when was the last time you bought salt?

I just realised that I still have the tub of salt I bought while I lived in my old flat, several years ago. I have used maybe 1/4 of it.

Seems incredible. I cook at home often and use salt for a variety of things but i guess not in vast quantuties, still. It seems mad.

How often do you buy salt? And how do they make money? It's so cheap and You can get free salt from just about anywhere

I bought 750g of sea salt (that i grind w/mortar and pestle) that is maybe half gone---three years old

I have never bought salt as such.

I loathe the stuff.

I can't remember having ever once in my life bought salt for cooking/seasoning purposes - it's just sort of... there, everywhere, all the time, y'know - but I did buy some a few months ago to aid the clothes-dying process.

Bought a new thing of sea salt when I moved in March '09. Have never ACTUALLY run out before but my last can of the good stuff got disappeared/became disgusting in the loft; the container was so food-stained and gross that I didn't look too hard when someone didn't return it to the kitchen.

xp HUH?

You should all be thankful you won't have to worry about sodium levels... salt, one of my truest passions, is going to be the death of me.

In the past 5 years I think I have directly contributed less than £1 towards salt. I know if everyone in the country spends £1 there's a lot of pounds but still that's assuming there's one single manufacturer of salt.. who DOES make salt??

Is there a famous family who owns the salt empire?

fucking love salt. big chunky salt

I hate the taste of salt so much I have to disguise it as other things (such as soy sauce) when cooking. I just think it's gross.

Well, except on chips. On them, it's kinda necessary.

I use Sel de Guerande (grey French sea salt) and I picked up a kilo of that this summer in the newish organic supermarket in Kentish Town. Was very relieved to find it for £2 but nearly bought some bizarre pink sea salt just because it looked interesting.

I imagine there's a select number of big salt mines that sell salt en masse to loads of companies who package it and sell it to very many restaraunts/whoever needs salt packets, which is where the money comes in (i.e. probably not from independent consumers).

Also, Pablo Neruda, OTM

last Monday actually. Not for me though, wine.woot had a gift package of 3 different salts including chardonnay oak smoked salt that seemed like a good xmas present sort of thing. But I generally buy salt once or twice a year. I make pickled things and preserve lemons so need koshering salt for that. That's also what I use for all my cooking and cheese making. It also works as neti pot salt since koshering salt doesn't have any additives or extra minerals. I buy fleur de sel (4 oz) for when tomatoes are ripe. And gray sea salt for the table.

Main commercial/industrial salt producer in the US: Morton

What I really want to know is who buys ice?

used to bike by the morton plant in CHI all the time iirc

i only buy ice for camping

i grow my own

I get Baleine and fleur de sel probably once a year or so.

I've never bought salt. When I went away to university, my mother gave me a huge 1kg tub of Saxa salt. I never used it.

yea i buy the baleine coarse & fine prob about once a year

maybe less. i use it generously in my cooking.

also anytime i'm mincing garlic, i use a little baleine coarse

salt melts ice so. not yet this winter, but last certainly.

i buy that maldon sea salt prob 3 times a year?

i like salt

Baleine, that's the whale stuff that I left for the boys. Haven't replaced it w anything fancy so far but maybe some grey salt for the holidays.

i bought both sea salt and table salt on saturday, thanks for asking

How do you STORE your salt? I gave up on shakers and use a little melamine ingredient bowl that I keep on the counter. Wash/refill it every few weeks, prob. Should I be worried about my impromptu salt cellar collecting dust or w/e??

I have something similar, Laurel.

I'm very interested in this high end french white/pink salt you guys speak of. Tell me more about it. I've seen it at Whole Foods and I've been curiously about, but does it make a difference in cooking?

We ran out last week! We splashed out on some sea salt flakes, plus a big cylinder of table salt (el cheapo), so should be good for the next few years.

I've bought expensive peppers corns and I've loved using them on everything. But salt, especially corse salt can over power the inherent taste of the food, so I usually shy away from using that much of it.

does it make a difference in cooking?

