It is the most common and widely used food additive anywhere in the world, Salt, commonly referred to as Kitchen Salt or just Table salt. Whether you are in a 5 star Casino Hotel in Las Vegas or in a Maasai Manyatta (hut), you consume some form of salt in your food. Here we take a look some 10 different types of salt from around the globe and their use.
1. Sea Salt
2. Kosher Salt
The salt is mainly used in cooking, brining meats and cleaning cookware such as cast iron skillets.
3. Himalayan Salt
Of the different types of salt, Himalayan salt is the purest form of salt in the world and is harvested by hand from Khewra Salt Mine in the Himalayan Mountains of Pakistan. Its color ranges from off-white to deep pink. The salt is rich in minerals – it contains the 84 natural minerals and elements found in the human body. Himalayan salt is used in spa treatments, as well as the kitchen.
4. Sel Gris
Sel gris ( “gray salt” in French) is a coarse granular sea salt popularized by the French. Sel gris comes from solar evaporation on salt pans. During harvesting, it is allowed to come into contact with the bottom of the salt pan before being raked, hence its grayish color. Sel gris is a coarse and moist salt, and usually contains about 13 percent residual moisture.
5. Kala namak
Kala namak (“black salt” in Nepalese) is Himalayan salt that has been packed in a jar with charcoal, herbs, seeds and bark, then fired in a furnace for a full 24 hours before it’s cooled, stored and aged. This process gives kala namak its reddish-black color, its pungent, salty taste and a faint sulphurous aroma of eggs.
It’s often used in vegan and vegetarian dishes to give egg-free dishes the egg taste, as well as in Ayurvedic practice.
6. Flake Salt
Flake salt a form of salt with dry plate-like crystals. The flake structure is as a result of differing growth rates between the faces and edges of the crystal. They may occur naturally but can also be produced by a variety of methods, including boiling brine over metal salt pans or evaporating it in greenhouse solar evaporators. This form of salt has a very strong salty taste and very low mineral content.
7. Black Lava Salt
A salt colored with activated charcoal. It is a sea salt harvested from the volcanic islands of Hawaii and it gets its deep, black color from the addition of activated charcoal.
Coarse-grained and crunchy, black Hawaiian salt is great for finishing pork and seafood.
8. Alaea salt
Alaea Salt is an unrefined sea salt that has been mixed with a red alae volcanic clay that gets its name and color from the reddish, iron-rich volcanic clay alaea. It is part of Native Hawaiian cuisine and is used to season dishes such as kalua, poke, and pipikaula (Hawaiian jerky). Traditionally, it was also used to cleanse, purify and bless tools, canoes, homes and temples.
9. Jukyeom Salt – Japanese Bamboo Salt
Jukyeom salt is a Korean folk remedy consisting of salt roasted in bamboo. Sea salt is stuffed into bamboo tubes, and the ends plugged with mineral-rich clay; the assembly is roasted up to as many as nine times in a pine-wood kiln. The trace elements in the clay and bamboo are thought to make this form of salt more healthy. Historically, jukyeom has been used as a digestive aid, styptic, disinfectant.
10. Mesquite Smoked Salt
Mesquite Smoked salt is an aromatic salt smoked with any number of mesquite bark free woods for up to 14 days. Smoked Salt can be made from a number of different types of barks and the kind of wood used for smoking impacts the flavor, which can range from subtle to bold or even sweet. The most common choices are alder wood, apple wood, hickory, mesquite, and oak. Infused smoked salts like smoked bacon chipotle sea salt are very popular because of the dynamic flavor profiles.
Main Uses of Salt
Food Preservation
Traditionally salt was used to preserve meat and other food stuffs from going bad. In recent times, it is used for pickling.
Cooking/ Food Additive
Table salt is the most common food additive anywhere and it is used to give food great its taste
