Salt of the Earth: Salt is No Longer an Unpretentious Condiment

There used to be two kinds of salt from which to choose at supermarkets: plain or iodized.    Now shoppers face a number of decisions when buying salt.  Should they stick to the regulars or try sea salt?  If so, what grind? What flavor? Should they buy a box or a grinder?  Is it important that the salt be from the Mediterranean?

These same consumers must also make choices when dining out.  In fact, gourmet restaurants are beginning to employ salt sommeliers to help diners make decisions about which salt to add to their steaks or seafood.  For example, The Anantara Resort in the Maldives’ salt sommelier, Nasrulla, helps guests to choose the right salt to bring out the flavor of their food. 

In Las Vegas, Envy Steakhouse doesn’t have a salt sommelier, but they do instruct their serving staff about which salts choices to bring to the table for their guests’ meat and seafood courses. Common choices at Envy are Alaea Hawaiian Red Clay, Hawaiian Black Lava, and Himalayan Pink Salt.  General Manager, Ryan Wolf comments, “Salish salt, an Alderwood smoked sea salt from the Pacific Northwest, is one of the more desirable picks, but diners also enjoy Murray River, a flake salt from Australia with high mineral content.”  The restaurant sometimes has White Truffle infused sea salt, but Wolf notes, “it is expensive.” http://www.envysteakhouse.com/

Black Truffle sea salt is used by chefs at Beverly’s in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, as part of their tenderloin accoutrement tray, and for their signature fries.  They also use smoked sea salt for their Bison Carpaccio, and Fleur de Sel for a number of preparations. 

Beverly’s buys salt from SaltWorks, a Woodinville, Washington, company. SaltWorks sells a five-pound bag of Black Truffle sea salt for $170.  The company, which was founded in 200l, stocks 100 varieties of salt.  While their financial report is private, President Naomi Novotny discusses their very successful business, calling it “one of America’s fastest growing companies,” and noting that when the company began nine years ago, it needed a 1,000 square-foot warehouse for storage.  Today, they have a 70,000 square-foot building to hold four million pounds of salt.

To help perplexed buyers make up their minds about which of the 100 salts to select, SaltWorks lists 15 salts in their online guide:  Coarse Salt, Finishing Salt, Flake Salt, Fleur de Sel, French Sea Salt, Grey Salt, Grinder Salt, Hawaiian Sea Salt, Italian Sea Salt, Kala Namak, Kosher Salt, Organic Salt, Sea Salt, Smoked Sea Salt, and Table Salt.

These 15 categories, however, are just a few of the grains in SaltWorks’ shaker.  A quick look at Smoked Sea Salt shows five different varieties:  Halen Nom Smoked Sea Salt, Maine Smoked Sea Salt, Salish Alderwood Smoked Salt (the one they offer at Envy Restaurant), Bali Coconut & Lime Smoked Salt, and Matiz Mediterraneo.  The more modest Hawaiian Sea Salt offers two choices.  Alaea Sea Salt contains a natural mineral, Alae, which is volcanic baked red clay and is added to the salt for its red color.  Black Hawaiian sea salt, also called Hiwa Kai, gets its color from activated charcoal.

Another black salt, Kala Namak, also called Sanchal, is an unrefined mineral salt from India that has a sulfuric flavor and aroma.  According to SaltWorks’ website, “Vegan chefs have made this salt popular for adding in egg-y flavor to dishes like tofu scrambles.”

Chefs are not the only people interested in new salts.  Major food companies are adding sea salt to their products, hoping to convince consumers that sea salt is tastier or better for them.  Wendy’s new French fries are “Naturally-cut from whole Russet potatoes, cooked skin on, and served up hot and crispy with a sprinkle of sea salt for a taste as real as it gets.”  Campbell’s Soup has a line of 25% less sodium soups, in which it uses “lower sodium natural sea salt, so they taste great!”

The soups may contain less sodium, but this is not necessarily from the use of sea salt.  Katherine Zeratsky, R.D., L.D. of the MayoClinic.com explains, “The real differences between sea salt and table salt are in their taste, texture, and processing not their chemical makeup…. By weight, sea salt and table salt contain about the same amount of sodium chloride.”

Sea salt, therefore, is not achieving its current popularity because of its health benefits.  Rather, chefs and home cooks alike are buying the salts because they offer new textures and flavors in place of  what was once an unpretentious, common, and cheap condiment.