I’ve got creative ways for cooking with salt during summer:

1.  Salsa & Chutney

In Think Like a Chef, Tom Colicchio writes that salt ” interacts with flavors of ingredients and your taste buds, “waking” up everything along the way. This is especially noticeable in a dish that is both sweet and sour.” He uses a Green Tomato Chutney to illustrate the point. The chutney is full of vibrant ingredients like jalapeño, ginger, bell pepper and vinegar as well as sugar and spices.Tom recommends tasting the completed dish, then adding a couple of grains of salt at a time, tasting to observe how the flavors change. This is intuitive cooking. Learning by doing, sensing, paying attention. Mango Salsa with Hawaiian Black Lava Salt from the book Salted is another recipe where finishing salt really shines. Not only does the black lava salt liven up the fresh flavors in the salsa, it also provides visual and textural stimulation. Stimulate your senses- that’s what cooking is all about.

 2.  Curing Meat

Sodium Chloride is an essential ingredient for curing meat. In Cooking By Hand (an excellent resource for intuitive cooking), Paul Bertolli writes that salt dehydrates meat, which “limits the amount of water available for the growth of certain bacteria.” Curing meat at home is super popular right now- check out Charcutepalooza! at Food52. Mario Batali’s Babbo Cookbook contains a recipe for Duck Bresaola described as “an excellent intro to curing meat at home: it is very simple and virtually foolproof.” Duck breast is rubbed down with kosher salt, black pepper, sugar, red pepper flakes, rosemary, and thyme, then left to cure in the fridge for 3 weeks. Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn has a recipe for Fresh Bacon that couldn’t be easier. Just coat a slab of pork belly with their Basic Dry Cure (1 pound kosher salt, 8 ounces sugar, 2 ounces pink salt) and refrigerate it about seven days. Rinse the bacon, pat it dry, slice and sautée in the pan. If you’ve never cured meat at home, it’s time to try something new!

3.  Salty Ice Cream

I love the idea of turning a popular candy, salted caramels, into a refreshing summer ice cream. Amanda Hesser includes a recipe for Salted Caramel Ice Cream in The Essential New York Times Cookbook (and the book is essential). The recipe from Nicole Kaplan calls for delicate fleur de sel, a good choice because the high residual moisture of this particular salt  keeps it from dissolving immediately in the ice cream. According to the book, Salted, this results in a “delicate but satisfying crunch.” I also like the sound of Honey Ice Cream with Sugar Maple Smoked Sea Salt in Salted. Salt contributes more than flavor to ice cream, it also affects the texture in a positive way, keeping the ice cream from freezing hard.

4.  Whole Fish Baked in Salt Crust

According to Paul Bertolli in Cooking By Hand, “rather than acting as a seasoning, salt is used like earth in clay baking to create a protective shell around the fish that seals in all the flavor.” He suggests combining egg whites with salt so the mixture can be placed atop the fish, forming a cast-like layer that is easy to remove after baking. The cooked fish is tender and moist. This Salt Baked Trout from Food & Wine is simple to prepare with a sustainable fish that is widely available. Baking fish in salt connects us with more rustic cooking methods, giving more ceremony and meaning to a meal. Give it a try!

5.  Pickling

At its most basic, pickling is curing vegetables in vinegar, sugar, and salt. Spices are added for flavor. Pickled vegetables are pleasantly crisp in texture and briny in taste. In Canning for a New Generation, Liana Krissoff uses pure kosher salt for all her pickles because salts with additives like caking agents or iodine will cause the brine to be cloudy. I’m a big fan of her recipes because of their lively flavorings. For example, Persian Tarragon Pickles are flavored with garlic, tarragon, coriander seeds, and hot chiles. The August issue of Bon Appétit magazine features a really interesting pickle from the article, The Preservation Society. The recipe for Zucchini Dill Pickles makes use of coarse sea slat, saffron, garlic, dill seeds, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, and chiles.

6.  Cookies

I love a salty chocolate chip cookie. Something about the salty/sweet combo really gets the taste buds firing. The A16 Food + Wine cookbook includes a recipe for Chocolate and Sea Salt Shortbread Cookies described as “unexpectedly complex” and “savory”. Check out the September issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine to see a recipe for Olive Oil and Sea Salt Madeleines in the article, Brave New Madeleines.

7.  Make Your Own Flavored Salts

Why buy flavored salts when you can make your own. Many of us keep flavored salts in the pantry, but beware of those with additives and a not so natural flavor. I first got the idea for making my own flavored salt from Heidi Swanson’s blog, 101 Cookbooks. She uses her homemade celery salt to season just about everything. I found more ideas for homemade salts in The Improvisational Cook, an excellent resource for learning to cook intuitively. Sally Schneider shares a recipe for Real Garlic Salt and her Fragrant Herb Salt makes use of fresh rosemary and sage leaves for a Tuscan flavor. Salt blends can be used on roasted vegetables and meats, or even popcorn.

 8.  Cured Salmon

Salmon is in season right now, so why not try curing it? When cured with salt and other spices, salmon develops a delicate, pleasing texture and fresh, herbal flavor. Cured salmon is as simple as covering the fish in the dry ingredients and leaving it alone in the fridge a couple of days. I enjoy cured salmon in pasta, on bagels or toast, or in a salad. Inspired by Jamie Oliver, I made Gravlax with dill flowers and beets from my garden here. You can find a fantastic recipe for Fennel-Cured Salmon in the reference cookbook Charcuterie.

 9.  Salted Nuts

What better to serve with drinks on the porch during summer than salted nuts? They are addictive and delicious. In her book, Nigella Bites, Nigella Lawson writes, “try these…and you’ll truly know what perfection is” in regards to her recipe for The Union Square Café’s Bar Nuts. Assorted nuts like peanuts, cashews, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, pecans and almonds are roasted then tossed with butter. The unsalted butter is flavored with cayenne, dark brown sugar, and Maldon sea salt. Maldon is a beautifully flakey sea salt collected from England’s Blackwater River estuary.

10.  Try Salting Early

The Zuni Cafe Cookbook advocates a practice of salting early with sea salt to “diffuse the seasoning throughout the food…promote juiciness and improve texture.” This technique is applied throughout the book in recipes such as the Zuni Roast Chicken, which is salted 1 to 3 days before cooking. Judy Rodgers attributes the succulence of her Zuni Hamburger to the fact that the boneless beef chuck is seasoned with salt a day in advance of grinding it. This technique could take your food to the next level, pretty exciting!

Do you have creative ideas for cooking with salt? Let me know in the comments section. Click Here.