Smoked salt brings the campfire to your plate
Smoked salt is sea salt that has been smoked over smoldering wood, taking on both color and seasoning in the process. It seasons and smokes in a single step – ideal for anyone who loves that grilled aroma but doesn't have a smoker in their garden. Four varieties, smoked over birch, oak, and beech.
Smoked salt is sea salt whose flakes are left for a long time in the smoke of birch, oak, or beech wood, absorbing color and aroma – golden brown, savory, and deep. The principle is ancient, the effect astonishing: a pinch is enough, and the dish tastes as if it came from an open wood fire.
Birch from Iceland, oak from England
Every wood smokes differently, and that is exactly what makes this small category so appealing. Saltverk smokes its Icelandic salt flakes over birch wood – the workshop of Björn Steinar Jónsson has been working exclusively with geothermal energy from hot springs since 2011, and the Birch Smoked Salt comes in a 90-gram jar. Birch smoke is light, pleasant, and slightly sweet, quite different from the robust oak.
The English classic comes from Maldon in Essex, where the Osborne family has been harvesting salt since 1882, now in the fourth generation: the pyramid-shaped flakes of Smoked Sea Salt are smoked slowly and gently over oak wood until they take on their golden-brown color. Smoky, crunchy, refined – a salt like a Sunday barbecue.
Four smoked salts, four vessels
Each of the four smoked salts resides in its own container: Saltverk in glass, Maldon in a cardboard box, the Icelandic producer Nordur in its iconic metal tin featuring a mermaid, and Pfeffersack und Soehne from Koblenz in a matte-black signature ceramic jar with a cork lid, handcrafted in the Westerwald region. Four houses, four characters – and on the metal tin, the mermaid keeps watch over the salt from Iceland.
All four are smoked over real wood – at Pfeffersack und Soehne it is beech, which gives the salt its reddish-brown color and mild smoky aroma. The difference lies in the wood, the duration, and the base salt: the longer it is smoked, the stronger the tone. With Nordur, the scent even recalls old whiskey – the tin won a Red Dot Award for its design in 2014.
By the way, smoked salt is a thoughtful gift for those who have everything – small, shelf-stable, and guaranteed to be used. The black ceramic jar and the mermaid tin are particularly good choices, as both remain long after the salt has been used up – the Westerwald ceramic can be refilled again and again.
Smoked salt on butter and baked potatoes
Smoked salt belongs wherever roasted aromas are welcome: on steak and burgers, over baked potatoes, in stews. When grilling, it replaces the smoker, and in the kitchen, it replaces the smokehouse – vegetables, tofu, and scrambled eggs in particular reward you with surprising depth. Try a pinch in tomato sauce or lentil soup, and you will taste the difference.
Smoked salt is also versatile in cold preparations: it elevates salad dressings, seasons cream cheese, and gives homemade garlic butter the nuance of a smokehouse. A jar lasts for many months with normal use – smoked salt should be dosed sparingly, otherwise it will overpower everything else.
Our favorite is the simplest of all: good butter on bread, a few flakes of smoked salt on top, and it’s done. Those looking for milder seasoning will find what they need in our herb and spice salts; the entire variety awaits in our world of salt. The campfire now fits into your kitchen drawer!
