How Humble Salt Became the King of Ingredients

How Humble Salt Became the King of Ingredients

Oak-smoked, pink Himalayan, Tahitian black—exotic salts are more than a pinch hit for discerning foodies

By Maria Fitzpatrick in the Wall Street Journal

YOU COULD SAY it all started with a deconstructed lasagna. When a small, century-old, family-run saltworks in Maldon, England, got a call from El Bulli, they couldn’t have imagined what would happen next. Wanted: one case of their finest crystals, in perfectly uniform but oversize pyramid shapes, individually wrapped in cotton wool and dispatched in haste to Ferran Adrià—the finishing touch for his latest culinary creation.

It was the mid-1990s, and the revered Spanish chef’s molecular gastronomy had yet to filter through to the masses; to anyone outside the business, treating salt crystals like precious jewels would have seemed like madness. Today? Not so much.

Recipe: Florence Knight’s Buttered Pork, Cannellini Beans and Watercress

Thanks to the influence of tastemakers like Mr. Adrià, the humble substance has become a status ingredient not only in restaurants but in our own kitchens. We’re taking everything with a pinch of the stuff, be it smoked and sultry, coarse and colorful, or delicately interlaced with celery, truffle, cumin or chili.

According to David Turner, global food and drink analyst at market-research firm Mintel, there’s been a marked jump in premium salts coming to market world-wide—22% more in 2014 compared with a year earlier.

It’s perhaps no surprise that these flavored, exotically sourced salts have spilled from specialist grocers into mainstream supermarkets—particularly when restaurant menus are making a feature of salt’s presence and provenance instead of using it as their secret weapon. Not all foodies are buying it, though. “In my view, the vogue for funky salts is rather unnecessary,” says Annie Gray, a U.K.-based food historian, consultant and broadcaster. “The nice colors may be pretty, but at the end of the day, it’s still the same chemical.”

But for some it’s a sign that we’re becoming more adventurous and discerning about our food, right down to the tiniest details. “The choice of where and what we eat is expanding all the time,” says Florence Knight, head chef at London’s Polpetto, who devoted a chapter in her last cookbook to salt. “People are excited by more interesting and challenging flavors in everything from Korean to Japanese food, and things like naturally salty sea vegetables. All of it has exposed seasoning, so people are looking at it differently.”

It’s significant, too, that the way we’re eating now is more relaxed, adds Ms. Knight: “That idea of French fine dining restaurants that wouldn’t put salt on the table, because that would suggest the seasoning wasn’t perfect, has gone.”

Cooks who have until now only dabbled with tiny sprinkles to draw juices out of meat or give an edge to their baking are crushing and garnishing with aplomb. It’s all helped along by the resurgence of age-old preservation methods such as curing and pickling, which involve not only a lot more salt but an “inescapable appreciation for the difference the right [salt] makes,” says Andrew Turner, executive head chef at London’s Hotel Café Royal. “The key to exciting results, whatever you’re cooking, is in the salt’s purity,” he says. “The beauty is, if the quality is that good, you can use less of it.”

Today’s most sought-after (and expensive) salts come from regions that are peculiarly blessed with advantageous geography, climate and geology. Mr. Turner uses pink Himalayan salt, which has a subtle sweet-spicy taste, sourced from salt mines in Pakistan. He has incorporated it into recipes such as a slow-cured gravadlax, where it adds depth of flavor through the curing process.

Recipe: Stéphane Pacoud’s Sea Scallops and Salmon Carpaccio With Black Tahitian Salt and Lime

 “The same recipe can be changed so much by the salt you use,” says Stéphane Pacoud, who earned his culinary stripes under Pierre Koffmann at La Tante Claire, and is now head chef at Bellamy’s in London. The Frenchman uses sel gris, a moist, fragrant, grainy sea salt that comes from the coast around Brittany, for stock and soups, but regularly dips into an armory of different varieties. Oak-smoked flaky sea salt called Halen Môn from the Isle of Anglesey, off the northwest coast of Wales, gives vegetarian dishes a punchier quality: “When you don’t have something like bacon, it can make things taste meatier,” he explains. “Smoked salt also makes red wine sauces taste rich, oaky and expensive. It feels like the oakiness is coming from the wine, but the salt is doing it.”

The right salt also adds an element of decorative fun. “I add color to dishes with Tahitian black salt,” Mr. Pacoud says. “It’s a shiny, black, amazing color, and the look of it on a plate with white fish, maybe a carpaccio with a bit of lime, is quite powerful. People taste it and they’re surprised again.”

