Smoked salt is a versatile and delicious spice that can add a unique smoky flavor to any dish. It’s perfect for grilling and barbecue, adding depth and complexity to meats, fish, and vegetables. Smoked salt is made with high quality sea salt and is slowly smoked over natural wood, resulting in a rich, smoky flavor that will elevate any meal. Whether you’re a professional chef or a backyard griller, smoked salt is sure to provide a unique flavor profile that you cannot find in traditional seasonings. It is perfect for rubs and marinades, and also as a finishing salt. Smoke salt works great on burgers, steaks, brisket, and even seafood and vegetables.
What is smoked salt?
Smoked salt is exactly what it sounds like. It is salt that has placed in a smoker for several hours, allowing the rich flavor to adhere to the salt. The smoke flavor can come from a variety of natural hardwoods, such as hickory, mesquite, apple, or alder. As with smoking anything from pork shoulder to brisket – the smoking time takes several hours. The finished product allows you to add a nice smokey salty flavor to any dish – and it doesn’t have to come directly from the smoker. While it’s easy to buy smoked salt online, it’s just as easy to make smoked salt at home.
What is the best salt to smoke?
When it comes to smoking salt, the best salt to smoke comes in large coarse grains. Coarse salt is ideal because it has larger crystals that can better absorb the smoky flavor. You also want to find a salt that has its own natural flavor. The two main salts that are used for smoking salt are coarse sea salt, or any Kosher sea salt that can be found in your local grocery store. Note, while any salt can theoretically be smoked, you want to ensure the grains are large enough, and that the existing salt has no additional flavors.
Is smoked salt hot or cold smoked?
Smoked salt can be both hot smoked and cold smoked. If you’re looking to cold smoke, you’ll want to smoke at no more than 80°F for 12-24 hours. We personally prefer to hot smoke at 250°F, and piggy back off another smoke that we may be doing. For example, if you’re smoking pork shoulder, or anything really, and you have some extra space, it’s a great opportunity to smoke salt for several hours. You’ll want to go for at least four hours, and ensure you have large grain coarse salt to allow a larger surface area for absorption.
How to make smoked salt?
Smoking salt is fairly straight forward. The two key ingredients are the coarse salt, and the natural hardwood that you want your salt to absorb. Some of the most common hardwoods that are used are cherry, apple and mesquite, but don’t let that limit you. Sometimes the best smoking wood is one that you have available, so feel free to experiment.
Small batch smoked salt
We don’t typically make smoked salt in bulk, so we’re going to discuss smoking salt in small batches, that will fit on your smoker while you’re smoking ribs, pork, or chicken. The most convenient way we found was to line a toaster oven pan with aluminum foil to use as your cooking surface.
How much salt do I use?
When it comes to determining how much salt to use, we’ll take our coarse salt, and fill our canister to the desired level. This way, when we distribute it on to the toaster oven sheet, we’ll know that the exact amount will fit into our spice jar.
Evenly distribute the salt on a small baking sheet
One the salt is evenly distributed on to the sheet it’s time to start smoking. As with traditional meats, make sure that you have a clear blue smoke before you begin the process. What you see coming out of the chimney will be infused into the salt. Once you have a clear, blue, consistent smoke going it’s time to place the baking sheet onto the grilling surface.
Smoked salt smoking time
When hot smoking salt, we like to shoot for a minimum smoke time of four hours. This is enough time to allow the salt to infuse the smoke and have a quality product. That being said, if you’re looking for richer and deeper smoked salt, we recommend going as long as you can. We’ve heard of some smokes going for over twenty four hours. While we think it’s overkill, its also fun to experiment and see what yields the best results. Lastly, be sure to rake the salt every hour. Raking the course salt allows for the different sizes to be exposed and infuse the smokey flavor.
Conclusion
Smoking salt is a fun, easy activity, that will produce a unique spice, with a very interesting flavor profile. More often than not, smoked salt is used as a finishing salt. It goes great with steaks, pulled pork and brisket. However, don’t let your imagination stop you there. It goes great in homemade rubs too. Jacobsen Salt sells a cherrywood smoked salt that is recommended on salmon, salads, and even fruits like peaches. Experiment with different hardwoods, and experiment with different cuts of meat, veggies and fruits, and let us know what combos you like the best.