While in Portland two weeks ago, I was invited to attend a dinner with demonstrations of grilling on Himalayan salt. This event was sponsored by Amnesia Brewing and The Meadow—a small store selling only salt, chocolate, wine and flowers, or as they advertise, “the basic elements of good living.”
I watched Andrew Schloss and David Joachim (award-winning cookbook writers and chefs) heat the salt blocks to 500°F to 600°F before starting to grill food on them. When the salt was hot enough, they grilled scallops, for our dinner, directly on top of the pink salt blocks.
The first course they served to us was the Garlic Scallops Two Ways—Seared and Cured (between blocks of salt, of course!). Separating the scallops, was a Green Apple Seaweed Salad.
Next to be grilled were some fiddlehead ferns—in season for only a couple of weeks in the spring.
The fiddlehead ferns were served with Pork Loin Roulade Swirled with Pancetta & Morels. The foods grilled on the salt blocks did not taste salty but rather got a nice sear. One problem with the scallops however is that they stuck to the salt blocks, making them a little difficutl to turn over.
After dinner we walked across the street to the Meadow to see and sample some of the salts they sell—over 150 types sourced from around the world. There was French fleur de sal, BBQ salts (these were my favorites), Hawaiian and Asian salts, grey salts and black salts made black with charcoal.
Here is a stack of the salt blocks, for sale at The Meadow.
Just when I thought that I was way ahead of learning about this food trend of cooking on salt blocks, I discovered that Sur la Table is also selling the Himalayan Pink Salt Blocks. If you are grilling on Mother’s Day, you might want to check them out.
Look for a new book, published by Ten Speed Press, this fall: Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes by Mark Bitterman. (Mark is the co-owner of The Meadow store, with his wife Jennifer.