Sea salt

Salt concentration in the natural park of the Lagunas de La Mata and Torrevieja

Sea salt is salt that is produced by the evaporation of seawater. It is used as a seasoning in food, cooking, cosmetics and for food preservation. It is also called bay salt, or solar salt.

Like mined rock salt, sea salt production dates back to prehistoric times.

Composition

Chemical composition of marine salt.

Commercially available sea salts on the market today vary widely in their chemical composition. Although the main component is sodium chloride, the proportion of content of other salts can range from less than 0.2% to up to 10% of the total weight. These are mainly calcium, potassium and magnesium salts of chloride and sulphates plus substantially smaller amounts of many trace elements found in natural seawater. Although the composition of commercially available salt can vary, the ionic composition of natural salt water is relatively constant.

Get Methods

Manual collection of salt in Lago Rosa, Senegal

Salt rassling represented on a postal stamp of the Turks and Caicos Islands of 1938

The production principle is the evaporation of water from sea brine. In hot and dry climates, this can be achieved entirely through the use of solar energy Thus sea salt is generally harvested in salt flats on large tracts of land near the coast where the action of the sun and winds favor the evaporation of seawater until saturation and subsequent crystallization of sea salt. They are located above all in coastal marshes where the zero altitude facilitates the channeling of tidal water to the evaporation areas. This is why modern sea salt production is found almost entirely in the Mediterranean and other hot, dry climates.

In cooler, wetter regions, other means of evaporating seawater are required. The salt crystallization is then carried out in factories where seawater is boiled in low-height containers: evaporation pans. It is the process used in the town of Maldon, England.

Today, salt labeled "sea salt" in the US it doesn't actually come from the sea, as long as it meets FDA purity requirements.

Historical production

Sea salt is mentioned in the Vinaya Pitaka, a Buddhist scripture compiled in the mid-V century a. C.

Ancient or medieval salt mines were established where the following characteristics were combined:

1. Access to a salt market.
2. A softly tilted coast, protected from open sea exposure.
3. A supply of economic and easy to work, or preferably the sun.
4. Another trade, such as grazing or tanning—which benefited from proximity to saline (producing leathers, salazones, etc.) and gave the salinera of a local market.

In this way, the marsh, the pastures (saladeros) and the salt flats (salt flats) strengthened each other economically. This was the pattern during the Roman and medieval periods around the Estuary of the Wash, in the east of England. There, the tide brought the brine, the extensive salt pans provided the pastures, the marshes and moors provided the peat for fuel, and sometimes the sun shone.

The diluted brine of the sea was largely evaporated by the sun. In Roman times this was done using ceramic vessels known as briquettes. Workers scraped the concentrated salt and mud slurry and washed it with clean seawater to remove impurities from the now concentrated brine. The brine was then poured into shallow containers (lightly fired from local marine clay) and placed on fist-sized clay pillars over a peat fire for final evaporation. Finally, the dried salt was scraped from the bottom of the container for sale.

In traditional salt production in the Philippine Visayas, salt is made from coconut shells, driftwood, or other plant matter submerged in seawater for at least several months. These are burned to ash and then seawater is passed through the ash in a filter. The resulting brine is then evaporated in containers. Coconut milk is sometimes added to the brine before evaporation. The practice is endangered due to competition with cheap, industrially produced commercial salt. Only two traditions survive to this day: asín tibuok and túltul (or dúkdok).

Taste

Black lava salt

Some gourmets find sea salt to taste better and have a better texture than regular table salt.

In texture-preserving applications, the coarser grain of sea salt may provide a different mouthfeel and may change the flavor due to its different dissolution rate. The mineral content also affects the taste. The colors and variety of flavors are due to local clays and algae found in the waters from which the salt is extracted. For example, some boutique salts in Korea and France are pinkish grey, some in India are black. Hawaiian black and red salts may even have powdered black lava and fired red clay.

Some sea salts contain sulfates and it can be difficult to distinguish sea salt from other salts, such as Himalayan pink salt, Maras salt from ancient Inca hot springs, or rock salt (halite).

Black lava salt is a trade term for sea salt collected from various locations around the world that has been mixed and colored with activated charcoal. The salt is used as a decorative seasoning.

Health

A salt grinder for marine salt

The nutritional value of sea salt and table salt is almost the same since both are primarily sodium chloride.

Table salt is more processed than sea salt to remove other minerals and often contains additives such as silicon dioxide to prevent clumping.

Iodine, an element essential to human health, is present only in trace amounts in sea salt. Iodized salt is table salt mixed with a small amount of various salts of the element iodine.

Studies have found some microplastic contamination in sea salt from the US, Europe, and China. Sea salt has also been shown to be contaminated with fungi that can cause food spoilage, as well as some which can be mycotoxigenic.

In traditional Korean cooking, jugyeom (죽염, 竹鹽), meaning "bamboo salt," is made by roasting salt at temperatures between 800 and 2000 °C in a covered bamboo container. with mud at both ends. This product absorbs minerals from bamboo and mud, and is claimed to enhance the anticlastogenic and antimutagenic properties of the fermented soybean paste known in Korea as doenjang. However, these claims are not supported by high-quality studies.

Uses

Sea salt and chemical salt share the same use in market segments, chemical applications, textiles, water treatment and decalcification, being the most appreciated sea salt in food and gastronomy in general due to its natural origin, its most exquisite flavor and richness in minerals and trace elements. The different granulometries of sea salt allow it to be used for different applications, traditionally in the preparation of salted fish, such as cod, anchovies, sardines, as well as meat, to salt hams and sausages.