An Introduction to Gourmet Salt

Salt is the prism through which the ingredients, dishes, and people of the world can be experienced in all their fullness and variety. This may sound like hyperbole, but sprinkle the parchment fine flakes of Maldon sea salt on home-grown butterleaf lettuce dressed in macerated shallot vinaigrette and you will experience a chlorophyll dynamo of flavor that seems to strum at the very heart of nature. Patter the pink flesh of fresh-caught trout with the stratified lacework flakes of Halen Môn and brace yourself against the sure compulsion to make offerings of hekatombs and burnt flesh to the sea god Poseidon. Let fall dark crystals of Turkish Black Pyramid salt on medallions of Armagnac-seared pork and plantains and you will feel the turgid rush of Incan discovery. Grind smoked salt on hand-churned ice cream and you will trade your house for an igloo. Salt sates the Alchemist’s desire, transmuting food to fantasy.

The salting of food predates even cooking, as earliest man recognized the unrivalled culinary importance of the salt crystals forming naturally by the seashore, or the salt rocks sought out by other animals in the nearby hills. By the time humans had developed language, the use of salt with food was already commonplace.

In Iranian legend, Hushang succeeded his grandfather Kayumars as the first of the Pishdadian Kings while still a youth. Returning from a hunting expedition one cold day, Hushang encountered a snake coiled on a rock and tried to kill it with a throw of his ax. However, the young man’s aim was off and the flint-ax struck the rock, sending bright sparks into dying embers of the evening sky. The discovery of fire brought all the benefits of the fire god Hephaestus’ trade, including the smithying of iron and all attendant technologies, from swords to frying pans.

What the legend does not tell is that salt was almost certainly the economic pillar of the Pishdadian empire by the time this discovery was made. No one knows whether the practice of salting meat originated with religious rites, as an experiment with flavor, or with some chance observation of its curative properties—but it was this last use upon pivoted which the whole of human civilization.

Salt could be used for the curing and preservation of fish and meats, and later, in the baking of bread. Food preservation allowed for provisioning during winter months and dry seasons, bringing stability and health to societies, and strengthening them against attack by others. Stability and security allowed larger groups of people to live together, increasing social complexity and accelerating the rate of human progress. Salt-preserved foods also permitted the formation of trade networks across sea and land, bringing wealth, cultural diversity, and culinary discovery to rising nations. Salting was, in short, what enabled mankind to rise above his animal self, to think strategically about his survival and begin exploring the greater world around him.

While our ancient ancestors may have been preoccupied with the use of salt for preserving food—perhaps in some instances even to the detriment of flavor—the practice of using salt judiciously to enhance and improve flavor has existed on for thousands of years. As agriculture and animal husbandry progressed and trade expanded, the diversity and quality of ingredients improved. The art of interplaying disparate flavors evolved to the point where great culinary traditions took shape.

Finishing Salts

Salt is food’s most effective flavor enhancer. The use of salt strategically, as an ingredient with distinct physical properties and culinary traditions, finds its fullest expression in finishing salt. The combination of mineral content, residual moisture, and crystal structure gives salt infinitely varied and uniquely complex behaviors of different foods. You can't consider the power of salt separate from the food it is seasoning, any more than can separate fire from the food it is cooking.

The concept of finishing salt is straightforward: fling a carefully chosen, artisan made salt across the surface of your food, and bite. As you eat, food and salt combine—first a flash of salt... then the food... a flicker of salt and now fuller food flavors, and then a faint spark of salt catches at the richest and most complex flavors of the food. With finishing salt, the relationship of salt and food evolves with every bite. The rewards are increased intensity of flavor, greater flavor complexity, exciting new textures and even aromas, and a heightened awareness of the very process of tasting food. Finishing salts promise the opportunity for a new, more intimate relationship with food.