I don't use the high end salts for cooking, because I don't think it makes that much difference (and sometimes can bring other minerals into the picture that maybe you really don't want). But they are great as table/finishing salts, esp. w/ foods where the salt is a big part of the flavor profile (like fresh tomatoes).

yes fresh tomatoes and salt or soft boiled eggs and salt too.

mark cl: explain salt + mincing garlic plz

i've got baleine, and i just keep it in its tube/shaker until i throw it in the mortar and pestle. then i just sprinkle from that until it's gone

I've used salt to aid crushing of garlic (and other things) in a mortar and pestle - is that what he means?

last week. i go through a lot of it

Waiting for Nabisco's response.

the salt allegedly keeps the garlic from sticking to the knife while mincing? i've never bothered with it though, always worried about adding too much salt to food.

I went to a sea salt pen/farm near nha trang, vietnam and bought some of their world famous pearl sea salt (for next to nothing).

here's a pic of one of the massive mounds of salt:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2592/3770735440_ca77984e58.jpg

3 years ago.

i'm still using a shaker i stole from a bar 3 years ago!

(as in - there's still salt in there)

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/1024/saltofthemonthclub.jpg

lolis that an onion fake box

I've had the same drum for about 20 months...and there's loads left.

>lolis that an onion fake box

yeah, sadly they no longer seem to sell it. imagine though, 12lbs of salt a year...

i buy some new salt every time i run out of salt. how can you not? it's like not having black pepper or onions or something, wholly necessary. maldon's every time.

I got all my cooking knowledge from italians. I got through a pretty large amount of salt as a result. Italian food is SALTY. and I love it. I'm sure my blood pressure doesnt tho... and in fact my bf has high BP so we should probably CIO with the spicysalty korean ramens and salty salad dressings heh.

But I dont have to buy it more than maybe once/twice a year. I get a big plastic bottle of the saxa stuff, and have a smaller grinder for coarse sea salt. That stuff you only need the merest flakes of.

xp Yeah, I'm with Or Something; it's a staple. Always get the kosher kind, store brand preferably, despite not being kosher myself; last time was last week, when my wife put it on the grocery list. I also go through Lawry's Seasoned Salt like crazy; pretty much every meal. Like onions, I guess. Probably buy a new container of it once every two months.

(xxpost) family history of high blood pressure, so over the years I gradually cut down the (added) salt to nothing.

yeah you want cayenne pepper probably
i like the taste of sea salt

Bought cheap-ass round-box salt a couple of weeks ago -- I use it liberally in water for cooking pasta and potatoes and when blanching vegetables. Kosher salt for actual cooking -- probably takes a couple of years to go through a box. I should get some high-end finishing salt sometime to see if I notice a difference; I've never had any.

is a big BSG guh that I'm not buying, sorry dude.

what's "BSG"? urban dictionary says:

battlestar galactica
bangin sexy girl
big smelly gonads
brian the shit guy

and none of these make any sense

big smelly gonads, duh

but anyways i think sea salt has a far better flavor than regular table salt. morton's & other table salts have these really harsh, weird flavors that stand out in pretty bad way, imo. taste some baleine coarse salt crystals next to some regular table salt - w/ the baleine's you wont have that "uugghhaalll too salty" reaction the way you will w/ the regular shit.

tho i don't know how sea salt compares to kosher salt - i tend to just buy the sea salt

also regarding salt grinder - i have one and like it b/c i basically just buy the coarse salt, which isn't the best to use for table salt b/c the you get bites of the crystals. the coarse granules don't absorb fast enough to use for table salt, so the grinder can be pretty helpful

gbx - re: mincing garlic i find that the salt crystals facilitate the mincing - helps a little w/ the garlic sticking to the knife & the salt breaks down the garlic a little bit

he silliest food trend of the last 10 years may well be salt-grinders to match the pepper grinder. Hint, there are no volatile oils that can be lost in ground salt, as in black pepper. Its just crystals of a simple ionic compound, about 0.00000000001 x as complex as a peppercorn. For this reason, regular salt doesn't go bad, and can be used indefinitely for money in places like the Sahara.

this is otm insofar as salt can't, by definition, go bad. it just is. however, there are other, sane, reasons to want to have control over how coarsely ground your salt is

xp ah!

