WHY I BELIEVE IN SALT
Salt has become one of the most important parts of my life, something I have submerged myself into. Eating and sleeping the mineral, from daily seasoning of food, pairing wines with salt and food, bathing regularly in salt, to drinking salt every few days in the summer.
I feel even before I got into the deeper meaning of salt, I felt it was a good and special item. It heals us in so many ways. We need to replenish our bodies with it, as we lose salt daily. The history is amazing the cooking techniques special and the flavour it brings to a bland dish makes life worth it.
Most people don’t have any idea of how many Salts there are in the world today. For a start there are over 200 varieties with more than 12 techniques of making salt.
Salt isn’t just white in colour but can come in many colours and textures and flavours vary from light salt flavour to very intense salty flavours, which is where my interest lies. For me it completes the circle of life. Salt has 8 minerals in it the ocean has 8 minerals and so does our bodies have 8 minerals in them.
Taste is the sensual expression of flavours. Salt has been around since the beginning an important mineral to human life and life itself, salt goes back more than 250 million years, people have always needed salt in their diet from the hunting days when salt in the blood of animal sufficed and is still used in the Masai’s culture today.
People that lived at the coast found it easy to acquire and use salt whereas inland people began to domesticated animals and discovered salt as animals sniffed it out (so as to say) and then it became the norm. Then people didn’t need to get it anymore only from the coast.
As people preserved more foods the trading with Salt increased, raised taxes and fought wars, being having more value than gold, expensive to purchase, due to its production and scarcity etc. It is the most important mineral and the only one we cannot live without…
Without Salt in our bodies, we will die!
Yours in Food.
Craig Cormack (Chef Patron)