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A Grain of Salt

I've always had something of a light hand with the salt.  My immediate family salted things much more lightly than most of our friends and relatives, and the general lack of pre-packaged foods (with some notably salty exceptions, true) meant that I wasn't getting the same saline dosage (and subsequent addiction) as other children my age.  I tended towards sweet treats, if there were treats to be had, and I seldom added salt to anything at the dinner table.  Like the rest of my family members, I was hard-pressed not to stare at the occasional dinner guests (or hosts, if I were eating at other people's homes) who upended the salt shaker over their plates without even first tasting the food.  Sometimes, you could see a snowy patina covering a plate of meat and vegetables, and I couldn't fathom wanting that much salt.  "Smokers," my mother explained dismissively of my grandparents abundant salt use, "have ruined their taste buds.  They need a mountain of salt to taste anything at all."  And so, I grew up looking askance at anyone who salted foods with any sort of enthusiasm.

With my teenage years, however, came french fries.  Even the stingiest of salt-misers would have to agree, potatoes like salt and fried potatoes like salt even more. I went from scornfully ignoring the salt to liberal usage in one short year - grade eight - when the move to high school, which was situated next to the mall, meant that a whole new world of abusively salty snacks were suddenly available.  We will not discuss my unholy fascination with "popcorn twists." Additionally, I had a little money in my pocket, because while I never received an allowance as a child, I did begin babysitting at quite a young age.  The combination of disposable income and easy access to somewhat illicit foods was irresistible.  So, my high school years were full of the usual seething cauldron of hormones plus a hitherto unimaginable increase in both salt and the fat that so often was a package deal in my clandestine junk food frenzy; I was probably heading for nutritional disaster, despite the heroic amounts of vegetables my mother spooned into us.

What may have rescued me from a lifelong abuse of salt was moving out on my own.  Suddenly having to purchase all of the food that I ate, instead of only the luxury items, and on a limited budget meant that I could not afford to eat most salt-ridden prepared foods as a legitimate meal, and salty snacks were cut back to an almost austere level.  I could afford plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, though, and I went happily back to my pre-salty ways.

Still, salt gets something of a bad rap. Salt is an essential mineral in the human body; we just don't necessarily need as much of it as we tend to get these days.  Still, we're not only getting sodium when we reach for the shaker.  Table salt has been used brilliantly to improve our overall thyroid health through the addition of iodine, which has greatly reduced incidence of goiter, an uncomfortable and unpleasant swelling of the neck caused by a malfunctioning thyroid.  While iodine is the only additive (that I know of) placed in salt for the direct health benefit of the consumer, plenty of other things have found their way into our salt, from dextrose, which is used to stabilize the iodine component, to herbal flavour components, to sesame seeds, to anti-caking agents.  I find myself wondering if the clever folks who first used calcium silicate to create "free-running" salt are partially responsible for the overly giddy sage today.  Has the ease with which we can pour the speedy, steady flow from the salt shaker resulted in accidental over-salting to the point where we become acclimated to it?

Salt has a venerable place in history, and is illustrated in the sheer number of expressions that feature it.  "Worth one's salt" comes to us from the Greek slave trade, "take it with a pinch of salt" indicates a credibility issue or open disbelief (I suspect that this has grown from salt's ability to increase the flavour and therefore the palatability of even the dullest of foods), "beneath the salt" refers to a custom of the antique British aristocracy, wherein the nobler guests were seated closest to the head of the long dining table, and only the top half or so were furnished with salt.  Even the word "salary" comes to us  from the Romans, who paid their soldiers a salarium, or "salt money."  We use salt not only to flavour, but to preserve our food, to tenderize our meat, to clean our cast iron skillets and glass coffee flasks, and to remove wine stains.  Our friends who are "the salt of the earth" are those whose personal characteristics are the most exemplary, and whose value to society is something we strive to match.  Salt is in our oceans, in our land, on our tables and in our bodies.  It is mined from the earth and evaporated from our oceans and sprinkled onto our lunches.

Over the years, my attitude towards salt has shifted and eased.  I still tend to use it rather lightly when I'm cooking, enough so to necessitate periodic adjustment at the table, although some of that is because I now have a craving for salt that I never had when I was younger, thanks to some digestive irregularities.  Still, I never expected to be in a household that had five kinds of salt.

Until recently, I had two kinds of salt in the house.  I had long ago succumbed to the pleasure and convenience of using coarse-grained kosher salt in my cooking, and I had a fine-grained sea salt (from Greece, although that was a quirk of the market where I purchased it rather than culinary design) that I purchased in order to use for baking, which requires more precise measurements than my usual slightly random following of savory recipes.  The additional three came in something of a rush, as a birthday present trio of exotic salts:  Fleur de Sel (much ballyhooed by gourmets and gourmands alike for its exquisite flavour and character), Brittany Organic Grey Sea Salt (irregularly sized grains with a *spang* of  mineral and oceanic flavour and a somewhat damp and clingy texture, and, most unusually, some Red Hawaiian Salt (unexpectedly firm, dry, and uniform in shape, like thousands of tiny glass shingles).

I am occasionally dumbfounded, standing in my kitchen, as to which salt would be the appropriate one to use.  The fine crystals of the sea salt are perfect for dressing fried foods, as the individual particles cling most readily to the slick surface.  The irregular scattering of the Brittany sea salt makes for an intriguing little hit of salt on a tomato sandwich, or on a silky strand of linguini.  The Fleur de Sel graces everything it tops, adding elegant visual appeal and a refined flavour, while the kosher sprinkles evenly, makes for an accurate fingertip-measurement, and the Hawaiian red resists the urge to melt and stands proud and pink wherever you place it, waiting to shatter under your teeth.

The only answer is to experiment.  First this one, then the other.  Today the grey, tomorrow the red.  Acknowledging when you've chosen inexpertly, or correctly, moving on.  There are still so many salts to try: smoked salt, citrus salt, black salt from Cyprus, pale flakes of Celtic Halen Mon, salt from the Himalayas.  There's a world of salt, a world of uses, and a world of history beyond the simple white shaker.

August 2006