Our Recipes

What other taste is more perfect for hot weather than Thai food? This tangy, salty dish is a Thai inspired recipe from Mark Bitterman's Salt Block Cooking.  Serves 4 Ingredients: 1 stovetop round Himalayan Salt Block ¼ cup fresh lime juice ¼ cup Thai fish sauce 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar 2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil 1 garlic clove, minced 1 hot chili pepper, such as bird chile, habanero, cayenne or Scotch bonnet, stem and seeds removed, minced ¼ cup finely shredded carrot 1¼ pounds large, wild-caught sea scallops (about 16) ½ teaspoon freshly ground Lampong Black Pepper Place the stovetop round Himalayan Salt Block over low heat on a gas grill or stovetop for 10 minutes (see Read Before Heating, in Salt Block Cooking, pg. 25). Turn the heat to medium and heat for 10 more minutes. Raise the heat to medium-high and heat the block to about 600 °F, about 20 more minutes (see Getting It Hot, in Salt Block Cooking, pg. 24). To make the dipping sauce, mix the lime juice, fish sauce, ¼ cup water, vinegar, sesame oil, garlic, chili pepper and carrot; set aside. Pat the scallops dry and pull off their white gristly tendons if not already removed. Season the scallops with the black pepper and let stand at room temperature until the salt block is hot. When the salt block is very hot (you should only be able to hold your hand above it for just a few seconds), place the scallops on the hot block and sear until browned and springy to the touch but still a little soft in the center, about 3 minutes per side. Work in batches if your salt block cannot comfortably fit all the scallops at once. Transfer to a platter or plates and serve with the dipping sauce.  Recipe & Photos by Mark Bitterman. To see more of Mark's photos and recipes, check out Salt Block Cooking

Pinot Noir Sea Salt, made using top-notch Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, has a strong aroma, bright visual impact, and a tamarind-like tart sweetness. The salty sweet pops of flavor and color are a delightful surprise sprinkled on top of this blackberry lime pie!   Makes 1 pie Ingredients: For the pie crust:  1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs 1/2 cup butter, melted 1/4 teaspoon Pinot Noir Sea Salt Cooking spray For the pie filling:  1 tablespoon lime zest (only collect zest from the outermost layer, the white portion of the peel is bitter) 1 lime, juiced 1 pint fresh blackberries 2 egg yolks 1 can, 14 oz, sweetened condensed milk To garnish: Fresh blackberries Pinot Noir Sea Salt Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray an 8-inch pie dish or a shallow 9-inch pie dish with cooking spray and set aside.  Mix the graham cracker crumbs, 1/4 teaspoon Pinot Noir Sea Salt and butter in a small bowl. Press down the mixture onto the pie dish. Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes, then set aside.  Place washed fresh blackberries into a strainer with a bowl underneath. Using a spatula, fork, or your fingers, mash the blackberries to release their juices. Discard the pulp. Mix the blackberry juice, lime juice, lime zest and egg yolks in a medium bowl for 1 minute on high speed. Add the condensed milk and mix on high speed for about 1 minute or until smooth and creamy.  Pour mixture into the crust and bake for 15-17 minutes or until the center is set. Remove from oven, allow to cool, then refrigerate for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight. Garnish with blackberry slices and Pinot Noir Sea Salt and serve. Enjoy!  Recipe by Dr. James Hancey  

In the dog days of summer, this crunchy, cool, sweet, salty, juicy, tangy salad fits the bill: no oven or stove top required, minimal work, maximum flavor.  Recipe adapted from Mark Bitterman's best-selling cookbook Salt Block Cooking. Sweet, juicy watermelon slices, creamy goat cheese, and fragrant mint are made only better when served on a stunning slab of pink salt.      

