Grenadine Sea Salt: Better Health and Exploded Flavors
“Salting mindfully, and with a basic understanding of a Salt’s properties and behavior, will lead inescapably to better nutrition and better tasting food.” -Mark Bitterman
I love how Mark Bitterman, Selmelier extraordinaire, owner of The Meadow and author of the James Beard award winning book Salted: a Manifesto on the World’s Most Essential Mineral With Recipes incorporates mindfulness into the process of salting our food. It is that simple however, and so true—salting mindfully elevates to an art form both the process of preparing our food as well as the pleasure of savoring our food.
When I first became involved with Grenadine Sea Salt, it was Bitterman, the ‘Guru of Salt’, whose books I read by way of educating myself about this new world of salt and salt production. I was blown away by the vast and timeless culinary and nutritional benefits of solar evaporated sea salt. Already a pretty serious cook, my time in the kitchen is vastly more creative and inspired by access to and understanding of these incredible crystals. Sea Salt has become an integral part of our wellness routine as well, as we are fortunate to have plenty of it on hand.
Health Benefits
Good salt, with its high content of essential minerals, is truly essential for good health. The key here is ‘good salt’—as is ours: unrefined, unprocessed, solar evaporated and drawn from some of the the most pristine ocean water on the planet. Bequia, a tiny island in the Grenadines in the southern Caribbean, is hundreds of miles from any industry, and relatively undeveloped, so there is no dumping of toxins into these waters from which we harvest our salt.
In addition to keeping our internal bodies in balance, unrefined sea salt and can reduce the risk of chronic diseases. Our salts exceptionally high content of essential minerals such as Potassium, Magnesium and Sulfate offer a wide range of benefits for the body: heart, brain, blood, cells, muscles, nerves, bones, sinuses. From improving digestion, helping you sleep, fighting depression, optimizing brain function, even preventing premature aging, the benefits of good, unrefined sea salt are numerous. You can find countless articles online to support these claims, and many more.
I’ll cover three of the more significant and universally agreed upon health benefits of our pure sea salt here.
Immune System
The nutrients in our Sea Salt are useful for increasing the immune system’s production of antibodies. When used in small doses, it can help prevent colds, the flu and other viral infections that attack the body. A wonderful antioxidant, sea salt also has a detoxifying effect which can help prevent premature aging. The essential minerals help regulate blood PH, which promotes the expulsion of toxins and acidic compounds. With COVID as part of our new reality, strengthening our immune system and staying healthy has never been more important.
Cardiovascular health
There is some confusion about the relationship between salt and the heart, much of it due to the high quantity of manufactured salt to be found in processed foods. The fact is, a good unrefined Sea Salt’s high concentration of essential minerals can help reduce the risk of artherosclerosis, heart attacks and strokes. As a natural remedy to control high blood pressure and high cholesterol, we begin each day with a glass of warm lemon (or lime) water with half a teaspoon of our Original ‘Wild One’ sea salt, diluted.
Muscular health
Due to its high levels of potassium and magnesium, sea salt can enhance the proper functioning of our muscles by helping to reduce tension and increasing the levels of electrolytes which we lose when we sweat, especially after intense physical activity. Salt is essential for maintaining the balance of water in our bodies. This is why athletes drink electrolyte enhanced beverages such as Gatorade. Coconut water is the latest electrolyte laden drink to be on everyone’s radar, and we are fortunate to have plenty of that here on the island.
Our blends have the added value of several completely natural and health promoting ingredients: mango, coconut, turmeric, chili peppers, citrus (lime), cinnamon and nutmeg. Then there’s our Mayreau Blend made with local dark rum: not without some medicinal effects :).
Flavor Benefits
In terms of improving the flavor of anything we eat, Grenadine Sea Salt just makes everything taste better. There is a reason chefs are such huge fans of high quality sea salt. Finishing salts differ from processed salts in flavor, texture, and appearance. With a higher moisture content than manufactured salt, our hand crafted sea salt retains its crystal structure and does not have the drying out effect of refined table salt. Our salts are the perfect flavor enhancer, making everything taste better.
Shira Bocar, food editor at Martha Stewart Living magazine, describes it as "ancient, with pronounced minerality and hints of chlorophyll”—qualities we attribute to trace elements in the water around Bequia's volcanic shores.
Science supports this flavor enhancing aspect. Our brains aren’t able to detect many flavor compounds. By adding finishing salt to our food, our taste receptors can sense flavors otherwise undetected, literally exploding the flavor of any dish. This is why a high quality, hand-crafted finishing salt is a magical ingredient to any chef. It doesn’t cost more, it pays more, adding more value to a dish than any other ingredient.
In addition to the original ‘Wild One’ finishing salt, we offer five unique blends, each featuring locally sourced ingredients from the Grenadine islands, for which they are named. We arrived at these creative combinations through much experimentation, adding yet another layer of fresh and innovative flavor, texture and color to our salts. You’ll get the best results when you use a complimentary sea salt blend for your particular dish. We encourage lots of ‘salt play’ when it comes to enhancing the flavor of your dishes. In addition to exploding the flavor inherent to any recipe, each of our blends can influence the flavor dynamic differently.
You’ll find lots of ideas on our ‘Food Inspirations’ page where we share some delicious ways to enjoy each of our blends.
As always, a huge shout out to Christopher Simpson for his beautiful photography.