Slabs of ancient salt flavor new trend in serving and cookware

By Nancy Stohs July 6, 2009 | updated 17 years ago

Pink Himalayan salt is quite versatile and fun for chefs to play with. The salt is from Pakistan, and custom crafted into blocks for cooking, and also into platters and bowls for serving and mixing. Photo by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MCT

MILWAUKEE • It’s a bold new concept in cooking. Instead of salting your food — you “food” your salt.Spear cubes of watermelon and rub across a salt disc for a kiss of flavor with each bite.Serving sushi? Leave the soy sauce in the fridge; set the rolls on a frozen salt stick and let them soak up the goodness.Sizzle your next fried egg directly on a block of salt heated on your stovetop — no skillet (or salt shaker) needed.Hand-mined from the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains in northern Pakistan, cut into smooth-as-glass blocks or molded into striking reusable salt bowls or other shapes, the primordial ocean salt that makes all of this possible shimmers like pink marble.Beautiful in looks alone, it’s the newest sensation in chefdom and home kitchens. In more ways than one, it is far from just another variety of sodium chloride.You can cook directly on this salt, just as you would in a skillet. You can grill on it, bake on it, cure meats and fish on it. You can chill on it, mix and grind herbs in it and serve on it. There seems to be no end to the creative applications of this 500 million-year-old mineral. (Yes, 500 million years.)The versatile salt has been featured on “Iron Chef” and the Food Network and has spread through the New York restaurant scene and beyond. Chef David Burke, of David Burke’s Primehouse in Chicago, dry-ages his meats in a room at his restaurant he had lined with Himalayan salt tiles.Himalayan salt had been popular in Europe as a New Age wellness therapy product for about 10 or 15 years before POSH Salt owner Laura E. Castelli, a New York lawyer, stumbled upon it, quite by accident.Having acquired a couple of small pieces from a young businessman seeking endorsements for other food products from her chef-clients, Castelli forgot about them until she was at a chefs’ awards banquet. Reaching into her pocket for a pen, she pulled out one of the pieces.The chef seated next to her asked, “What’s that?” and before long it was the buzz of the table. Suddenly she had chefs across the city demanding she get them this salt.Striking out with the original source of the salt (he wasn’t sure where he’d gotten it), she called on old contacts of her husband’s from his garment-trade days working in Third World countries. Eventually she was introduced to their now-partner, a Pakistani who had rights to mine the government-controlled salt.The original shipment — 48,000 pounds — arrived in the dead of winter 2004. With nowhere else to store it, she and her husband, Jerry Petrozelli, cleaned out their one-car garage and filled it with the heavy blocks.That’s how they discovered the salt would become “cold as ice” — and stay cold for hours. Exploring the other extreme, Castelli also found it could be heated (up to at least 900 degrees) and cooked upon, imparting a subtle salty flavor in the process.The cooking and chilling, the curing, the presentation possibilities, the “Saltware” concept — all of this came out of their kitchen and a makeshift production studio they set up in their basement. “The more we played with it, the more different uses we found for it,” Castelli said.Now, the warehousing, packaging and “salt-crafting” have headquarters in a large facility in New Bergen, N.J. The couple (her mother, Julia Fracica, is a third partner) also have three smaller warehouses in the area — and clients all over the country. Their products, mostly culinary but also some spa items, are available at www.poshsalt.com.And they’re developing more products all the time — caviar-serving pieces with tiny wells, an oven pizza stone, salt blocks with shell impressions just for serving oysters. They custom-make pieces, to order, at no extra cost.They recently added a variety of coarse-milled Himalayan salts and aromatic “finishing” salts (a pinch is all you need).Clients outside the United States include a U.S. research station in Antarctica and a Caribbean mega-yacht line. “So it’s used on the high seas,” said Castelli, remarking on this “beautiful irony.”The salt is the result of evaporation of the primordial ocean, Castelli said. But unlike other salt deposits, this one became solid crystal with the formation of the Himalayas. As the region’s plates shifted and collided to form the mountains, the pressure and weight “turned it into this block crystal.”The stated age — 500 million years — is based on geological history, not some kind of carbon dating. It’s somewhat arbitrary.“As best we can approximate, it was 500 million years ago when the salt started its journey toward what it is today,” Castelli said. It’s been in the form it’s in today for only about 250 million years, she said.Anecdotal history relates that Alexander the Great discovered the long-hidden salt in 327 B.C. when his battle-weary horses licked the walls of a cave and became rejuvenated — “like ancient Gatorade.” Difficult to mine and costly to transport, it was all but forgotten for centuries.What makes the salt unique is that it’s been locked away these many millenniums, protected from the “hand of man, pollution and everything else we’ve brought upon ourselves,” Castelli said.Now there are other man-made dangers — not the least of which is instability in that part of the world. “Every time I turn on the news, my stomach flips,” Castelli said. “We’re invading Pakistan? No, don’t invade Pakistan! And then there was the (2008) earthquake.”Her hope is she can continue to acquire the salt, because it’s so different from the salt we use now.Regular salt, evaporated from our current oceans, requires chemical processing to purify it — removing some of the natural minerals. Himalayan salt, according to Castelli — a registered nurse as well as a lawyer — “mirrors the essential mineral composition of the human body” with 84 minerals. The higher iron content is what makes it pink.Castelli and a cardiologist friend are working on a study to try to back up claims some people are making that this purer version does not raise blood pressure the way regular table salt does.More important to foodies, the flavor is discernibly different, something those chefs at Castelli’s table picked up on when they dared to take a lick.“Our salt has a very delicate, soft marine flavor,” Castelli said.And it’s durable stuff, which alone makes it worth — so to speak — its salt.When people inevitably ask, “What’s the shelf life?” Castelli is ready with an answer:“I don’t know,” she says, “500 million years?”