Exotic salts are staging an extraordinary comeback, regaining ground lost to industrial salt manufactures in the late 1800s. Once again you can find a variety of quality salts. However, the abundance of crazy-looking, exotically-named salts has not always redounded to the benefit of the meal. To a large extent, the true potency of finishing salts remain shrouded in hype and hullabaloo, and even a certain materialism—as the entrancing crystalline cosmology of a sublime finishing salt appeals to our jay-bird love of all things golden bright and gemstone shiny.

Most finishing salts come from the sea. We take great care to select every sea salt with an eye to the purity of the water source from which the salt came, and the few quarried salts we carry are exclusively hand-harvested. As a result, our finishing salts are unrefined yet pure, produced in ways that are complimentary and respectful of the environment, local economies, and regional culinary traditions.

The Meadow’s salt sets have been composed to help everyone, from professional chefs to rabid foodies to regular-eatin’ folk of every stripe, gain a working understanding of finishing salt. With just a handful of salts we can explore the physics and chemistry of salt on food, and unlock the infinite possibilities of their combined forces. The magic of finishing with salt is that it allows salt’s complex crystals to come into a much more intimate and dynamic relationship with your food, and your palate.

We can organize our exploration of finishing salts by analyzing their constituent parts. The lion’s share of a salt’s power can be attributed to three physical properties: mineral content, crystal structure, and moisture content. Secondary properties include culinary tradition, health benefits, cultural and geographical associations, beauty, and economic and environmental appeal. While some salts suffer from the snob appeal of being hard-to-find, expensive, or endorsed by celebrities, even these have a place.

The Meadow’s Starter Set of finishing salts contains a selection of six salts that effectively illustrate how minerality, moisture, and crystal structure determine the behavior of finishing salt on food. Crystals shaped in flakes, pyramids, granules, chunks, strata, fractalized blocks, contain a complex mix of trace minerals, and may also contain varying degrees of residual moisture.

The marvel of finishing salts is that no single set of definitions can fully explain them. However, here are some ground rules for working with these finishing salts: 1) use less salt—or none at all—during the preparation of a dish, leaving your food with its natural flavor before finishing with salt; 2) appreciate salt as a object, opening yourself up to the mineral burst of an undissolved salt crystal on your food; 3) experiment freely, be playful, taking the opportunity to use your own creativity to explore your unique food, cooking, and taste preferences. Once you achieve success using finishing salt you will never go back.

The Gourmet Salt Starter Set

Fleur de Sel de Guérande — No collection of finishing salts is complete without finishing fleur de sel. The Meadow’s Fleur De Sel de Guérande is formed by wind and solar evaporation in stunning Loire-Atlantique department of France. Formerly capital of the Pays Guérandais, an ancient region of the Duchy of Brittany, Guérande produces the quintessentially French sea salt: bright and briny, with a clean mineral quality and delicate residual moisture that give balance and body. This is your all-around finishing salt, and will win you over for life once you’ve had it on the succulent, massive grilled sardines of the Brittany coast. The more delicate the flavor, the better fleur de sel will behave, sparking nuance and depth from everything from eggs in the morning to popcorn at night—not to mention fine vegetable dishes and poultry, pork, cheeses, even chocolate and caramels!

Sel Gris de l’Île de Noirmoutier — Over 15% of the material in The Meadow’s Sel Gris de l’Île de Noirmoutier is trace minerals, making it among the highest mineral content finishing salts anywhere. After sun and wind evaporate the seawater to a dense brine, it is flowed into saltpans to crystallize. While crystals of fleur de sel may be forming on the surface of the pan, the crystals that form within the brine itself are precipitating to the bottom, where, as in the days of the earliest Celtic settlers, wood rakes are still used today to harvest the salt. High residual moisture (13% water by volume) give sel gris resiliency on moist foods, and sel gris sprinkled on meat is a signature dish in French, Spanish, and Italian cooking. The introduction of sel gris into the kitchen also provides a happy occasion for non kosher eaters to toss their box of Kosher salt (essentially pure sodium chloride) over their left shoulder straight into the waste bin. Why? Kosher salt is made of porous grains designed for koshering, which seeks to remove the moisture from meat. To keep moisture in, and to infuse mineral richness, use sel gris as a permanent replacement for Kosher. In addition to finishing on meats, cheeses, and even deserts, The Meadow’s Sel Gris de l’Île de Noirmoutier is ideal for roasting, boiling pasta water, and recipes where dissolving the large crystals is not a problem.

