"gourmet salt" news and stories

Thanksgiving is over, the bird has been eaten, and Christmas is right around the corner. That means we're in the final shopping push as December 25 barrels toward us. If you're looking for something unique to give your foodie friend this holiday season, I suggest a collection of sea salts.

Some argue that flavored salts are a cheat, but I disagree. When used properly, a flavored salt will magnify the flavors in your dish and make the good taste wonderful. A small pinch of garlic sea salt will perfect your steamed or sauteed vegetables. Some smokey salt will add a nice hint of flavor to your meat.

To pull together your gift: Either grab a basket to store the salts in, or re-package the salts in vessels that show off the crystals inside. Long test tubes or glass-topped canisters collected into a larger tin work quite well.

Happy Shopping!

Yesterday there was an Ask Metafilter thread about the differences between regular, kosher and sea salt. Although the thread did, at times, degrade into discussion of surface area and human origins in the sea, it did produce a few useful resources.

Slate ran an extensive review of several types of salt, from Morton to Maldon, last spring. Gourmet Sleuth also has a great rundown of different types of salt, as well as a salt FAQ. In print, there are some good salt discussions in Jeffrey Steingarten's It Must Have Been Something I Ate and Robert Wolke's What Einstein Told His Cook. And, of course, here's a transcript of the Good Eats episode about salt.

Perhaps the most definitive and useful thing to come out of the discussion: coarse salt is better for margaritas.