Salt News

The beautiful thing about cooking with a plate of pink Himalayan salt plates is that the material is about as predictable and well-behaved as a shaved cat in an electrical storm. At least that is how it appears when you first start to use them. Salt is hygroscopic, meaning it has a tendency to drink pure water out of perfectly fine air. Hauled straight out of the mountain in Pakistan, Himalayan salt blocks have varying mineral densities that alter their thermal expansion coefficient, so different parts of the same plate can expand at different rates. At the same time, salt crystals in Himalayan salt blocks are strangely elastic, so the strains of such thermal expansion and contraction can be largely absorbed. Bringing us full circle, fissures and irregularities can appear from rapid heating and cooling, while rinsing and drying them can fuse them back together again. In short, your Himalayan salt brick or plate or block is a little like The Picture of Dorian Gray painted by Georges Braque, secretly reflecting the vagaries and adventures of your kitchen life in its glowing pink cubic crystals.

The prospect of a kitchen utensil harboring unspoken truths about our private kitchen lives, our sordid failures and glittery triumphs, is upsetting to some people. To them, there may be nothing to say but, “Stick with stainless steel.” Many others are not so much averse to the intrinsic mysteriousness and seemingly endless misbehaviors of salt plates, as they are flummoxed. For the benefit of the latter, I would like to share a recent letter I received from a particularly courageous Himalayan salt block user, and offer some replies as best as I can.

Continue Reading »

Mark Bitterman :: Jan.26.2008 :: Himalayan Pink Salt Blocks :: No Comments »

Soy salt is crispy, frothy, mild, savory, and suavely unassuming. Meaty and bready and sea-weedy and saucy at the same time. Soy salt: a salt that walks through a room, like an Asian James Bond (Chow Yun Fat?) approaching the craps table, a man with tigershark eyes moving through the sea’s striated jungle shadows.

You are standing on the deck of a small but sturdy ship, gazing into the blue-green waters below, thinking about touching your toes to the cool brine that ripples and glistens in the fresh morning light. But just below, fast, flashing, the sharks swim. You look at your honey-bunny in the purple velour lounge seat by the cabin door, sipping Bloody Mary from the salt-crusted lip of a aquamarine plastic tumbler, smiling at the sun, listening to Jimmy Buffet. What is there in this moment to pluck at the ukulele of love and death and food and destruction? I look at eating as a way to bridge such dichotomies, a way to embrace your mid-morning glazed craving for a donut as you hum softy sunning in the sun, at the same time existentially thrilling to the teeth-gnashing and liquid mystery below.

When I first tasted soy salt made by the Kamebishi Company, located in the rural town of Hiketa, Kagawa Prefecture, in Japan, I quickly decided that soy salt was not a salt at all. It was more like a foodstuff. Fields of soy, savannas of cattle, whacked up vegetables on a charcoal grill. Randomness. The flavor is as intense and pungent as it is intractable and mild, much like a wine that has been given its time to age. I put it on eggs. Good. I put it on toast. Makes Marmite obsolete (almost). Put it on mixed greens salad. Perfect.

Continue Reading »

Mark Bitterman :: Jan.09.2008 :: Finishing Salts, Flavored Salts :: No Comments »

There was Iburi Jio cherry smoked sea salt from Japan in the cupboard. There was a lone, single, solitary pork loin in the refrigerator.

The Iburi-Jio cherry roasted sea salt in our household needs no explanation (think popcorn, think steak, think summer squash, think sashimi, think buttered toast, think sole, think salmon flatbread, think eye of newt—Iburi Jio is the omniscient presence that weighs in on all the mind’s internal arguments over whether ‘tis nobler to sprinkle a given gourmet sea salt or a prized smoked sea salt).

The pork loin, however, was a bit of a rogue foodstuff for this time of the year. For some reason, it had been bought the very morning of Thanksgiving, and, inevitably for a pork loin bought on the day of gustatory debauchery, it had thereafter lingered. This evening I pulled it out, and after noting with the nose that it was none the worse the wear after the week it had spent in the fridge, I fried it in coconut oil.

Coconut oil, for those of you not in the know, is a strange substance which, in addition to culinary application, has “recommended uses” as a dietary supplement (1 to 4 tablespoons coconut oil daily), for skin care (massage into skin as needed), and for hair care (liquefy, then apply 2 teaspoons cocoanut oil to hair and scalp 1 to 2 hours before washing!). Hmm…

Continue Reading »

Mark Bitterman :: Nov.28.2007 :: Cooking with Salt, Finishing Salts :: 1 Comment »

Brining your turkey, or salt brining any bird for that matter, is a no brainer. Preparing the brine takes minutes and a brined turkey (or brined chicken or brined game hen or brined pigeon or brined pheasant) has more flavor that is better balanced, and has a firmer, plumper texture. Also, salt brining your turkey makes for a juicier bird, every time, meaning it is better when you cook it right, and if the gods are not smiling on your oven today, it is more forgiving when you over-cook.

