Bamboo salt

Sel de bambou (jukyeom)

What it is

Jukyeom is sea salt packed into three-year-old bamboo, sealed at both ends with yellow clay and fired over pine wood up to nine times; the ninth firing runs hot enough to melt the salt, which pours out and sets as a purple-grey rock. The nine-roast method was codified by the herbalist Kim Il-hun and only industrialised in 1987, so the product is far older in idea than in trade.

In the kitchen

It smells sulphurous and faintly of egg, so treat it as a seasoning in its own right rather than a salt substitute — a pinch on grilled beef, on a sesame-oil dip, on plain rice. Nine-roast costs several times what one-roast does: cook with the cheap one and keep the purple crystals for finishing.

Goes with

Toasted sesame oil Nori Beef Egg Silken tofu (kinugoshi) Radish

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