The presence of mulling spices in a drink is no big thing, except when the spices are actually mulling in the drink. Adding cloves and lemon peel to hot alcohol results in lightning-fast extraction of flavors that at first sip are delicious but can quickly become overwhelming. By the time you’re done, you feel like you need to dip yourself in alcohol to extract all the clove and limonene from you. Let bitters do the heavy aromatic lifting, and enjoy the stability of balanced bitter sweetness as it supports the boozy, spicy warmth at the heart of the drink. Serves 1 (you) Ingredients: 1 cup boiling water 1 tablespoon Demerara sugar 1½ ounces whiskey, bourbon, rye, Irish whiskey, or Scotch 5 dashes citrus bitters 2 dashes aromatic bitters Pour the boiling water into a heated mug. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Sit, back, relax and enjoy! Variations: Bitter Boozy Coffee (aka Irish Coffee): Follow the recipe for the above, using freshly brewed hot coffee for the boiling water, Irish whiskey, and chocolate or cinnamon bitters for the citrus bitters. Top with a spoonful of softly whipped cream and drizzle the aromatic bitters on top. Hot Buttered Rum: Follow the recipe for the recipe above, using dark rum instead of whiskey and cinnamon or other spiced bitters for the citrus bitters. Top with a thin pad of unsalted butter and drizzle the aromatic bitters on top.  Recipe from Bitterman's Field Guide to Bitters and Amari written by Mark Bitterman.         Recipe taken from Mark Bitterman's new book, Bitterman's Field Guide to Bitters and Amari.

There is nothing better for a creamy, romantic meal than a french fleur de sel, specifically the Fleur de Sel de l'Île de Ré.  When our firstborn came onto the scene he was a terror.  Not the misbehaving kind of terror, which usually does little more than wreck your sense of personal dignity and bury your life’s dreams under a three-year blanket of hard domestic labor.  For one, he rarely slept.  Entire nights might be passed watching the moonbeams glide across the deep space blue of his staring eyes, which seemed preternaturally aware of his surroundings, calling every move we made into question. But most insidiously — he ate.  He ate early and he ate often, with unflappable abandon.  One night, not more than a few handfuls of months into life, sitting in a baby chair clipped onto the side of the table, he watched as I put the finishing touches on a romantic meal for my wife and myself.  Wine chilled, candles lit, salad tossed, baby staring with evil innocence from his edge of the table, I served up filet of sole with herb butter, scattered with a luscious French fleur de sel. The aroma of fish, herbs, and butter filled the air.  Then the baby lunged for the closest plate, and devoured the fish before our eyes. Fleur de sel has no higher purpose than to grace the buttery-moist flesh of sole.  The excellent Fleur de Sel de l'Île de Ré, France, with its mineral sheen of a full moon, underscores the perfection of each of the other elements in the dish, defining their features in the most loving light.  Sole is so delicate that the grassy pungency of fresh herbs must be suffused in butter to preserve the balance of the fish.  The fundamental soleness of the sole is truly a wonder to taste—full to bursting but hard to grasp—like insomnia that set you dreaming as you stare at a child’s moonlit face. Serves 4 Ingredients: 2 tablespoons unsalted butter (the best you can get), 15 minutes out of the fridge 3 tablespoons medium chopped fresh herbs, such as tarragon, parsley, dill, thyme, sage, chervil, savory, and/or rosemary Finely grated zest and juice of 1/2 lemon 4 sole (or flounder) fillets, about 6 ounces each Coarsely ground mixed peppercorns 2 tablespoons olive oil 4 two-finger pinches Fleur de Sel de l'Île de Ré Blend the butter, herbs and lemon zest together. Gently roll into a cylinder about the size of your thumb and cut into 4 disks, set aside. Pat the sole fillets dry with a paper towel and season with pepper.Put 2 large skillets over high heat until very hot. Add a tablespoon of oil to each skillet and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Put 2 fillets in each pan, whiter side down and sauté until the edges of the fillets are opaque, about 2 minutes. Turn carefully and cook on the other side until the surface is dry but the flesh is still moist in the center, about 2 more minutes. Transfer to plates. Remove the pans from the heat and deglaze with the lemon juice. Pour over the fish. Top each fish fillet with a pad of herb butter and season with a pinch or two of Fleur de Sel de l'Île de Ré or other French fleur de sel (don’t substitute sea salt!). Garnish with more herbs and lemon zest, if you prefer. Serve right away. Recipe, photo, and words by Mark Bitterman. Recipe, words, and photograph by Mark Bitterman.

