Coarse pink rock salt in a 750 g jar from Damune of Barcelona — the larger, everyday format.
What it is, honestly
Pink salt is halite mined in the Punjab region of Pakistan, in the Salt Range south-west of the Himalayas. It is an ancient sea, evaporated and buried some hundreds of millions of years ago, and the pink colour comes from trace iron oxide within the crystal.
You will read a great deal about its eighty-odd minerals. The minerals are genuinely there, but they are traces: pink salt is over 97% sodium chloride, and the remaining fraction is too small to make a nutritional difference at the quantities anyone eats salt in. We are not going to tell you otherwise. Buy it for what it actually delivers — a clean, rounded, slightly less sharp flavour than refined table salt, an attractive colour, and coarse crystals that behave well in a grinder or a mortar.
It is also worth knowing that pink salt is not iodised. If iodised salt is your main dietary source of iodine, replacing it entirely is a change worth being aware of.
How to use it
This is a working salt, not a finishing salt. Coarse crystals go in the grinder for the table, or in a mortar when you want to crush them into a rub or a spice mix. It seasons roast vegetables, grilled meat and fish, and it is the right salt for a dry brine on chicken or pork — spread over the surface a few hours ahead so it draws out moisture and then reabsorbs it as seasoned brine.
For pasta water or bread dough, ordinary fine sea salt is cheaper and does exactly the same job.
treatfuls
treatfuls
treatfuls
