During the winter I have time to explore ideas and products that might not necessarily catch my attention during the heady rush of the gardening season. I love salt, and this winter I became interested in the process of artisanal salt making. For once, I am not especially interested in doing it myself, but I am interested in supporting people who do it well.
There are a lot of ways to make salt, and some interesting books about how it is done, but in the course of buying samples of all kinds of salt I discovered that many are based on a large, squarish, heavy crystal that, to me, is a very uninteresting manifestation of salt. It doesn’t look good in the salt bowl and it’s nasty to bite into. I like the delicately crunchy flakes that come from using the fleur de sel process. I also seriously object to the use of artificial flavors, especially “smoked salt” made with a heavy dose of liquid smoke seasoning. They reek, and they don’t do food any good.
The salt that I have ended up loving and using as my “house salt” is one made from ocean water in Sitka, Alaska by the Alaska Pure Sea Salt Company. The owners, for whom this is a considerable labor of love, make wonderful salts with natural flavorings and sell them at a fair price. You can read on their website all about how it is done. What I will say is that the texture and flavor are excellent. I particularly like their alder smoked salt, which has a natural and delicately smoky flavor. A flourish of it on top of low-carb chocolate ice cream elevates an ordinary treat to food of the gods. I borrowed the photo of the controlled, elegant spoonful shown above, because I myself am more inclined to eat a bowlful and was embarrassed to post a picture of my own dessert.
Addendum: Since publishing this post, I have learned from the owners that their vanilla bean salt will join the permanent line-up. It’s wonderful. I have sprinkled it on desserts, but the saltmakers recently enjoyed it on Alaskan king crab, which sounds almost too good to be true. Try it.
You can find their products at the link below. I haven’t tried all their flavored salts, but all the ones that I’ve tried have been good.
https://www.alaskapureseasalt.com/ak-pure-shop
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