March 23, 2005
ATTENTION NANCY CRATER:
Salts of the earth: Connoisseurs use a rainbow of choices to improve food (DEBRA HALE-SHELTON, Associated Press)
Adding salt "to taste" isn't so simple in these days of specialty foods, exotic ingredients -- and probably more kinds of salt than you, and certainly your grandmother, ever dreamed of.Salt connoisseurs aren't just shaking out the stuff. They're carefully "pinching" it, savoring the texture and color as much as the taste of often-coarse, usually hand-harvested crystals of white, pink, red, gray, golden, even black salt.
Take Rob Seideman, owner of the Internet business Salt Traders, www.salttraders.com. He and his wife and business partner, Kelly Hall, keep 14 kinds of salt in their kitchen pantry.
"I have them all in my kitchen because there is no such thing as the best salt," Seideman says. "There is only the best salt for the purpose at hand."
Visit a specialty food store, and you can find everything from sea salt to flake salt, smoked salt to rock salt, kosher salt to table salt. There's fine and coarse salt. There's even salt like the Vikings once made.
There's inexpensive salt for routine cooking, and wallet-busting salt best used as a precious garnish.
The salt from France known as fleur de sel is the delicate-flavored pale "caviar of salt," says Patty Erd, co-owner of The Spice House in Chicago, Evanston, Ill., and Milwaukee. It smells of the sea and violets and is excellent as a garnish on roasted asparagus or cherry tomatoes.
There's the golden-brown, almost jewel-like Danish Viking smoked sea salt. Seideman was recently selling an ounce of it for $9.75. It's so delectable and unusual in taste that Seideman says, "I don't refer to it as my favorite salt because it's so much more than a salt. I really refer to it more as my favorite ingredient." He suggests using it as a dry rub for meat. Some restaurants use it to give other foods a smoked taste.
Indeed, I found the Viking salt to be the one of several sampled that was so delicious and aromatic (it conjured up for me a favorite back-home barbecue spot) that I not only ate a few stand-alone crystals but reached for seconds.
The Brothers won some reknown as kids with our creation of French-Fried ice, achieved by sprinkling table salt on an ice cube--especially good in summer. But I always found the simplest salt recipe to be the best: the Father Judd kept a bag of Hailite on the front porch and you could just dip in to keep a steady supply of rock salt in your pocket for replenishment all winter (one caveat, avoid pocket lint, which gives the salt a dry and gamy taste). Posted by Orrin Judd at March 23, 2005 7:55 AM
We used to pay kids in grade school to lick the big lumps of Halite that littered our playground during the winter months.
Posted by: Governor Breck at March 23, 2005 8:12 AMMeanwhile, Bart is off somewhere panicking about scarce resources.
Posted by: Peter B at March 23, 2005 8:16 AMGov:
Well, you grew up rich. In the 'hood we were buying rock off the pusher man even in the '60s.
Posted by: oj at March 23, 2005 8:20 AMJust a couple of "salt of the earth" brothers. Avoid salt-peter.
Posted by: AllenS at March 23, 2005 8:22 AMThere's a three-quarter mile thick salt block northwest of where I live near Carlsbad, N.M., which occassionally can be seen from the surface as huge salt ponds the look for all the world like frozen lakes, even when it's 110 degrees in the middle of the summer.
Lots of salt mining operations up there, and the government also found it's a great place to store low-level radioactive waste, 2,100 feet down in the middle of the block. No idea how the salt tastes, but once the Pecos River passes over it, you pretty much don't want to drink the water any time it's travelling through Texas to the Rio Grande.
Posted by: John at March 23, 2005 8:27 AMSome simple advice. Avoid regular Morton's iodized salt. Kosher salt is pretty much more of the same. Buy an inexpensive brand of sea salt - La Baleine is readily available - for cooking. Use the fine for seasoning and the coarse for cooking water.
Save your money. Most people's palates and cooking skills are simply not up to the task of appreciating and differentiating the subtleties (mine included) of these products. If YOU can, it's likely your family or dinner guests cannot.
Indeed, probably the hardest skill to acquire in cooking is seasoning food. If you have to ability to add the right amount of salt and can tell when food is properly cooked, you are most of the way to being a good cook.
My palate isn't attuned enough to appreciate the difference between a $100 bottle of wine and a $20 bottle, although the difference between a $10 bottle and a $20 bottle is quite noticeable. However, I am certain that $10/oz salt is beyond my ability to fully appreciate and frankly it reminds me of those Hong Kong parvenus who put gold leaf on their food.
I'll stick with the Coarse or Fine Sea Salt I get at Shop-Rite for $1.69/lb.
Posted by: bart at March 23, 2005 10:15 AMEat some salt-water fish once or twice a week and you'll get more than enough iodine in your diet to avoid the problem.
Posted by: bart at March 23, 2005 11:06 AMCommodity snobbery is a sure indication that there are too many people with too much time and money on their hands, and no idea what to do with it.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at March 23, 2005 1:04 PMOJ:
What Bart said. Also if you eat just about any commercially-made food product, including bread, you will probably get enough. If you don't, just use popcorn salt for that popcorn you are always popping - sticks to the butter better. I'll make an exception for that.
PS - Ain't my goiter, it's the double chin I've been developing due to lack of exercise over the winter.
Posted by: Rick T. at March 23, 2005 1:06 PMWhen I was a wee one, my cat and I would taste the salt licks in the barn. Then, my Dad and I would load them up and deliver them to the cows, with the cat along for the ride.
Posted by: Stormy70 at March 23, 2005 2:12 PMYou're one omnivorous creature, OJ. Small wonder you're concerned about earthly appetites.
Posted by: ghostcat at March 23, 2005 2:35 PMIt's not snobbery to think that kosher or sea salt tastes far better than regular iodized table salt. I used to think that sodium chloride naturally had a certain unpleasant metallic taste to it, but now I know better.
In other spice news, freshly-ground pepper is leagues better than the powdered stuff.
Posted by: PapayaSF at March 23, 2005 5:36 PMIf you can find Maldens Sea Salt get it and all the bases are covered.
Posted by: Tom Wall at March 23, 2005 6:31 PMMy daughter came into the back yard a few days ago licking the cup we use to spread ice melt with. "Dad, I found some really sweet salt" she said.
Have any of you run into Redmond RealSalt where you live? Our valley (the Sevier, in central Utah) is underlaid by (among other things) a lot of salt. There has been an open salt mine in the town of Redmond for many years. Until about ten years ago they just sold the stuff by the ton for use on roads and for livestock. Then someone got the bright idea of putting it in bottles and marketing it as table salt. Apparently they have won a number of awards. The locals are pretty bemused by the whole thing, but most of us use it at the table - it does taste pretty good. (Lots of trace minerals as well - including arsenic and selenium which are pretty common in some of our local soils)
Posted by: Jason Johnson at March 23, 2005 11:05 PMFor years I have battled wine snobbery. when ever a waiter asks what wine I want I always say Prestone.
Now salt snobbery? Oy Veh! Too many dollars, not enough sense.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at March 23, 2005 11:07 PM