Where Does Salt Come From? — How to Make It

-So, what restaurants, right now, carry your

salt

? - We sell at 11 Madison Park. We sell to Nomad. We sell to Gramercy Tavern. We sell to Untitled. We sell to the Dutch. We'll probably sell about 50 pounds a week to restaurants and food manufacturers and then the rest will go into retail packaging. - We will go into the water to discover how ocean water is converted into the best sea

salt

used by some of the best restaurants and chefs across the country. (surf music) - I first made salt as a hobby. Almost for about 30 years. - Wow. - As a business, we started this in 2010.

The first jar of salt we sold was in the summer of 2011. - Wow, and I already had it. It's so delicious that I use it to finish things off mainly because I just want to try it. - Well, I always liked food. I always liked to eat. I always liked to eat well. It's important and, living in Manhattan, it's certainly easy to do. Part of what attracted me to making salt was the naturalness, the traditional methods. And we started doing it when we were much younger and we continue to do it, largely because I don't want to strip away what I have.

We continue to get the water bucket by bucket. During the summer we receive about 2000 gallons of water each week. - Manually. - Everything at hand. - Does it take longer to

make

it solar? - Yes, it's long. - Because he is naturally dehydrated. - It's unpredictable. It's... we think it's definitely the best way to do it. It is also the most difficult path. We're going to the ocean. Today we will get about 100 gallons of water on this tour. We generally

make

two or three trips a day. - Wow, a hundred gallons. (laughter) (upbeat guitar music) How far do we have to go to collect?

Because the water seems quite rough. - Let's go, probably up to a little above our knees. - Okay, right

where

the waves break. - Exactly. I can take two at a time. I feel more balanced. - If I can carry two buckets, I'm thinking, the first time I do it should I go with both or try one? - Go with two, but... - Because I don't want to leave one lying around. - No, I don't want you to do that either. Go with two. Don't fill them completely. - I understand. - Very well, right now, if we go on the back of this wave, we will be very nice.

That was good. (laughter) (upbeat music) Wait, wait, wait. We have collected about a hundred gallons of seawater. - It seemed. - A little over 850 pounds of seawater. We will usually do this two or three times a day. We will only do one today. - How - thank God - how much salt-- - Today we are going a little slower. (laughs) - How much salt, finished salt, would 100 gallons produce? - We won't get 100% performance, a lot of that is intentional. - Good. - So these 100 gallons will probably give us about 15 pounds of salt. - I'm excited to see the next steps. ♪ This one is for all the kids ♪ ♪ There's no more school ♪ ♪ So you should know what time it is ♪ ♪ It's summer ♪ - The water we collected from the ocean has sand in it.

There are other things floating and swimming in it. We want to get rid of them, so when we take them out we will put them through a filter. Where it will slowly filter into our salt urns and there will be sediment there and it will go through another filtering step. We will not plant new crops from late November to mid-January. It's not cold enough and it's still wet. Once we hit mid-January, the humidity drops really low and suddenly things evaporate much better. - Okay, so you don't bring that much water? - Exactly. We will go and start replenishing supplies, but instead of going three times a day.

We will go three times a week. How are you doing with the siphon? - We're about to find out. (laughs) I don't know. Right now we're going to pass this... it's a 50 micron siphon, the thickness of a fine hair, the diameter of a hair. - Wow. (gurgling) - Perfect. - I'm extracting. - It's cloudy because we have a lot of algae and plankton here. We are trying not to remove all the algae. We're trying to moderate it, that's

where

a lot of the flavor

come

s from. - So your salinity really

does

n't change? It's just the minerality, all the impurities. - Exactly. - That's what varies. - If we were collecting salt and drying it in a lava flow, it would have a different taste and a different color because of the minerals in that lava and that's a lot of carbon.

And that's where, say, Hawaiian black salt originally

come

s from. If it were in contact with many iron deposits, it would have a red color and that is where Himalayan pink salt comes from. - This is very interesting, yes. - And that ocean flavor is obviously the 70+ salt compounds along with the algae. - Well, in summer evaporation occurs in a few weeks, three weeks? - Yes. - And in the colder months that slows down to what? - Up to about three months. - Three months. So how do you know when it's done? How do you know which of these to choose? - By the look. - By the look. - From here I can see crystals in this one.

I can see crystals here and if I open this we will see them much clearer. And the goal is to simply slide them. This first batch was planted in March. - So this took two months to crystallize to where you can harvest it? - Well, after two months in the spring, we have enough crystals to make it worth kneeling and... - Good. (upbeat music) - So if you could try leaving it right in the middle. - Oh my God. - And this is where it really is more art than science. The formula is, I don't know, if I will have two weeks of pure sunshine or not. - Good.

But all this relates to its natural handmade craftsmanship. - Exactly. Let's start... - Let's start with the classic. - This is enough to eat. - I'll try it alone. Oh my God. It's like this clean, pure salt. And it's flaky and the crystallization is very nice. You know, there's a difference between finishing the salts in flakes and this is like a good balance. I mean, it's not too big a flake. It is not too flat nor

does

it break. It's right where you want it to be to use as a final salt, so... - Some of the chefs who use our salt compare its taste.

They say it tastes like fleur de sel with a completely different texture. - Completely. Well, I totally agree with that. And it's just clean, it's very clean. And maybe that's because I've been in the sun all day and in the water, and I'm seeing this pure, all-natural process and it's so much more rewarding to taste the end result. It's really satisfying. - Thank you. - Oh my God. - It just brings out the flavors and makes it pop. - And that's their job, to enhance an amazing meal. Salt is just, I've always been a salt lover, I want to taste it in my food, but through cooking, you know, it's the foundation of making good food.

You have to use salt from the initial stage, the middle stage and the final stage. You know, all this brings something different and is very important. It's the foundation of the kitchen, so I'm really glad I got to see this process and it's so good. I hope you liked this episode. If you want to see something from our sister brand, "The Verge". Click here. - A lot of microbes that scientists and cheesemakers are still trying to catalog and understand. Take this cheddar cheese, for example. It's called Stockinghall Cheddar and is made by Murray's Cheese in New York City.