Salt, salt, salt.
After deciding that sel gris really does make food taste better, I recently decied to try some others and purchased Hawaiian Pink, Peruvian Pink, Himilayan Pink, Alderwood Smoked and Bolivian Rose. What food, (cheese, vegetable, fruit) would be a good vehicle to do a taste testing to discern the differences in these salts? Does anyone prefer one of these salts over others?
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12 Comments:
Did you buy all those salts from here? I love their Alderwood Smoked Salt and we also use a lot of the Himalayan pink.
What I would recommend is something very bland with little or no personality of its own.
* Toasted baguette spread with a minimal amount of unsalted butter.
* Toasted baguette spread with a minimal amount of cream cheese.
* A slice of fresh mozzarella
* Quail eggs, fried sunny side up or over and sprinkled with your salts.
chiff0nade at 4:37PM on 06/04/08
A poached egg sounds just about right. Chiff0nade has a great idea to use quail eggs so you can sample many salts without getting too full.
bitchincamero at 4:47PM on 06/04/08
I actually read about someone using these different salts on ice cream! You could use vanilla ice cream as a blank slate to try out these flavors. Sure, it'll add some sweetness but doesn't it sound good?!
Hillary
Chew on That
Chew on That at 5:33PM on 06/04/08
Forget about trying them on another substance at first. Dissolve an equal amount of each in the same amount of water, and taste them that way first. Then go investigate eggs or whatever you'd like. The ice cream is a little too numbing to the taste buds, it would seem to me, for fairly serious tasting, but, hey, I just wrote a restaurant review that lauded a dessert of a warm chocolate chip cookie with ice cream on top of it, saying the salty notes of the cookie made a great partner with the ice cream. That's not serious, it's just for fun.
lemons at 5:44PM on 06/04/08
Howabout unsalted butter, piece of countryish bread, sprinkle of salt. Yum.
pemabuk at 7:48PM on 06/04/08
This is interesting. I purchased some tea smoked sea salt while traveling and it sits on my counter waiting for me to figure out what to do with it. It was so intriguing. Now I am at a complete loss. It does have a lovely smoky scent.
izatryt at 9:17PM on 06/04/08
hardboiled egg (the white only)
tmj529 at 11:29PM on 06/04/08
How about unsalted butter, piece of countryish bread, sprinkle of salt. Yum.
This is the way I sampled the Alderwood Smoked Salt for the first time at a restaurant called Oystercatchers in Tampa. I generally don't butter my bread but a very determined waitress encouraged me to sample the salt this way. OMG. I think I ate more buttered bread during that meal than I have in the prior ten years combined. She advised mixing the butter with the salt. Instead, I spread the tiniest amount of butter possible, just so the salt would stick, then sprinkled the salt onto the bread. I could taste that Alderwood Smoked salt before the bread reached my mouth. That last nasal in-breath before food enters your mouth is a prelude to the smoky wonderfulness that is to come.
chiff0nade at 7:34AM on 06/05/08
lately I've been getting thoughs bags of caramel squares and a sprinkle of fleur de sel, sweet with that salt crunch, it's good to set out for company and partys..
Markbb at 9:22AM on 06/05/08
Sliced fresh ripe tomatoes and plain halved hard boiled eggs are also excellent vehicles for salt-as-only-seasoning.
Amandarama at 10:27AM on 06/05/08
Thanks one and all for your great suggestions. I now have enough ideas to throw a salt tasting party.
I'll put out the salt and serve:
Unsalted buttered bread
Bread spread with cream cheese
Hard boiled eggs
Fresh mozzarella
Sliced tomatoes
Caramel squares
Vanilla ice cream
Hmmm, now I have to come up with right wine pairings...
LindaY at 11:43AM on 06/05/08
-Fresh heirloom tomato slice w/ a dab of mayo
-egg over easy soft
KtMc24 at 4:02PM on 06/05/08