Making Artisanal Salt At Home

A five gallon, food-safe, official water-harvester

Salt.

Pretty simple: Take some seawater, boil it, and collect the solids.

It's really almost that easy, however reducing water to collect what is, by weight, essentially four percent of the contents requires patience, a few specialized pieces of equipment (although not necessary, as a big pot will do) and ENERGY.

You are essentially boiling away five gallons of water.  If you have ever made stock, boiling away water is tough.  We use a 22 quart hotel pan that spans two burners to accelerate the process.  Cost me $25 I think.

Ok.  Now to collection.  You want natural, clean water.  We have collected from the docks or a boat, but the beach is the most accessible.  This salt come from Narragansett Beach in Rhode Island.  Our favorite place.

Coastal waters, while clean, can on occasion become contaminated with runoff due to heavy rain, or urine due to heavy human activity.  Neither is an enhancement of the final salt product.

To improve your chances of an enhanced product, harvest your water off the beach in at least knee-deep water, when the tide is rising (new water coming in), and fewer people are there and are pissing in the surf (come on, we've all done it!).  I tend to grab my harvest in the evening when the tide is rising.  Jesus, we are talking about me wading into the water and dunking a bucket.  Then hauling the 40 lbs (8 pounds per gallon, memorize it), up the beach to my car.  This is not a culinary skill, rather a Cross-Fit interval.

I let the sand settle to the bottom of the bucket.  Some recommend overnight, but sand is heavier than that so an hour will suffice.

I run the salt water through a sieve that is lined with a tea towel to remove any additional sand, but leaving a quart behind won't materially change the salt yield and will prevent solids from contaminating your product.

Boil, boil, boil.  It took me about three hours over two burners to get down to less than a gallon, when the solids begin to precipitate out.  This is where the art form comes into play, and I cannot claim to have mastered it yet.  The salt will begin to form as flakes (preferred).  Agitation will break up those flakes and make the salt more sandy, and crystal formation in other fluids generally produces bigger crystals as the precipitate binds to existing crystals providing bigger chunks.  Stay tuned as we refine the crystal-growing and form technique.  The salt still tastes the same, however.  Salty.

A word of caution.  As the water evaporates and the salt precipitates, heat management is essential.  You will not only burn the pan and salt, but the salt will magically begin to pop out of the pan and speckle every surface in its path.  Marriages can fray, cleaning folks can quit, pans can be ruined. When the salt begins to precipitate, turn the heat way down, and watch it.  Even better...put it in a 250 degree oven.

The bitter end

Eventually the salt will get sandy, and i used a flat-ended spatula to keep the water moving and the salt away from the heat.  When it approached the consistency of high-tide sand, I took it off the heat, went to bed and then left it out in the sun for a day.  Because salt is hygroscopic, it will always be a little wet as it pulls moisture from the air.  if you want it very dry and granular, pop it in the microwave for a few seconds.

The salinity of the water will dictate the yield of your final product.  We got about one pound, four ounces for our work.  Worth it?  Absolutely.

Here's the video of the whole process: