Flavored salts: Dare to dip

We've seen flavored vinegars and flavored oils. An outfit called Saltistry (salt artistry, get it?) makes flavored salts. And not just the obvious flavors, such as herbs and spices. Preserved-lemon salt. Lavender gray salt (made with an unrefined sea salt). Truffle salt.

Last night it threw a public tasting at the Beverly Hills-adjacent Food Court L.A., and it was like a lot of tastings -- that is, a mob of people crowding around a buffet table and getting in each other's way at the best item (that would be the tiny roasted peewee potatoes -- so small I thought at first they were olives -- which you were supposed to dip in truffle salt; excellent earthiness). At this one, people connected with the event also wandered around encouraging everybody to dip freely and not confine themselves to the recommended flavor combinations.

Personally, I found most of the flavor combinations, even the non-recommended ones, to be charming or at least plausible, except for cantaloupe and coconut black salt, and I suspect watermelon and truffle salt might not have worked so well either. The clementine slices with tangerine salt were very good (if kind of a no-brainer), but preserved-lemon salt also proved an excellent foil for the clementines.

After two times around the table and trying 18 different salts on fruits, candies (chocolates and salty caramels -- surprisingly good with the lavender salt), raw fish, flank steak and duck rillettes, my ears were ringing. But maybe that was the noise of the crowd.

So I headed for the bar. It was making margaritas (with lime-flavored flake salt), Salty Dogs (tangerine salt) and Bloody Marys (six-pepper salt). I'm sure they were interesting and all, but this was the only open bar I've ever seen where more people were lining up for plain spa water than for cocktails. We'd all had way more than a grain of salt.

-- Charles Perry

Comments

[Oatmeal Cookie Guy]

Flavored/gourmet salt is showing up all over the place...even in such "common" places as Le Pan Quotidien.

In Manhattan, there's a new(ish) restaurant called Gilt. (It's in the old Le Cirque space.) They served smoked salt alongside some amazing baguettes. The combination of the crusty bread, the smooth butter, and the smoky, crunchy salt was amazing. I'd go back for the salt alone!

[RoxSmith]

Hey, as much as I love the good ol' American chip, I much prefer the fleur del sel, or any salt of the sea on my meals. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it!

[LG]

Who says that sprinkling unrefined sea salts with pure ingredients to your food is complicated? Stating that we don't "need specialty salts" seems like you're over simplifying and demonizing the wrong thing here. The real problem is the excessive sodium found in processed foods!

When will the medical community start to speak more specifically about the real problems in the american diet? I daresay that a few pinches of fleur de sel on a roasted baby potato has anywhere near the SODIUM found on a potato chips!

[LG]

When will the medical community stop aligning sea salts with the absurd amounts of SODIUM found in our procesed food supply???? I daresay that Charles Perry was better off eating the food that was prepared with no salt and then dipping/sprinkling modest amounts of pure sea salt just before eating, then he would have been eating canned/frozen anything from the grocery store! come on !!!!

[N.Walter]

For the unexperienced cooks, having these flavorful salts could be quite handy.

[Gene Perry]

d00d - remember who rolled you the old-school Temecula rocksalt for Christmas - all part of my creative trailblazing ways Uncle Charles. Rock on.

[Alexa Fleckenstein M.D.]

Don't want to be a spoiler - but this would be case where simplifying would come handy. We don't really need specialty salts, I'd say.

At least, you ended with all of them drinking water. I hope it was not iced. Because warm water from the inside, cold water from the outside - remember?

Alexa Fleckenstein M.D, author.