An Open Letter to Salt

Dear salt,

I love you.

Yours truly and forever,

Lucius.

It’s true. I do love salt. However, I am not in a monogamous relationship with it. At any given time I have at least three varieties on my counter within arm’s reach. And another seven in my pantry.

Why, you ask?

Because salt is important! Because there are a thousand kinds, all with subtly different tastes; with textures from fine to coarse, granular to flaky, dry to damp!

Fleur de sel, kosher salt, and Himalayan salt, coarse and finely ground, respectively. My boos. My main squeezes. My best bitches.

Would you sprinkle a chocolate chip cookie with iodized table salt? (I swear to God if you answer yes I will smack you so hard your ancestors will flinch.)

No, you say? You would sprinkle it with some Maldon or some Ile de Ré? Well, then. I guess we can still be friends.

I could fill pages discussing salt, but I know modern attention spans, so I won’t. The quick version: there’s table salt, kosher salt, sea salts defined by the location of their harvest and sea salts defined by their texture or flake size. Then flavored salts: salts aged with citrus rind, garlic, truffle, wine, or spices, or smoked over various hardwoods.

Kosher salt is the workhorse. I use it whenever I have a liquid phase that I want salt to go: pasta water, in sauces and stews, marinades and vinaigrettes. The liquid is like, “Hey, sailor,” and the salt is like, “On my way!” It goes everywhere the water goes. Its purpose is not to be noticed but to blend in; to become the scaffolding for all the flavors in your dish.

Now for finishing salts. Despite their name, they are not salts intended to refine one’s social graces in preparation for the rites of upper-class patriarchal oppression. No, rather they are the crown of salty stars you anoint your food with right before serving. Like the sprinkles on your ice cream, finishing salts are for winners.

For savory dishes, fleur de sel is my favorite. Celtic sea salt and sel gris are from the same region of France and are similar. These are moist salts (say that out loud in front of others - I dare you) and are light grey in color. Despite that unappealing description they are actually quite pretty, and are downright delicious.

Fleur de sel from Ile de Ré

Maldon is another favorite finishing salt of mine. A sea salt in large, crunchy flakes, this is ideal to sprinkle on top of something sweet: caramels, dense fudge brownies, a really special chocolate chunk cookie. It is easily visible, and lends a crunch along with a little burst of salt to balance sweetness. Imagine that orchestra of flavor on your tongue. CAN I GET A HALLELUJAH? Amen, my brothers and sisters!

Fine sea salt is great for baked goods both savory and sweet. You add it to your dough or batter where it acts invisibly to enhance flavor and/or balance sweetness. Could you use plain table salt? I suppose. but where’s the fun in that? Plus, sea salt gives you bonus minerals like potassium, calcium and magnesium.

Himalayan salt gets its pink color from those extra minerals. It is sea salt, in the sense that it was deposited by ancient oceans. But then it was buried under literal mountains of rock in the Himalayas where it lay protected from humans shitting all over it with their pesticides and their plastic…and their literal shit. It needs no refining, but only to be chiseled into smaller bits in order to be enjoyed.

It’s also fucking expensive.

In the regions where it is mined, it is called “white gold”. I know, a real head-scratcher for me, too. (Umm…pink. It’s pink, guys.)

I use it in liquid-y sweets that need a touch of salt, like ice cream and custards. You may not taste it, but I will know it’s there. And that makes it special. I also keep some in a special salt grinder that I hide from everyone except the people I like. Luckily, I don’t like many people. The bag should last my lifetime.

Admit it. That’s some sexy fucking salt.

Lastly, the flavored salts. Aside from smoked salts, I don’t use them much. Maybe to jam a little extra flavor into a vinaigrette. Otherwise, I usually stick with my boos: kosher, fleur de sel, Himalayan. I sometimes cheat on them with Maldon, my side bitch.

Smoked salts, on the other hand, are awesome. Anything you can think of that would benefit from a little smokiness: salt-cured salmon, a pot of chile, something you’re going to cook on a gas grill but want to taste like it came from a charcoal grill even though you got rid of yours because it was too messy and lighter fluid is gross. See? I understand you.

Thanks for hanging with me, gentle reader. I think we all learned a little something today, didn’t we?