Categories
Randomness

the salties

It is pretty obvious to our friends and family that Jordan and I like food. Because of this, we often receive specialty food products as gifts — hot sauce, candies, olive oils, that sort of thing. Thanks to our loving family and friends, our collection of one particular pantry staple outshines all the others … SALT!

Our friend Katie (art history buff turned pastry chef turned organic farmer—seriously, read her blog) was visiting a few weekends ago, and after a bit of good food and wine, we decided we ought to taste test our entire salt collection. It turned out to be a lot of salt. Friends and family, I think we are solid on fancy salts for a while.

Here are the results of our exhaustive sampling. Hopefully, this tongue numbing experience wasn’t in vain and these descriptions will be helpful in your next specialty salt purchase.

A note about our technique. We tried a pinch of each salt, and comparing against our baseline of kosher salt, made notes for each variety. It got rather silly after a point because well, salt is salty. A few salts received specific “awards”, a few were blessed with amazing quotes by Katie, all were salty.

The Salties, in alphabetical order

Black Diamond: Shock and Awe 
Black, salty rocks. This salt is all about the spectacle.

Fleur de Sel: Most Classic 
Straight up salt. Nice flake.

French Grey Sea Salt: #1 Finishing Salt
Mild, oceany and crunchy. “I like a wet salt” – K.L.N.

Hawaiian Sea Salt: Don’t Waste Your $$$
Basically kosher salt.

Kosher Salt (either Morton or Diamond Crystal): Best All-Purpose Salt 
Size makes for even distribution, all purpose, super affordable

La Baleine French
What you think of when you think sea salt.

Lemon Flake
Amazingly lemony. It’s like a salt snack.

Malakai Guava Smoked Salt
Surprisingly mild smokey flavor.  Add to homemade BBQ sauce.

Maldon
Slightly crunchy, very nice texture.

Meadow Sel Gris
Light texture, but a very substantial crystal. “It’s useless it is so big” – K.L.N.

Molokai Red: Most Surprising (in a Good Way)
Fruity at first, with a salty finish. Very crunchy. Would be great on roasted potatoes

Murray River
Light, snowflake-like texture. Very, very salty

Rosemary Salt
Wow! That is rosemary.

White Truffle Salt: Salt of the Gods
Hands down our favorite flavored salt. “This doesn’t even taste like salt. This tastes like food” – K.L.N.

A shout out goes to the tasters for their valiant efforts and also to our amazing friends and family who always seem to bring us back fabulous, salty presents.

-Emily

By The Answer is Always Pork

Cooking and Eating in San Francisco

One reply on “the salties”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.