Changing your kitchen, the easy way.

I know that there are many readers of this blog who are far, far along the ‘not dabbling in normal’ path in their kitchen. I also know that there are others who *want* to be further outside of the normal kitchen of today but either don’t know quite where to start or are overwhelmed by the task in front of them.

I thought I’d do a series of articles to help move a kitchen from a basic, modern, processed-food heavy kitchen to a whole-foods based kitchen for those who would like suggestions for small, easy steps on beginning the transition. Some articles will deal with foods, others with processes. All will have a recipe and a cookbook suggestion at the end of it. (I have to justify my cookbook addiction somehow.)

So today, I’m going to start with a really deceptively simple step – changing over the type of salt you use. For those of you frozen in the ‘where on earth can I start’ mode, this will be a big mental move for you – you’ll do something to get moving in the direction you want to go. Having a small step that is doable will help with your momentum.

Table salt, your basic iodized salt, is what most people use. It’s recommended by every anti-sea-salt source because of the iodine added to it – iodine that they say is not in sea salt. Now iodine *is* in many different types of sea salt as a trace mineral, but it’s not enough to supply your iodine needs if you only use sea salt in cooking or as a seasoning, and goiter, a direct result of not enough iodine, is not something you want to deal with.

See?

The good news is that if you’re eating a healthful diet, iodine isn’t a big issue because some basic foods have plenty of iodine in them. Yogurt, cow’s milk, strawberries, eggs, and sea vegetables are among foods that provide high levels of iodine, sea vegetables (kelp/seaweed) having the highest levels. I don’t know about you, but I don’t mind getting my iodine quota from strawberries. If you’re still worried, you can use iodine tablets or supplements. Look at this page for recommended amounts and good, whole food sources.

So, having put that fear to rest, let’s talk about why you wouldn’t want to use table salt. Table salt is made by taking either rock salt or sea salt, removing all of the minerals (except for the basic sodium chloride), bleaching it to make it pretty, adding back in a lot of iodine, and adding anti-caking agents like aluminum silicate and sugar. It is, by its very definition, a processed food. So let’s remove it as the first, and simplest, of our processed food casualties.

So what do you use in place of table salt? Sea salt.

Sea salt is 98% sodium-chloride and up to 2% other minerals – lots of other minerals. There can be over 100 trace minerals in sea salts, most containing around 84. The makeup of different salts depends on where and how they’re harvested. Some sources say that these minerals are all important, others say that there is ‘no chemical difference’ between table salt and sea salt, even with the minerals. There is an obvious chemical difference, even if it is very small. That may or may not be your main reason for switching salts. For me, the trace minerals were a bonus – my main reason was to stop eating a dead, bleached, processed to pure sodium-chloride table salt.

For some purposes, you’ll want salt that’s been ground down into a finer texture, while other uses call for a coarser, more natural texture. Sea salt comes in a lot of different varieties, textures and flavors, and the quality of different sea salts is obvious when you start experimenting.

(image from faerie’s finest)

As a quick note, Celtic Sea Salt is widely accepted as one of the highest quality sea salts, while Pink Himalayan Salt has an amazing soft flavor. French Grey Sea Salt has a chunkier texture while Redmond’s Mineral Sea Salt is very grainy.

I’ve made the mistake of using Redmond’s Real Salt in a casserole and we thought we’d dropped it in the sand, but I have had a lot of success with it in goat meat recipes. Using Pink Himalayan Salt in any heavily seasoned dish is a waste, but using it as a garnish on simple boiled potato cubes turns them into an irresistible snack. I use a basic sea salt for all of my cooking and garnishing. I get the sea salt from a local co-op (Azure Standard is ours), from Frontier, or from a local health-store. I’m not picky on the brand for my basic sea salt. If you are worried about a brand, check it out. Some sea salts are processed very little, but it’s enough to remove trace elements. If that’s important to you, you’ll want a brand that doesn’t do that.

When cooking with sea salt, add it at the end of your cooking so that you’ll lose fewer nutrients in the heat. Also, be aware that sea salts have more flavor than bland table salts, so you’ll want to use less salt at first (usually 2/3 of what the recipe calls for) and add more if needed.

One thing I found out while researching for this article is that there are a *lot* of hidden sources of sodium in processed foods. If you’re needing to cut down on sodium in your diet (for hypertension or other reasons), cutting out processed foods would help an awful lot. MSG is obviously no good for you (but luckily is falling out of favor). Sodium saccharin used in diet sodas and other foods that need an artificial sweetener, sodium acid pyrophosphate is used in baked goods, sodium alginate and sodium carboxymethyl cellulose are used in ice-cream, beer, desserts, pies, diet foods, and baby foods, sodium benzoate is used in preserved items like margarine, pickles, jellies and jams, and sodium propionate is used in baked goods. That should be enough – that’s only a few of the more than forty known additives adding sodium into processed foods.

One last note on salts. My husband’s favorite salt is neither table salt or any type of sea salt. It’s Lawry’s Seasoning Salt. He uses it on a lot of different meat dishes that he makes. In the name of being frugal, when we’re done with a seasoning bottle, I put it in my children’s kitchen. The other day I walked in on them playing in their kitchen and one daughter was saying to another, while holding the empty Lawry’s bottle, “Let me put this on your cookie! It’s soooo good on everything. Daddy says so.” So there’s that.

Recipe

Today’s recipe is a very, very simple one that will help you appreciate the flavor of sea salt. Try it with different sea salts if you want to, to really have fun.

Slice radishes very thin. Slice a baguette into thin slices (toast them if you want to get fancy). Put some salt in a dish and some soft butter in another dish. Put all of these on the table together.

To eat, butter a baguette slice, sprinkle a small bit of salt on the bread, top with a few radish slices and eat.

Such a simple recipe, but so satisfying and it really showcases different sea salts. Doing this has led to each of my daughters having their own favorite salts, which has led to my husband telling me that I’m raising snobs.

Cookbook suggestion

One of my favorite cookbooks is one I don’t yet own. I just keep checking it out from the library. The River Cottage Family Cookbook.

This cookbook is amazing. It has a *lot* of pictures (always good to help get kids interested) and the recipes are simple, and for every one I’ve tried so far, delicious. It explains how different ingredients work (and work together), so you (and your kids) aren’t blindly throwing in whatever you’re told to – you learn that you’re able to switch up a recipe if you want to. This book also tells you where food comes from and explains why you should be careful where you get your food from.

It’s a thick book, for sure, but there’s a lot in it. If you have kids, this is a book you should have in your kitchen.

Enjoy!

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I also blog at It Blows Here and The Napping House