Peruvian Warm Spring Finishing Salt

Waters from a warm mountain spring 10,000 in the Peruvian Andes, seeps into terraced salt ponds where it has been hand-harvested for over 2,000 years. The faintly pink crystals have a high moisture content and lower mineral content, making them an exciting alternative to traditional French salts such as sel gris. The pearl-pink crystals of Peru Mountain Spring radiate the beauty of a child's quick laugh rippling from a hut on the banks of the Urubamba river.

The finishing salt's flavors are complex and mild, rounded and semi-sweet, and dissolve with an understated but resilient crunch on food. Structure, subtle flavor, and rich cultural associations provide a stunning context for a variety of foods, perhaps tracing history, from pre-Inca dishes of tamales, potato, huanaco deer, and seafoods ranging from perch in a slipper of banana leaf to an astringent scallop ceviche. From there it assumes its place in criollo recipes such as lomo saltado and papas a la huancaena based on the beef, hen, and rabbit introduced with the influx of Spaniards, Italians, French, Germans, Chinese, and Japanese.

Mineral content: Sodium, Calcium, Potassium, Magnesium, Iodine