves at the local British Shoppe, and while we could order from a couple online places, it was WAY overpriced for 4-6 oz. of salt and misc. seasonings.

At last, we decided we would just make our own.  This was easier said than done however because it appears that the recipe for chicken salt is practically an Australian national secret.  It isn't listed anywhere! We found two random blogs that had recipes and Brett decided he wanted to try the one based on Aussie KFC's version of chicken salt. Here it is:

Chicken Salt Recipe

6 Tbsps Salt
2 Tbsps MSG (Use Salt if one is averse to this ingredient)
3 tsp Sugar (Superfine, or Castor variety)
3 tsp Onion Powder
1 tsp Garlic Powder
1 tsp Cornstarch (i.e. Cornflour: Yellow variety)
1/2 tsp White Pepper
1/4 tsp Citric Acid (Crystals: This creates that zesty flavor!)
1/4 tsp Turmeric (For that "nuclear" yellow color!)
1/4 tsp Paprika
1/8 tsp Celery Seed (Finely Ground)

Mix it all up, use immediately, or allow to meld for a few hours before use...  
THE VERDICT:
 Well, first, I'll note the few issues we had with the recipe listed.  1) We didn't have MSG, but substituted salt as suggested.  2) Celery seed is incredibly hard to actually grind up. 3) We use regular white cornstarch instead of yellow so ours didn't have the typically coloring of Aussie chicken salt.  4) The recipe makes enough to fill an entire spice bottle (we bought a new empty one from the spice store, but you could save an empty one to refill with this new mix).

Overall, the recipe as listed wasn't too bad.  The onion powder and garlic powder were overpowering though, so we would definitely reduce the amounts to 2tsp and 1/2tsp the next time we make it.  Because we already had the mix, to fix it, we added 1 1/2 tsp sugar and 1 tbsp salt to counteract the onion/garlic and it immensely improved it. 

I don't see myself using chicken salt all that much (to me, it has limited applications), but Brett assures me that he is going to be using it plenty.  Makes me happy that we went the extra mile...

P.S.-->  In case Lyn reads this, know that I am probably never going to attempt trying to recreate Brett's favorite tomato paste from scratch.  He'll have to go home (Aus) for that.