Salt News

I’m not super self-aware, except at times–though even then much of my sense of self-awareness stems from the recognition that I often have no idea what I’m doing or thinking.Jennifer has called my attention, more than once, to a habit I have of cracking my knuckles when approaching someone who has just asked me a nice plump salt question. Walking from behind the counter–or descending the ladder from which I have been arranging wine bottles or fixing the frame of one of Roger Hallin’s beautiful nudes that are hanging some 10 feet up the 17-foot-tall walls of the shop–I interlace the fingers, flip the palms forward, and flex them, releasing a quite pleasant crackling of cartilage and tendon. Opening up the energy. I think Jennifer is concerned that there is an air of fiendish glee in the gesture that visitors might find… disconcerting.

Anywhere between five and five hundred times a day, someone stands before the wall where we have about 75 salts arranged in little apothecary jars and asks, “If I want to have just one salt, which one should I choose?”

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Mark Bitterman :: May.10.2008 :: News & Musings :: No Comments »

Interested in Gourmet Salt? Start reading here.

No one knows whether the practice of salting food originated with religious rites, as an experiment with flavor, or with some chance observation of its curative properties, but earliest man recognized the culinary and dietary importance of the salt crystals that formed naturally by the seashore. The salting of food even predates the discovery of fire and cooking, and salting today remains the most effective way to enhance the flavor of foods.

Almost every culinary tradition in the world evolved around the availability of salt. Historically, thousands of artisan saltmakers flourished at the heart of major economic centers and ports of trade. The salts produced from each of these saltmakers brought something unique to the table, with crystals varying with the saltmaking techniques, climates, lands, and mineral contents of the seas from which they were made. For this reason, salt is the prism through which the ingredients, dishes, and people of the world can be experienced in all their fullness and variety.

When gold was discovered in the American West, frontiersmen needing salt to season and cure their foods created massive demand for salt. Aided by technological advances, businesses like Richmond & Company (which later became Morton’s) began to produce salt on ever larger scales, and a century vast international consolidation of salt production ensued. Most companies were wiped out, but key producers of some of the world’s most esteemed gourmet salts survived.

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Mark Bitterman :: Apr.30.2008 :: Finishing Salts, Sea Salt :: No Comments »

I just returned from an exhilarating trip back east to meet up with a bunch of foodwriters. I hope to have some good written up in the days to come. I gave a presentation on salt at the end of the event and was giddy as a schoolboy for about a week afterward at the enthusiasm and interest they showed.

I just got a note from Sandra Gutierrez, who is a food writer by trade, describing her personal connection with salt.  The pink tick mark at the center of the map below depicts the site where Sandra’s story was based.

Dear Mark,

I didn’t have a chance to tell you but my grandfather was a salt producer in Guatemala, Central America. I spent many summer vacations running around the salt boxes, and remember vividly how beautiful the mounds of collected salt looked as the sun arose each morning. I remember beautiful pyramids of golds, pinks and oranges reflecting all around us. I would run around the perimeters of the salt boxes and had many falls and scrapes that were “cured” by the salt. Ouch!

The ending of this story is a sad one. In the late 1970’s the Guatemalan government expropriated our family’s land and destroyed the “salinas”. They were called “Salinas Santa Rosa”. In its place they built a port “Puerto San Jose” and the rest of the land was divided among the government representatives for their own private use. However, they couldn’t erase the beautiful memories of children playing and laughing amidst the mounds of glittering salt!

Sandra A. Gutierrez
Food Writer/Cooking Instructor
www.SandrasKitchenStudio.com

Mark Bitterman :: Apr.10.2008 :: News & Musings :: No Comments »

I have been meaning to share a link to a good article by a professional chef on his experience with Himalayan salt blocks.

IDEAS IN FOOD: Improvisation and experimentation in the kitchen, written by Chefs Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot, has a huge readership, and for good reason: they are intrepid, clever, and skilled cooks.  Check out their brief experimentation with Himalayan salt blocks here>>

Mark Bitterman :: Feb.22.2008 :: Himalayan Pink Salt Blocks, In the Press :: No Comments »

I don’t intend to spill an inordinate amount of ink on Himalayan salt blocks at the expense of other fine saline subjects, but there are enough inquiries from customers these days that a short series on the practical side of working with plates of Himalayan salt seems warranted.

There are dozens of ways to use Himalayan salt blocks, as plates, platters, skillets, curing bricks, freezing slabs, and more.  Cooking, however, is an important one to get under your belt as soon as possible.

And by the way, I personally like to use one Himalayan salt block for cooking, and keep a separate Himalayan salt block/plate for room temperature uses such as curing, serving, and otherwise presenting food.  That way, your cooking salt block benefits from the patina and structural changes inherent to cooking, much as a cast iron skillet benefits from careful use and cleaning. At the same time, the purity and simplicity of the unheated Himalayan salt block can be emphasized when used for presentation at the table.

Heating, Using, Cleaning, and Storing Tips for Himalayan Salt Blocks: see the complete article.

Mark Bitterman :: Jan.30.2008 :: Cooking with Salt, Himalayan Pink Salt Blocks :: No Comments »