We gave you a recipe to use with one of our three signature foundational salts, Bitterman's Flake, now here's a recipe for another one of the three, our Bitterman's Sel Gris. Lemon chicken shows very nicely with a touch of  Bitterman's Sel Gris rubbed in the poultry’s cavity, and a more generous amount of this warm salt sprinkled at the end, lending a lush mineral crunch to balance the dish’s aromatic citrus zest and juicy sweet-sour acidity.  Coarse, crunchy salts like sel gris should be a legally required addition to roast chicken.  The real question is, should the salt go on before you tuck the bird into the oven, or after you have carved it and set it on the table?  Before you don your finest wrestling gear to settle the matter with violence, consider the possibility that both are great.  The former delivers extra-crackling skin bristling with popping brittle bits of salt.  The latter lets subtler flavors of whatever seasonings you put on the skin shine forth, and then complements them with a more unctuous crystalline crunch. Lemon chicken shows very nicely with a touch of Bitterman's Sel Gris rubbed in the poultry’s cavity, and a more generous amount of this warm, supple salt sprinkled at the end, lending a lush mineral crunch to balance the dish’s aromatic citrus zestiness and juicy sweet-sour acidity.  The Bitterman's sel gris is coarser than French sea salt’s such as Sel Gris de l’Ile de Noirmoutier, but it is also milder and somewhat silkier,making it a delicious alternative to these briny-minerally French classics. Free salt for anyone who sends me a photo of themselves in full wrestling attire. Serves 8  Ingredients: 1 chicken, about 4 lbs (2 kg), visible fat removed, washed and dried 3 three-finger pinches Bitterman's Sel Gris (or coarse French sea salt) plus more for the table 4 grinds cracked black peppercorns 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil 1 large lemon, cut in half, seeds removed Preheat oven to 425ºF. Sprinkle the interior cavity of the chicken with a three-finger pinch of sel gris the cracked black pepper. Coat the outside of the chicken with the olive oil and place the chicken breast-side down in a ceramic roasting pan.  Squeeze the lemon all over the chicken and put the spent lemon halves inside the chicken cavity. Roast for 45 minutes and turn the chicken breast side up. It’s easiest to use large tongs with one arm inserted into the chicken cavity and the other gripping the back of the chicken. Roast for about 20 minutes more, until the skin is golden brown and a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh registers 170ºF. Remove the chicken to a carving board and let rest for 5 minutes before carving. Carve the chicken and arrange in the center of a platter. Remove the lemon halves from the cavity and squeeze any remaining juice over the carved chicken.  Scatter the remaining tree-finger pinches of sel gris over the chicken and serve with a small bowl of sel gris for the table. Written by Mark Bitterman.

