Smoked sea salt

Sel fumé

What it is

It is cold-smoked, never heated: the crystals sit over smouldering wood for a day or more at a temperature that will neither melt nor dry them, taking the smoke on as an aroma rather than a coating. Colour tells you the wood - alder gives a pale gold, oak and beech a deeper brown.

In the kitchen

The aroma is volatile, so it goes on at the table or off the heat; cooked into a braise it disappears and you have paid for plain salt. A pinch on eggs, butter or a boiled potato is where it reads loudest.

Goes with

Egg Butter Potato Scallop Pork Dark chocolate Tomato Cream

Same species

Alaea red Hawaiian salt Sodium bicarbonate Fleur de sel de Guérande Himalayan pink salt Kala namak (Indian black salt) Kansui

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