Thread: Sea salt

If you like sea salt and you live near the ocean go get yourself a couple of gallons of seawater. Make sure you get it from the ocean and not a bay or someplace where ships dock. get it from where there is lots of waves. Now take it home and put it in a big pot on the stove and boil it down. it will be a couple of hours at least. Youll end up with some very tasty salt...if I recall, you get about 4 to 8 oz per gallon, and depending on your location you might get pink salt or black salt and I have found that the flavor varies from mild to fairly sharp depending on where you get the seawater.

ChrisL reminded me of this when I read his thread: Garlic lovers....my extreme aioli - Straight Razor Place Forums

We use our sea salt on everything which, by the way is fairly mild and an off white to slightly grey in color. it is fairly course which, for us, is okay for most dishes but we use a mortar and pestle to grind it finer for certain things.

Good luck.

Originally Posted by JMS

If you like sea salt and you live near the ocean go get yourself a couple of gallons of seawater. Make sure you get it from the ocean and not a bay or someplace where ships dock. get it from where there is lots of waves. Now take it home and put it in a big pot on the stove and boil it down. it will be a couple of hours at least. Youll end up with some very tasty salt...if I recall, you get about 4 to 8 oz per gallon, and depending on your location you might get pink salt or black salt and I have found that the flavor varies from mild to fairly sharp depending on where you get the seawater.

ChrisL reminded me of this when I read his thread: Garlic lovers....my extreme aioli - Straight Razor Place Forums

We use our sea salt on everything which, by the way is fairly mild and an off white to slightly grey in color. it is fairly course which, for us, is okay for most dishes but we use a mortar and pestle to grind it finer for certain things.

Good luck.

This is an excellent idea, Mark, but I am very nervous trusting the sea water around here...lots of ship traffic, lots of factories and such. Any ideas on how to know if your water is clean? I mean, seawater is all pretty suspicious to this Kansas boy...

Originally Posted by JimR

This is an excellent idea, Mark, but I am very nervous trusting the sea water around here...lots of ship traffic, lots of factories and such. Any ideas on how to know if your water is clean? I mean, seawater is all pretty suspicious to this Kansas boy...

It is a fairly good guarantee but not 100% guarantee if you are only getting your water from heavily moving sources such as lots of waves that it will be clean enough for human consumption. In Okinawa I found a beautiful, clear and very calm beach. I waded out into the water. Beautiful blue and yet I could see all the way down to the ocean floor. As I came out of the water I went to dry myself. Only then did I discover that I was covered in an oily substance. A little later I discovered a few submarines docked nearby. I believe that was the oil source.
When the water is in constant motion it tends to move out the impurities quickly, which is why you only drink water from a moving stream in the wild.
Also, I wouldnt collect sea water at any location where there is any kind of run off from a sewer or factory...look for long stretches of beach with very active water. Failing that, take a boat out past the surf and collect your water there.
Unless you are importing your salt I bet it is coming out of the local beaches anyways.

Thanks! Seems easy enough, the waves here are pretty active.

Good point about the importation. I think most of the salt in the stores here is sea salt anyway...I mean, there is the iodized table salt, but it's outnumbered by sea salt which, I think, is mostly from Kyushu around here.

All salt is sea salt.

Originally Posted by welshwizard

All salt is sea salt.

Nope. Over here we have salt mines in some regions. Where water in pumped into the ground so that the salt dissolves into the water and can then be pumped up.

There's also chemical salts. Salt is only Natrium Chloride (sometimes with some Iodine mixed in)after all and can be produced through certain chemical processes. Mostly this is a lot cheaper than harvesting it from natural resources.

Most table salt isn't "sea salt" at all.

Originally Posted by LX_Emergency

Nope. Over here we have salt mines in some regions.

In the UK our salt mines are deposits from the sea when it covered the land millions of years ago. I think if you go back far enough, salt originated on land and was washed into the oceans. I've always thought of table salt as sodium chloride.

Could be. I don't know. I wasn't aroung then.

However there are plenty ways to make salt out of it's components without getting it from the sea.

Fish poop in the ocean y'know. I've never used salt in my food. I don't even buy the stuff. I do have a box of coarse kosher salt in the cabinet for radical cleaning of tobacco pipes but never add it to food. Just never cared for the stuff. Not good for the arteries if used in excess .... or so I've heard.

If you look at some of these fancy kitchen supply outfits they sell bags of sea salt from all over the world and its pretty pricey stuff.

What about all that sea salt they produce at the lower end of San Diego Bay in those big evaporation ponds. I know its used for water softeners but I wonder what contaminants it has.