I think I bought a little pre-filled salt shaker back in 2006. It's still perfectly viable.

I don't cook here, to clarify. Julia owns all the salt.

A salt thread with no one shouting at each other! Whats going on, ILX.

stfu

:D

hahahah =)

BSG = broad sweeping generalizations

ie "all sea salts taste bad"

rap music has no melody

etc

Um, I'm entitled to make as many broad sweeping generalizations as please me when it comes to my subjective taste, as I did above. In general I think of salt as a flavor enhancer that has to be there to unlock other things, but its simply not that interesting to me in and of itself. I've done the blind tests and I find I'm not at all interested in the metallic tinge (a bit like Alum to) imparted by the handful of sea salts I have compared kosher salt (ordinary mined halite). That's the comparison, not to table salt, with is ground finer, and has iodine and anti-caking agents added.

In a sense, all commercial salt IS sea salt. In the small expensive jars, its from embayments of ocean that evaporated this year. In the large, cheap containers, its mining ancient drying sea/lakebeds where the other salts precipitated out before or after the much purer halite.

If you want to add another flavor, as in those curious bamboo smoked varieties, etc, there are traditional solutions like smoked paprika that make a lot more sense than this crystal worship.

nothing makes more sense than crystal worship.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/people/jlipps/Solution.jpg

A word to hypertension-fearing salt lovers: As someone who is genetically predisposed to high blood-pressure, I've found that weight control & regular cardio exercise pretty much cancel out the effect of sodium.

That and drink enough water. Salt really isn't bad for you; salt without enough water to process it is.

http://cdn2.ioffer.com/img/item/124/096/929/o_36kklsv2DTzkpho.jpg

http://www.niksula.hut.fi/~rsirokov/covers/crystal_method_-_comin_back_uscd5.jpg

http://www.sydlexia.com/imagesandstuff/megaman/Crystal%20Man%20profile.png

I'm shorting salt.

i have that same box of diamond crystal kosher salt that's upthread. i bought it like a year and a half ago.

I went through salt at a pretty quick pace when I was using a neti pot every day

what is absolutely dud, however, is using table salt in a recipe that calls for kosher salt and vice versa

i always use kosher salt in recipes... i just adjust as necessary.

not using table salt means i also take an iodine supplement for my thyroid.

Kosher salt? What's unkosher about regular salt?!

Great thread.

I have always marveled at how long a container of Morton's salt will last.

But I have been going through boxes of rock salt pretty quickly ever since I discovered how well rock salt and alcohol will clean "functional glass art".

I bought a set of pepper/salt grinder (because it came as a pair) but I just chucked the salt out and replaced it with Sichuan Pepper.

it was actually very hard to find grinders that don't come pre-filled with pepper/salt??? (or rather the ones without are usually more expensive!!)

You chucked the salt out?! Gandhi died for that salt!

He was a seasoned campaigner.

If I want salt I just go and get some from the big yellow bin at the end of my street.

i don't think he would be too insalted. xpost

He would have taken it as a condiment.

He would have grit his teeth.

I'm with George on this one. Throwing out salt shows really pour judgement.

also, Halloween 2007:
http://i36.tinypic.com/33za1xh.jpg

wau

Gandhi died for that salt!

Apparently his last words were 'don't let the bastards grind you down'.

Salt really isn't bad for you; salt without enough water to process it is.

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Monday, November 9, 2009 10:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

um

too much water without salt is also bad. it's all ying and yang and bing and bang and olufsen it is

i mean, the ~reason~ salt is bad for people with hypertension is because it causes them to ~retain water~

I went as the Evil Morton Salt girl for halloween one year. Red dress w a white umbrella & horns and carried a pumpkin under one arm. I was kind of hard up for ideas, obv.

i remember reading some jeffrey steingarten thing where he said that something like 20% of the population is sensitive to salt, meaning that it affects their blood pressure, but that for everyone else there's no problem. does anyone know if that's true??

(i hope it is)

Alton Brown said something like that in his salt episode. (Rather, he demonstrated it in some delightfully quirky sketch featuring characters with silly accents and mannerisms.) So yeah, if the blood pressure thing doesn't run in your family, eat as much salt as you want.