Bitterman Mark - Salt block grilling: 70 recipes for outdoor cooking with Himalayan salt blocks

Other Books by Mark Bitterman

Salted: A Manifesto on the Worlds Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes

Salt Block Cooking: Recipes for Grilling, Chilling, Searing, and Serving on Himalayan Salt Blocks

Bittermans Field Guide to Bitters & Amari: Bitters; Amari; Recipes for Cocktails, Food & Homemade Bitters

Bittermans Craft Salt Cooking: The Single Ingredient That Transforms All Your Favorite Foods and Recipes

To my sister, Jenny

the origin of salt block grilling

Grilling conjures different images our past expressed in snapshots of the great times we all spend outdoors. Near a sandy beach, paper plates and condiments strewn across a picnic blanket, ice chests stocked with burger patties and potato salad, and dogs run up from the water shaking their wet fur over everyone. In the wooded mountains, a tin coffeepot steaming on a rock at the edge of a fire pit, kids giggling in the tent, and trout and eggs frying in butter. In the hills of Tuscany, a cold, bitter drink gathering droplets of condensation on the table, the gregarious chef explaining in Italian (which you dont understand) the finer points of slow-grilling pork shoulder and wild herbs. In your backyard, neighbors arrive with a six-pack of their latest home brew, lured by thick steaks, onions, and asparagus marinating while the coals slowly catch and glow. Cooking fresh foods over fire connects us to the pleasure of today and the anticipation of days to come like nothing else. Salt blocks are the next adventure in grilling, a new way to bring the best memories of the past into the future.

The discovery of salt block grilling is threefold: Thick blocks of scorching hot salt bring fantastically effective new techniques to the grill, including convection cooking, searing, simultaneously grilling from below and searing from above, and even cooking from within the food itself. Food gets cooked better, faster, and more perfectly. Salt blocks drive flavor in cooking like nothing else, enlisting the dynamic duo of salt and fire in a single smoldering slab. Salt draws moisture so the heat can brown and crisp the food even as the salt and fire join forces on another front, breaking down both proteins and starches to create texture and flavor. Those objective benefits aside, the greatest promise of salt blocks is surely the newfound sense of adventure they bring to meals prepared under the banner of a blue sky. Salt blocks revive the excitement of familiar places, take you to new ones, and expand the realm of whats possible in outdoor cooking.

Himalayan salt blocks are made of solid salt, formed million years ago when salt deposits from an evaporated sea were buried deep under the earth. Geologists call this natural mineral salt halite . Giant boulders of it, sometimes in excess of pounds, are extracted from ancient mines in the Salt Range of Pakistans Punjab region. The boulders are then sliced and diced into innumerable shapes and sizes using stone-cutting saws and lathes. Miners, obsessed with stone and all its permutable charms, have long fashioned objects from boulders of salt, or even carved reliefs directly into the walls of the mine. The biggest of these salt mines in Pakistan is the Khewra mine, which features a veritable theme park of salt-hewn sights, including replicas of famous mosques and the Great Wall of China.

By far the most common use for Himalayan salt is to grind it into cooking salt. Unlike industrially made salts like kosher salt and iodized table salt, Himalayan salt contains over eighty trace elements. Where refined salts taste harsh and acrid, this salt tastes rich and balanced. This rich flavor shines through on foods cooked on Himalayan Salt Blocks.

Contrary to all the marketing and hype, Himalayan salt blocks are not actually from the Himalayas. In fact, there are few if any salt mines in the Himalayas. The name was introduced by marketing-savvy folks in the health food industry in the 1970 s and s, and it has proven impossible to shake the term ever since, though few have tried. When I first began selling Himalayan salt in my shop, The Meadow, back in 2006 , I tried to popularize the name Punjabi Pink, but people would look right past it and say they were only interested in the pink salt from Tibet, or, my favorite, pink sea salt from the Himalayas, which posited not only an imaginary salt mine in the Himalayas, but also an entire imaginary sea. So with apologies to the excellent people who live and work in Punjab, we will continue to call their pink salt Himalayan .

The good people of Pakistan, as well as those of neighboring India, who buy enormous quantities of Pakistans prized pink salt, do not cook on salt blocks. With mind-bogglingly rich culinary traditions of their own, they cannot be blamed for their lack of innovation on this front. It was in Americawhere fresh meat and produce and a blazing bed of coals equals cuisinethat salt block grilling first took off. My previous book, Salt Block Cooking , remains the standard reference for serving, curing, warming, melting, baking, freezing, and even drinking with blocks, bowls, and cups of Himalayan salt. Salt Block Grilling is the first book dedicated solely to the perfect marriage of salt blocks and the grill.

a salt block for every grill

Himalayan salt blocks have settled onto most of the surfaces of my kitchen, and I use them daily. I keep the butter out by the stove on a four-inch-thick cube of salt that keeps the butter cool and fresh (remember that salt is a preservative) even when the stove gets hot. Appetizers like radishes and butter, fruit and cheese, and olives and meats are almost always served on a salt block, as are many salads, whether its avocados and jicama, tomatoes and mozzarella, cucumbers and onions, or pears and endive. I cook on salt bocks whenever the food warrants it; scallops, duck breast, or shrimp in their shells simply dont compare when cooked in a pan. If Im having guests over, I use salt blocks more deliberately, because their primordial beauty contributes to the atmosphere of hospitality and chitchat. Ill even serve mint juleps or oyster shooters in little shot glasses that have been lathed by hand out of salt blocks. But for all of a salt blocks utility and appeal in the kitchen, it is in the great outdoors where they really shine.