The Magical Wonders of Sea Salt

Say a cheerful "goodbye" to the awful, generic, supermarket brand of salt that you are used to using and say "hello" to the amazing flavor of pure and lovely sea salt.

Sea salt has been used by the pros to enhance recipes for years and now you can use it too! Many times you can find sea salt in your normal grocery store spice aisle. The kind that I use while cooking to salt meats and veggies during the cooking process comes in a container much like the regular salt brands, making it super easy to find & use. This type of fine grained sea salt is perfect for use during the cooking process, however adding salt at the completion of the dish (finishing salt) is a whole different and wonderful ball game.

Thanks to modern technology you have salts from all over the world at your fingertips. They come in a myriad of colors and flavors and can truly add something beautiful and delicious to a recipe.

One of the best and most versatile types of sea salt is Fleur de Sal. This beautiful salt is harvested from salt ponds in France by artisans using only special wooden tools specifically designed for this purpose. The conditions have to be perfect to produce good Fleur de Sal, which is only harvested once a year. The coarse, slightly damp texture and the scent of the ocean is what makes this salt so special. Sprinkle it on any dish after you have plated it and you will have increased the depth of flavor ten fold. **Try sprinkling it on chocolate things as well (cookies, truffles, brownies, ice cream) it intensifies the chocolate flavor and makes these sweets even more irresistible than they already are.

Grey salt is a wonderful alternative to Fleur de Sal, it is harvested in a similar process and is just as special. This unrefined salt gets its grey color from the minerals in the ponds it is harvested from. You can use this salt all thoughout the cooking process to enhance the dish from the first ingredient to the plating process.

A favorite finishing salt of mine is Black Salt (either Mediterranean or Hawaiian.) The color is attained when natural sea salt crystals are combined with activated charcoal. The flavor and especially the striking color always really adds something to my dishes. I LOVE adding it on top of seared tuna -- So pretty!!!

Another salt which I love using is Pink Sea Salt (Himalayan or from the Murray River in Austrailia.) The fun light pink / peachy color helps to brighten up a dish and adds a lovely mild salt flavor. This salt comes in either coarse crystals for grinding or in beautiful and delicate pyramid shaped flakes.

Explore all of the fun varieties of sea salts! They are beautiful, delicious and amazingly beneficial to the flavor of your cooking. :)

** You can often buy sea salt as a set. You end up getting a lovely variety of salt a lot more inexpensively than if you were to buy all of them separately. Love it!