Salt
As with just about everything these days, the culinary world has gotten into salt way down to the most finely parsed "granular" level. From our formative years when it was just Morton Salt "When It Rains It Pours", now we have an impossibly long list of types and sourcings of salt. How many types of salt do you have? (Are you a salt snob? Cooky Cat most definitely is one.)
If you watch any cooking show on television you will plainly see that kosher salt is the go-to salt in professional and gourmet kitchens. Here is something that tuned us up on the subject.
Not so fast with the kosher salt. It seems.
From an excellent article in the Houston Press Blog we excerpt this revealing quote on Kosher Salt from Mark Bitterman's Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral :
Kosher salt is used in many professional kitchens because it is easy to grasp with the fingers, easy to scatter into food, quick to dissolve, convenient to purchase and very, very cheap. The modicum of texture it offers compared to free-flowing iodized salt leads some to believe that it is somehow more natural. The combination of professional endorsement and perceived naturalness has led to the widespread acceptance of kosher salt as "gourmet." But everyone saying it does not make it so. Kosher salt is a processed food with all the mineral and moisture qualities intrinsic to real salt stripped away and with crystal structure fabricated by automated processes. The flavor is antiseptic, like the bright fluorescence of a laboratory on a spaceship drifting aimlessly away from earth. The texture crackles and bounces on your tongue like an undead pet, a battery-operated puppy with no hair, trying to comfort you with its soulless antics. When we cook with kosher salt we sanctify the artificial, we embrace emptiness, we become unfit for our posts - a nakedness far worse than embarrassment.
Here is Salt News an informative source for information on salt (the selected page opens on an article on purity of sea salt) and another for The Meadow, shopping the world of artisanal salts. Salt News is a Blog published by The Meadow. The Meadow was founded by Mark & Jennifer Bitterman and is located in Portland, Oregon.