A mouth watering recipe for a crispy tangy spicy red snapper, flavors singing in exotic Southeast Asian voices, paired with Bitterman's Flake Salt. Written by our very own Mark Bitterman.   A crispy tangy spicy red snapper: flavors singing in exotic Southeast Asian voices.  Restless nights preceded this recipe.  There was hand wringing.  Soul searching.  The dilemma of which salt.  Bali Rama, with its arrowhead tips of explosive freshness, was the seductive choice, a magnificent sea salt that seems never to steer me wrong.  Maldon sea salt would have been a convenient and more predictable choice, salt’s gold standard of unflappable, balanced crispness.  But the snapper wanted something more, something both melodic and taunting, like the sound of seashells raked by summer waves across a tropical reef.  The choice of salts became clear: Bitterman's Flake with its huge pyramidal crystals that seem nearly to tremble with oceanic vitality, a sea salt with the mathematical exactitude of music. Serves 3 to 4 Ingredients: For the Snapper: 2 teaspoon coriander seed, ground 1 tablespoon white peppercorns, ground 1 three-finger pinch Bitterman's Fleur de Sel 4 garlic cloves, minced 1/2 bunch cilantro, leave, minced 4 to 5 pounds cleaned (gutted, scaled, fins trimmed, gills removed) whole red snapper juice of 1 lime 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 3 three-finger pinches Bitterman's Flake Sea Salt For the Sauce: 2 fresh lemon grass stalks, all fibrous layers removed, finely sliced 1/2 fresh chile, minced 1/4 cup Nam Pla (fish sauce) 1/4 cup water 1/4 cup lime juice, about 2 limes 8 chives, finely sliced Combine the coriander, peppercorns, fleur de sel, garlic and cilantro into a coarse paste.  Make 3 deep slits in the sides of the fish and rub the spice paste into the slits and all over the surface of the fish. Set on a boiler pan and drizzle with lime juice and olive oil. Preheat the broiler and set the fish aside for 10 minutes while you make the sauce. The lemon grass needs to be thoroughly trimmed so that only the tender heart is left.  (The trick to lemon grass is pealing away way more of the outer layers than you might think.)  Combine the sliced lemon grass, chile, fish sauce, water, and lime juice. Broil the fish 4 inches away from the heat until the skin is crisp on both sides and fish flesh is opaque (but still moist) deep in the slits.  Transfer to a serving platter.Drizzle the sauce over the fish, scatter the chive, and finish with Bitterman's Flake over top.

Celebrate summer's everlasting bounty with this fresh vegetable frittata, which is sprinkled with Haleakala Ruby Red Hawaiian Sea Salt right before serving.     Celebrate summer's everlasting bounty with this fresh vegetable frittata, which is sprinkled with Haleakala Ruby Red Hawaiian Sea Salt right before serving. Serves 6 to 8 Ingredients:  1 1/2 cup cooked potatoes, peeled and sliced 2 big pinches of Bitterman's Fleur de Sel,  1 pinch for the water and 1 pinch for the vegetables 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 large bell pepper, seeds removed, sliced 1 zucchini, cut into rounds 1 summer squash, such as pattypan squash, cut into small pieces 1/2 cup mushrooms, washed and sliced 1 cup fresh spinach 1/2 cup of cherry tomatoes, sliced in half lengthwise 10 large farm-fresh eggs 4 ounces goat cheese Haleakala Ruby Coarse Red Hawaiian Sea Salt or Molokai Red Hawaiian Sea Salt, for finishing Freshly ground Black Pepper and red pepper flakes, to taste Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Boil the potatoes in a large pot of salted water until softened, then drain, peel, and cut into pieces. Set aside. Heat oil in a 10 inch cast iron skillet over medium heat. Cook bell peppers until softened, about 3 minutes. Add in zucchini and squash slices, then season with a big pinch of fleur de sel sea salt. Cook for 2-3 minutes until softened. Add in the sliced mushrooms and cook for another 2 minutes. Add in spinach and cook for about 1 minute or until the spinach starts to wilt. Then mix in the cooked potatoes and allow it to warm through, about 3 minutes. Lastly, add in the cherry tomatoes and remove from heat.  Meanwhile, crack 10 eggs in a medium bowl and add in a dash of fleur de sel sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Whisk for about 1 minute until the eggs come together. Pour eggs over the veggie mixture. Sprinkle the goat cheese on top.  Place in preheated oven and bake for about 12 to 15 minutes or until set (the middle will barely jiggle). Once set, place on the broiler setting and broil for about 1 to 2 minutes to brown the top. Allow to cool slightly, then sprinkle generously with Haleakala Ruby Coarse Red Hawaiian Sea Salt and serve! Don't forget the hot sauce! Recipe & Photos by Farah Raqib. To see more of Farah's photos and recipes, visit tplusf.tumblr.com.    

A refreshing and comforting salad, drizzled with Italian balsamic and buttery smooth olive oil, and salted by sitting on top of a plate made of Himalayan Pink Rock Salt.