If you’ve been a fine dining establishment recently you may have noticed that a once humble condiment is now taking centre stage. Sprinkled on carpaccio, gracing a bowl of edamame beans or dusting house-made focaccia, sea salt in its finest forms adds a delicious zing and welcome crunch to anything it graces.
Throughout history human beings and animals have had an inherent taste for salt. It is in fact virtually the only mineral we regularly add to our food. While all salts are nutritionally the same, there are subtle differences in texture and flavour that make all the difference in a recipe. Table salt is mined from underground deposits by pumping down water, which is then evaporated and refined until it forms very fine crystals. It’s treated with calcium silicate to prevent clumping so it will pour easily from a shaker. Kosher salt is created with a similar process but the crystals are large and pyramid shaped. Essentially the same in flavour to table salt, kosher salt is preferred by many chefs because it doesn’t stick to the fingers when added by hand to a dish.
Sea salt is made by evaporating seawater. Although some brands are evaporated artificially, the high-end salts are evaporated in natural basins, usually by hand using traditional Celtic raking methods to collect the forming crystals. Minerals from the seawater give the salt unique colours and flavours.
A quick perusal of your local fine food shop will reveal many different kinds of sea salt. Alaea, or Hawaiian sea salt, gets its unique reddish color and taste from the red oxides in a special volcanic clay (alaea) that is added to the salt. French gray salt – sel gris – is a naturally moist, unrefined sea salt harvested on the Guerande salt marshes of Brittany in France. It gets its gray colour from the natural minerals in the water. Using a method in use since the time of the Vikings, smoked sea salt is smoked over wood fires to infuse the crystals with the aromas of the burning wood used. It is an excellent, natural way to add smoky flavour
to foods.
But the queen of the sea salts is by far the French fleur de Sel, or “flower of the sea.” This ultra premium salt is harvested in September by workers who sweep the crystals from the surface of the evaporating seawater with flat, chestnut-wood spades. The small, flaky crystals are perhaps the purest of all salts and have a complex, less saline taste that evokes the sea on your palate.
Whatever kind of gourmet sea salt you choose it is important to remember that they will easily lose their unique flavor when cooked or diluted. Since they come with a hefty price tag, they should be used as “finishing salts” and added to a dish just at the end of cooking or sprinkled on just before presentation. But no matter which sea salt you use, it will quickly become the most indispensable ingredient in your kitchen.
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Salts of the Earth
Oven Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Smoked Salt
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