SALTS

By JJCR

At 30 dollars a lb., you need to exercise good judgment when selecting salts for your kitchen especially exotic salts.
For regular cooking, nothing beats .70 cents a lb. kosher salt. It blends well, is clean tasting, easy to cook with, and additive free. All of the qualities of expensive salts get lost during cooking. Their value is geared towards finished food that is , sprinkling on top of food just before serving. Texture as well as taste become important for a finishing salt.
My favorites, hands down, are fleur de sel and maldon sea sals. Their flavors are mild and textures pleasingly crisp.

Ingredients

• FLEUR DE SEL:
• MALDON SEA SALT
• SEL GRIS:

Preparation

Step 1

KOSHER SALT:
Kosher is granular salt thats pressed together. If you look at it microscopically, each grain resembles an ancient Egyptian pyramid stacked cubes that have weathered. Why am I telling you this? Its the design that makes kosher salt so good. This structure dissolves easily and imparts plenty of flavor ( without oversalting) because of its large surface area. We use it in our test kitchen.

RED ALAE HAWAIIAN SEA SALT:
Hawaiian red and black salts ( black not shown) are specialty finishing salts. While they look cool, their flavor is a bit strange. Red salt has an iron taste from the soil thats used to add color, while the black salt tends to have a sulfuric aroma from added purified lava.