How does brining work? Simple: a brine is a salt solution, and salt subtly denatures the proteins in the turkey, allowing them to hold more water, making for a juicier bird. Since you are bringing brine into the bird, make the brine of the finest stuff: sea salt and spring water.

So, rather than squeak around the kitchen like a church mouse, I just say it: This is the best turkey brining recipe in the world, bar none. Though there may be fancier brines, more complicated brines, or in the parlance of pun-insensitive management consultants, “more sophisticated brining solutions,” there is not a better way to brine than the old fashioned way. Use other turkey brining recipes as inspiration for elaboration on this recipe, but show your bird your love by sticking to the fundamentals.

My logic is simple: if salt is the key agent in a brine, a better salt will yield a better salt brine. Use the right salt for your turkey brining and you are vouchsafed something I once read (for real) on a fortune cookie: “eternal fun smart joy.” The right salt will contribute mineral complexity to the flavor of your bird, which in this day and age of large-scale farming, is possibly already mineral-deficient to begin with. From a flavor standpoint, this is not subtle.

Rule one to brining your turkey–and there is only one real rule. Never, NEVER use Kosher salt in your turkey brine. Kosher salt is 100% pure sodium chloride, though at times a touch of sodium ferrocyanide is added for good times. Pure sodium chloride in the form of kosher salt is a calamity that has befallen man far more grave than any wrought by Pandora or Eve. Kosher salt, whether dissolved in a brine or, worse yet, added directly to the food you put in your body, is the equivalent of using Velveeta in you fondue, or cream of mushroom soup in your beef Bourguignon. The refined sodium chloride that is Kosher salt has no correlative in your body or on your palate. That is why it tastes harsh, biting, and painfully sharp. Do NOT use Kosher salt. Lots of recipes call for Diamond brand Kosher salt, or Morton’s Kosher salt, and lots of people like to preach earnestly about the superiority of Diamond over Morton’s, or vice versa. To me, both Kosher salts are fine, if, and only if, you are koshering your meat–which is to say, extracting as much fluid from it as possible. If you are not koshering something, do not, ever, use Kosher salt.

So, back to brining your bird…

Continue Reading »

Mark Bitterman :: Nov.19.2007 :: Brining, Cooking with Salt :: 1 Comment »

A while back I promised some photos of Maldon’s new smoked entry into the salt sphere. Here they are, along with some flavor and usage notes.I am eating some of Freddy Guys‘ freshly dry-roasted hazelnuts and drinking a glass of

Amnesia Brewing’s excellent copacetic IPA, which they sell to-go in mason jars, and contemplating Maldon Smoked Sea

Salt. The Maldon Smoked sea salt (smoked primarily with oak, but with a muddling of various other hardwoods in reportedly top secret proportion) is a little sharp, even

astringent in the nose, making it not one of my favorite salts to smell on its own. But that is perhaps irrelevant,

as I don’t need to smell every salt au natural before eating it, and when eating it, interesting things happen.

The delicate crunch of Maldon’s flaky crystals provides a very pleasant sensation in the mouth. Maldon has

preserved all the flaky delicacy of its regular flake seasalt in its hardwood smoked

seasalt. (Strangely, you comem across GIANT mutant flakes now and again (sometimes larger than a quarter), and I don’t recall seeing them so large so often in the non smoked sea salt.)

Then breath through your mouth while you chew. This practice, of course, may take some discretion on your part, as nobody wants to see too much heavy in-breathing and chewing at the table. If you walk amongst the

rough and ready, I definitely encourage you to just breath heavily, flinging Maldon smoked salt, chomping hazelnuts, slugging back gulps of beer, and contemplating the sensation.

But if your lifestyle calls for more reserve–doilys and manners and whatnot–then just try briskly salting your hazelnuts (or bread and butter, or cheese, whatever) and softly pull a breath of air through your ever-so-subtly parted lips (this is something familiar to wine tasters), feeling the action of air, salt, and food combine on your palate.

The result is a bit of a surprise: a waft of sweetness, a sharp-yet-rich quality, almost a little like candied citrus.

So, thumbs up, Maldon. Tonight it is cranberry and candied hazelnuts on a goat cheese and various greens salad for dinner. A perfect opportunity for Maldon Smoked salt.

Mark Bitterman :: Nov.02.2007 :: Finishing Salts, Sea Salt :: 1 Comment »