Salt News

The Meadow carries over a dozen different types of Japanese sea salts, more than from just about any other single country. Japan has a long tradition of making salt using their home-grown techniques that are unlike any found in the rest of the world.

We’re often asked how the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor disaster in March of 2011 effects the salt products coming from Japan. We’ve written an extensive article about Radiation and Japanese Sea Salt to try and answer this question. The article covers the basics of how radiation works, where our salts are made in Japan relative to Fukushima, and if there is any impact on the quality of Japanese sea salt.

The Meadow is also still selling a set of three Japanese sea salts to benefit the victims of the tsunami. All net proceeds from the sale of this product will be donated to Mercy Corp.

Mark Bitterman :: Jul.30.2012 :: Gourmet Salt :: No Comments »

Hawaiian sea salts offer a combination of color, lots of minerals, and a varying grain size that makes them some of the most versatile salts available. Red alaea salt, black salts infused with activated charcoal, green salt infused with bamboo leaf extract, and plain, high-quality white Hawaiian sea salts are all available at The Meadow.

Hawaii has a rich salt producing history that stretches back long before Europeans landed on the Island. Today, some salts that are sold as “Hawaiian” are made elsewhere, and processed to look like traditional Hawaiian salts. Virtually all the “Hawaiian salts” sold around the world (including in Hawaii!) are based on industrial sea salts from manufacturers such as Cargil, and then passed off as authentic Hawaiian salt.

We’ve written a new guide that will tell you all about Hawaiian sea salt at The Meadow, including descriptions of the types of Hawaiian salts, the history of Hawaiian salt, and how Hawaiian salt is made.

Mark Bitterman :: Jul.13.2012 :: Gourmet Salt :: 5 Comments »

Cooking Up a Story is doing a week-long feature on rediscovering salt. I did an interview about the importance of salt and its relation to our food:

An excerpt about the three foundational salts of cooking: “The most popular salts we sell are fleur de sel, which is a delicately crystaled, very mineral rich salt for all-purpose finishing. Put it on eggs, fish, cooked vegetables. We have flaky salts, which are parchment fine crystals that you can put on a green salad, each of them a different textual drama. And then we have coarse, moist, minerally salts called sel gris or grey salt. Steak, lamb, root vegetables, roasts, or anything hearty enough that it wants a big minerally crunch of salt to go along with it.”

Mark Bitterman :: Jul.12.2012 :: Gourmet Salt :: No Comments »