Tips and Tricks

• When tasting a sauce or soup over a period of time, be sure to rinse your mouth between tastings. If you’ve tried something six times, you’ll think it needs more salt but it usually doesn’t.
• Avoid underseasoning salad dressings by tasting it on the leaf and not on its own.
• Always add salt slowly. If you oversalt something, you often ruin its texture too, and no amount of fiddling can rescue your dish.
• Salt can be a tool as well as an ingredient. In recipes like salt-baked cod, use it to draw humidity out of the fish so that it doesn’t break up while cooking.

However, not all salt surprises are to be savored. Mr. Pacoud, who makes a salted caramel ice cream, says the trend for putting coarse pieces of salt into recipes, particularly sweet ones, may have gone too far. “I don’t want a strong sense of salt in my mouth,” he says. “Finer salt dissolves more quickly, so you can’t feel the texture of it. The consistency is important for how you experience flavor.”

So is shape. Large but fine flakes, such as Maldon’s pyramid-shaped variety or Cornish sea salt, disperse flavor more evenly across the tongue as they dissolve, which makes them particularly popular for garnishing. Flaky sea salts are also a good base for making your own flavored salts. Ms. Knight, who makes her own celery salt, recommends a less-is-more approach with ingredients like chili, garlic and citrus. “Each of those components is important in cooking, but they’re in a recipe for different reasons,” she says. “Chili adds warmth to a dish, whereas salt is there to heighten flavor. You don’t necessarily want to keep adding both in equal measure.”

Really appreciating salt also means knowing when to play it low-key in the kitchen, says Mr. Pacoud. “It doesn’t always have to be loud,” he says. “If someone can’t identify that there’s salt in a dessert, but something is making their taste buds come alive...that’s wonderful. It’s important to preserve that magic.”

THE CRYSTAL MAZE // A Guide to Salt

CELTIC OR GRAY COARSE SEA SALT // Collected from the salt marshes around southern Brittany, sel gris has a moist consistency and a rich, unpurified mineral flavor. Use for: salting stocks, cooking vegetables, rubbing meats. Grind into a simple salt dough to encase a lamb joint or beetroot; it will cook them to perfection, sealing in flavor. It’s also great for cooking medium-rare steaks, as it tends not to draw out too much moisture from meat.

BLACK HAWAIIAN LAVA SALT // These glossy crystals get their black color from volcanic charcoal remnants, and a bold, smoky topnote to match. Use for: decorative finish, and to add an interesting dimension to fruit, seafood and meat. Don’t use to cook, as it will dissolve, leaving a black residue.

FLEUR DE SEL // Gathered from salt pans, notably round the town of Guérande in Brittany, and also in the Camargue, this very white salt has a snow-like consistency and a delicate, earthy flavor with a slight hint of violets. Use for: finishing only. Add just a pinch to enhance the flavor of raw or cooked food. Try on a simple dish such as ripe, sliced tomatoes.

PINK HIMALAYAN SALT // Mined in the Himalayan foothills in Pakistan, it gets its pinkish tinge from traces of iron oxide, and has a hint of minerally spice and sweetness. Use for: Fun. Buy in slabs and cook meat over it on your barbecue, for a surprising smoky/salty twang. Or use it to infuse vinegar. Let the vinegar evaporate off, and it will turn back into salt, but with a sweet, vinegary twist.

MALDON SEA SALT // Soft, translucent, and flaky in texture, this has a mellow, distinctive, almost-sweet flavor, and is soft on the palate. It is unpurified but force-dried, which gives it a cleaner taste than some sea salts. Use for: just about anything. Fast-dissolving due to its form, it is versatile in cooking, and brings out the richness in meats and chocolate. Use to finish dishes, crushing the grains between the fingers and letting them fall naturally, or to add texture to recipes where you want a bit of crunch.

Poster's comments:

1)  Ingesting salt is a sensitive PC subject these days.

2)  Conventional wisdom is try keep today's sedentary ingestion at around 2.4 grams per day.

3)  There was a time when salt was literally worth its weight in gold.

4) Now anyone who sweats a lot usually has to ingest more salt, often just to keep from getting cramps. If you allow yourself to get dehydrated, it often takes 3 or 4 hours to recover.

5)  Since calculating salt ingestion can be difficult at best, just try keep consumption down in a sedentary type situation most experience these days. Now for those who may sweat a lot, like athletes, outside farmers, and some military types, they often need to ingest more salt just to keep cramping down.