National Culinary Review

FLAVORS

Stock Your Pantry with These Eight Salts

Keemun tea/cherry wood smoked salt, in tea chest, right, is dusted on housemade potato and root vegetable chips at the Pairings and Statler Lounge bars at The Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers.

Fleur de Sel Use: butter, fatty pork, honeyed toast, banana tart, banana flambée, banana bread, bananas

Flake

Use: green salad, tabouli or farro salad, tomato salads like Greek or caprese, foie gras, rolls, butter cookies

Julian Landa

sand in the jar, has a warm, rich, mellow flavor and a fine texture. If you're finishing something more delicate, such as a panned fish, it blends better than the Murray River.” The sel gris, he adds, is inexpensive enough to be suitable for many other applications. “We use it to start our sauerkraut, for instance. It's also fantastic on oysters."

a competitive advantage and a new way to market themselves.

Sel gris/Korean sel gris
Use: all meats for cooking and
finishing, preserves,
wild mushrooms, pasta water,
steamed vegetables and
butter, caramel

Molokai Alaea Use: Fish, chicken, pork, sausages, rice, fruit, salsa

WORTH ITS WEIGHT
Fehribach touches on a sensitive subject—
price. Gourmet salts do cost more than
their commodity counterparts, but, insists
Bitterman, the same is true for many
things chefs purchase. “The problem is
that salt is viewed more like water, as an
insignificant, no-cost component. The fact
is, even the priciest artisanal salt is still the
cheapest ingredient in any dish. Employed
mindfully, judiciously and for greatest
effect, a little goes a long way.”
Naomi Pomeroy, chef/owner of Beast
in Portland, Ore., gives her meats a final
sprinkling of Normandy fleur de sel
just before plating, crusts scallops with
triangular shaped Maldon flakes, favors
a smoky grey salt topping on a chocolate
caramel tart, and puts just enough truffle
salt in her demi glace to bring out the
earthiness of the stock.

Mongolian Blue Use: grate over: butter, fresh root vegetables, truffles and pasta, lemon- and salt-crusted chicken, duck confit

But she confesses that kosher salt is still her go-to option for most applications. “I’m comfortable with it. I know it, and can measure by feel. I’d like to get rid of the mass-produced stuff, but really need to take the time to get familiar with these better salts so that I can work with them in the same intuitive way.”

Mongolian Rose Use: freshwater fish, fresh root vegetables, salad, green beans, custard, chocolate

Getting educated, Bitterman admits, can seem daunting, but the payoff is worth the effort. “Natural artisanal salts are an exciting new culinary frontier for chefs to explore, offering the potential to upgrade the flavor of everything they prepare.”

Moroccan Atlantic/
Moroccan sea salt
Use: couscous; lamb stew
with harissa; roasted
vegetables with cumin;
grilled sea bass with
caraway, lemon, and cilantro

The National Culinary Review | January 2011

Beyond bottom-line considerations, this is a plus, because people are under increasing pressure to cut back on the amount of sodium—one of salt’s two primary elements—that they consume. The real culprit in the American diet is the huge quantity of it “hidden” in processed and packaged foods. But chefs, asserts Bitterman, who can create great-tasting dishes with less salt, which equals reduced levels of sodium, have

Vietnamese sel gris Use: omelets, stir-fried anything, spicy beef soup, pan-seared beef with chiles

Laura Taxel is a Cleveland-based journalist and author who writes about food, chefs and the restaurant business for consumer and trade publications.