Salt News

Sautéeing on Himalayan salt blocks creates exponentially more flavor than sautéeing in a conventional skillet.  This is because a salt block cooks your food in two ways. At a blazing 500 degrees or higher, the heavy block of salt has enormous thermal mass, sizzling away moisture to produce a thick crust of rich, concentrated flavor.  At the same time, the Himalayan salt itself sets to work, bursting cell membranes, intermingling juices, and breaking loose new flavors that in turn sizzle away to make for even more concentrated flavors.  Want to make the most of this miracle of cooking chemistry?  Balance out the scallop’s rich buttery flavors with a spritz of citrus and reinforce everything with the lip-tingling spice of Szechuan peppercorns. You’ll not have another scallop that’s this fun to cook, impressive to serve, or tasty to eat.

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Mark Bitterman :: Jul.10.2010 :: Gourmet Salt, Recipes, Salt Blocks :: 6 Comments »

Flank steak has to be pretty much the best thing short of a foot rub while drinking a root beer float.  But it’s tough.  It’s ornery.  There is a common strategy to making the flank steak supple enough to eat without popping your jaw out of joint: marinating.  I’ve made coffee and ginger marinades, lime and tequila marinades, smoked salt and chili pepper marinades, vinegar and sugar marinades… you name it.  Every time, great steak.  But think of the poor steak.  A wonderful, flavor-packed piece of meat forced to suffer quietly the insult of subjugation to intense acids and sugars and salts.  When we see a flank steak, we see a quandary.  How do we get that elemental flavor out of a meat that resists the teeth?  There is a solution, a way honor the humble yet noble flank steak in its naked beauty, a way that takes virtually no preparation ahead of time, a way results in a fun, incredibly juicy and savory dish.

I’ve covered this dish before here and elsewhere, including at the Himalayan salt block cooking classes at The Meadow, but I don’t think it has ever actually been hammered into a simple recipe.

There are two simple tricks to this dish (if you can call steak seared on a giant block of salt a dish): cutting the meat against the grain, and cooking it at a high temperature.  Oh, and cooking it NOT on steel, but on a block of ancient, super dense, mineral rich Himalayan rock salt.

Ingredients:
1 2lb piece of flank steak
1 8x8x2 inch Himalayan Salt Block or Plate

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Mark Bitterman :: Feb.19.2009 :: Recipes, Salt Blocks :: 6 Comments »

Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto  generally has to satisfy his penchant for preparing and serving his zany, mouthwatering foods on Himalayan salt blocks with the more modest 8 inch by 8 inch by 1.5 inch slabs of pink rock salt.  These are fine, most of the time.  But, with back muscles aching and biceps tingling, I am elated to announce that we have just finished unpacking a full container of the most unusual new and renewed sizes of Himalayan salt plates, salt platters, salt bricks, and salt cubes.

My favorite by far this time around has to be the imperial super mondo extra big and fancy and fun Himalayan salt platters (it’s tempting to call them Himalayan salt boards, or salt planks, or salt joists…), which measure a solid 8 inches by 16 inches in size, with a thickness of 2 full inches.  They are begging to party.  Some ideas that come to mind:

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Mark Bitterman :: Dec.01.2008 :: Salt Blocks :: 2 Comments »

I just found a photograph I took with my cell phone a year and a half ago.

In the spring of 2007, the editors of the bridal issue of a magazine popular here in the Pacific Northwest asked us to design a floral arrangement and table service.   Jennifer came up with an idea that stunned everybody who saw it, combining in one sophisticated table setting the most ephemeral and delicate of beauties with the closest thing on planet Earth to the eternal.

For flowers, Jennifer found about two dozen different varieties of white flowers, many of them wildflowers we collected ourselves from the forests, streams, and meadows near our house in Portland Oregon.  She arranged them either singly or in small bunches in a variety of unique vintage and antique glass vases from the vintage vase collection in our shop.  For the centerpiece she arranged pale pink dogwood blossoms with very tall, slender white tulips. The effect was one of extraordinary diversity brought into strange and unexpected harmony, as if nature herself had flung together the vases and flowers, and suddenly withdrawn, leaving the fragile petals trembling above the crisp white linens covering the table.

