Smoked Sea Salt – The Easy Way to Add a Little Smoke to Your Grub

By Jim Rakshys on Feb 15, 2012 in Featured, Rubs, Marinades and Sauces, Techniques, Tips and Equipment

This is a great tool for all of you smoke jockeys out there! Yes, I said smoked salt. Look at the pictures….you can see the gray color from the pecan wood I had used. I found that a good deal of folks are not familiar with smoked salt, even one that I know who like to BBQ and grill. Before I get into the “how to”, let me first cover the two basic types of smoked salt you can find in the store: 1) Salt that has literally been smoked with some kind of wood for hours, and 2) salt that has been soaked in liquid smoke. We’re going to cover the “real” smoked salt here, which consequently is the more expensive of the two kinds if you were to buy it in the store ready to go.

So, “What do you do with smoked salt?”, one might ask. To which I would answer, “Put it on anything you like.” Seriously. Replace regular sea salt with smoked sea salt in your BBQ rub, especially if you’re not going to add any wood to your fire when grilling meat. Sprinkle it on fish before broiling it for a hint of smokey flavor. Add it to your baked potato to give the taste and impression that you just pulled it out of the coals of a camp fire. The nice thing about real smoked salt versus the kind soaked in liquid smoke is that it doesn’t have an overpowering smokey flavor, but just enough to give that “fresh off the grill” taste. It’s definitely worth spending a little time to make your own and try this at least once.

Time:

Prep: about 45 minutes to burn your choice of wood to coals
Cooking Time: 4 – 6 hours

Cooking Method and Temp:

Indirect cooking
Low (you want as little heat as possible…..just the smoke)

Ingredients:

Moist coarse sea salt (This is important as the moist sea salt absorbs the flavor much better than dry sea salt)

Note: Check out your local Asian market or restaurant supply. I think I paid about $4 for 10 pounds

The wood of our choice

Preparation:

Set up your grill for indirect grilling.
Either 1) put a layer of the salt in a shallow aluminum baking sheet, or 2) place aluminum foil right on the grate in the spot where you don’t have direct heat, and lay some slat on it being careful not to put too much so it doesn’t spill off of the foil
Light your wood in either a fire pit, charcoal chimney, or in your charcoal grill and let it burn down to mostly coals

Having a place to burn the wood that’s separate from where your cooking it is helpful so you can start more wood as soon as you add the first set of coals to your grill.

Once the wood is ready, use a shovel (if your using a fire pit or another grill), or dump the coals from the chimney into your grill
Place the aluminum baking sheet with the salt, or the grate with the aluminum foil and salt onto the grill, and cover your grill…shut all of the dampers
Light up another batch of wood
Check the salt every hour stirring/mixing it with a spatula, tasting it, and adding new coals (make sure you use some kind of over or grill mitts to handle the hot grate)
Once the salt has the taste you want, you’re done. I tend to do it for 4 – 6 hours when I’m able to get pretty thick smoke.

It’s a little time consumption, but well worth it and you’ll save a bunch of money over the store bought stuff while really impressing your friends. Enjoy!