Maldon — Ah, Maldon, our knees grow weak. On Essex, England’s Blackwater river estuary, after a period of dry weather, during the fortnightly spring tides, seawater is collected for saltmaking. The water is poured into stainless steel saltpans mounted on an intricate system of brick flues that give the exact heating pattern required for the formation of Maldon’s massive yet parchment-fine flake crystals. This is the ultimate salt for daily use in salads, with a texture equivalent to fireworks and a crisp, balanced flavor. The large flakes ignite fresh contrast in the color, texture, and flavor of broiled meats and especially vegetables. Crunching Maldon between the finger and thumb, then letting flakes fall to the surface of a lovingly crafted dish, is almost as satisfying as eating it.

Turkish Black Pyramid — This sea salt is hand harvested from the Mediterranean after being channeled through a network of dikes and ponds. The massive pyramidal crystals are combined with activated charcoal to impart color and a trace of organic flavor and body. The Meadow’s Turkish Black Pyramid is intensely salty, and is best used judiciously. With pyramids perched strategically along the surface of a dish so that unsalted areas and salted areas of a food may mix in your mouth, this salt illustrates the profound, inextricable, satisfying relationship between saltiness and flavor. Try on light-colored, heavy-bodied foods such as pork loin, halibut, pastas, and mashed potatoes—or why not think Aztec and strew its black pyramids atop thick pumpkin soup?

Alaea Volcanic — The Meadow’s Alaea Volcanic sea salt underscores the importance of water source and the saltmaker’s craft. Seawater sourced from the ultra pure waters around Molokai are solar evaporated and combined with red Alaea volcanic clay to achieve an ultra mineral-rich sea salt with the clear, refreshing flavor of deep Pacific waters. The salt is used in Hawaii for both seasoning and preserving foods. Hawaiians believe that the baked Alaea clay, which is composed of over 80 minerals, provides a variety of benefits, with detoxifying and healing powers. While the salt has also been used historically for ceremonial purposes such as blessing and purifying sea-going canoes, it also works wonders on seafood, pork, and fruit salads, and can be ground to produce a glinting blend of white and red color.

Halen Môn Gold — Halen Môn sea salt, made from the pure ocean currents off the Welsh coast, is smoked with the wood of an 800 year old oak tree. The result is a finishing salt with large, crackling filo dough layers of crystals impregnated with pungent, warm oak aromas and a full yet clean flavor. It is exceptionally deft at coaxing every nuance of flavor from virtually every dish it finds, and exemplifies the potential for using salt to beautify the table as well as bring forth flavor to food. Works wonders on the most sublime winged creatures such as pigeon or guinea fowl, or sea beasts such as rockfish, abalone, and mussels. Astonishes and thrills on ice cream, crème brûlée chocolates, caramels, marzipans, and everybody’s favorite, flambéed bananas.

The interplay of salt and food is complex, and finding the salts that make the most of your food can take some searching. A salt’s mineral content, crystal structure, grain size, residual moisture, and color all combine uniquely on a given dish. If you are interested in tasting salts for their own merits, excellent mediums for tastings include bread and butter, cucumbers—and try chocolate. Our own favorites? Goat cheese with Turkish Black Pyramid and cocoa nibs; swordfish and mango salsa laced with Alaea; and mixed green salad tossed with a macerated shallot vinaigrette and strewn with Maldon. Every food, preparation, and presentation affords new possibilities. When you discover a new salt, you bring fresh distinction to your life.

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