Jennifer then set 8 inch by 8 inch by 2 inch thick squares of light pink Himalayan rock salt plates on white china chargers.  The Himalayan rock salts are 600 million years old.  They just sat there, and glowed.  Way back before there as any developed life on the planet, a great ocean became enclosed by land and slowly evaporated off to form a vast deposit of salt and natural trace minerals.  The luminescent squares of Himalayan salt, effectively the distillate of one of the first oceans to form on the planet, both anchored the table with their solidity and uprooted it, bringing the primordial bed of all life on earth into contradistinction that was simultaneously aesthetic, conceptual, and playful.

The photographs in the magazine were great, but never quite did justice to the amazing delicacy of the white wildflowers and the immutable depth of the salt blocks.  But this picture at least serves as a schematic for the idea.

For any of you–like me recently–still baffled: to get an image out of your cell phone you can email it to yourself.

Mark Bitterman :: Sep.18.2008 :: News & Musings, Salt Blocks :: 1 Comment »

I’ve been doing plenty of creative cooking on Himalayan Salt Blocks since my last post on the subject, and plenty more less creative things. Mostly, I’ve been working (remotely) with my people in Pakistan on optimizing the cut and grade of Himalayan salt blocks we are importing into the U.S.

The happy day has come: the latest shipment of Himalayan salt blocks has arrived, and now, after horrendous physical labor in the warehouse (my forearms are like Popeye’s, and small children stop and gape), it’s all ready to use.

Thanks to the great work of our supplier, for the first time we have divided our blocks into grades, allowing customers to buy the Himalayan salt block that best suits their expected needs. The bad news is I somehow have not yet managed to snap a photograph of them, but that shall be forthcoming.

There is more detail available at www.atthemeadow.com, but to summarize:

Our larger tiles and plates are thicker than standard blocks, for both added strength and a greater physical appeal. Large pieces such as 8 x 8 x 2 and the new 9 x 9 x 2 are an impressive half inch thicker than standard salt blocks, and the same goes for our extra-huge 9 x 18 platters. This larger size applies to all grades, not just the new premium.

The thick size is extremely cool to look at: it sits at the table like it wants to crush it. It broods. It handily supports the most massive food, from a Tomme de Savoie to a fan of lobster tails. I still have the 1.5 inch thick blocks in my kitchen, but they look a touch puny next to the new big fat boys.

Regular Grade Himalayan Salt Blocks are for serving food at room temperature, or if you have a mind, frozen for a sorbet or that semifreddo service you have been wanting to attempt for all those years. A Himalayan salt block cheese platter, marinated vegetable plate, sashimi plate, butter dishh, centerpiece, etc., will do best with a Regular Grade Himalayan Salt block.

The new Premium Grade Himalayan Salt Blocks™ are painstakingly selected (ever tried to move 200 ninety pound boxes of salt around a warehouse in the middle of July?), for the most versatile use by the most serious-minded cooks. They are the ones I wanted to take home… Fear not, I get all the funky pieces. I am glad to sort though a stack of the premium grade (or the regular grade for that matter) salt blocks looking for anything in particular that might desire.

Architectural Grade Himalayan Salt Blocks™ are the least expensive Himalayan salt blocks. They are pure and beautiful and similar to the regular grade in many regards, but are only sold in large quantities and may contain some flaws that make them less than ideal for culinary uses of Himalayan salt blocks. Starting a new club and want a luminous wall of salt? Building out a wine cellar? Sprucing up a spa? That’s the idea.

Mark Bitterman :: Jul.26.2008 :: News & Musings, Salt Blocks :: 2 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 :: Salt Blocks :: No Comments »