ABOUT THE SALTHimalayan salt products can be purchased directly from www.poshsalt.com.“Cooking-grade” blocks are a minimum of 1 1/2 inches thick.The salt pieces are not nonstick, so a little butter or oil will be needed when using them to fry, sear or bake. This also prevents too much salt from being absorbed. It is normal to hear little popping sounds as the blocks are heating.Heat the blocks slowly, starting them in the oven or gradually increasing the heat of the burner underneath. If you heat them too quickly, there is the possibility they will crack.The salt can be heated up to 900 degrees, and it will freeze to 0 degrees. The blocks stay hot or cold for hours.Naturally antimicrobial, the pieces can be used again and again. To wash, simply wipe clean with warm water and dry thoroughly. Do not use soap, and never put in the dishwasher. Let dry 24 hours before using again.Each time a piece is washed, an oh-so-tiny layer is removed. But cared for properly, the pieces should last for years. Store dry pieces wrapped in plastic to keep out moisture.

TEMPTING THE TONGUERule No. 1: Go ahead, lick it.“Everyone who sees this wants to lick it,” said personal chef Alisa Malavenda, picking up a small salt disc.Once you’ve got that out of your system, get in the kitchen and have some fun. There are many ways to use Himalayan pink salt. Here are just a few:• The moister the food, the more salt it absorbs, and the more quickly. For extra-moist foods, once the desired salt level has been reached, you can still serve on the salt pieces by creating a barrier between the food and the block — lemon leaves, soy papers or, for heated salt blocks, cedar papers (in this case, the food will pick up both salty and smoky flavors).• Use a large salt bowl to toss a fresh fruit salad for a bit of salty flavor before transferring to another bowl for serving.• Roast Cornish hens: Heat a large salt block in a low oven, working up to 350 degrees. Remove the backbone from the hens and flatten the birds. Lay them skin side up on the hot salt block and bake until done (time depends on the size). The skin will be crispy and the flesh will have a “nice mineral kind of flavor,” Malavenda says.• Serve cold soup in chilled salt bowls; just remember to use less salt in the recipe.• For a simple dessert with flair, scoop three flavors of sorbet on a frozen sushi stick and serve.• Thinly slice flank steak and sear it on a hot salt block about a minute on each side.• Grind pesto by hand in a Himalayan-salt mortar and pestle.

SALT BLOCK CHOCOLATE ‘FONDUE’

1 pound dark chocolateCut-up fruit, pieces of your favorite cake and other dippers1 Himalayan salt block (at least 8 by 8 by 2 inches; larger is easier)Skewers or fondue forks

Procedure:1. Heat Himalayan salt block slowly on gas range over very low heat. (You can use an electric range, but be sure to use a metal wok ring as a spacer to keep the salt ¼ to ½ inch above surface of electric coil.) This should take about 10-15 minutes.2. When salt block is warm, test to see if it is the right temperature by placing a small piece of chocolate in the middle of the block. If the chocolate starts to melt slowly, it is the right temperature. If it smokes, you need to reduce the heat and wait a bit for the salt to cool down.3. Add half the chocolate and, when it starts to melt, use a spatula to move the chocolate around to temper it. When chocolate is melted, add remaining chocolate and continue to work it with the spatula.4. When chocolate is completely melted, transfer salt block and chocolate to the table and set on a trivet. Be sure to warn guests not to touch the block. Dig into the chocolaty goodness with fruit (to prevent the moist fruit pieces from causing the chocolate to seize up, furnish butter knives or cheese spreaders so guests can spread chocolate from the salt slab onto the fruit), cake pieces or anything else you’d like to (marshmallows, pretzels, croissant pieces, etc.).