In every kitchen around the world, you will likely find some type of salt. Although it can be used in homemade eco-friendly cleansers for your home, salt, and gourmet salts in particular, are used in all types of cuisines found worldwide. Gourmet salts are unique in their type and benefits offered to cooks.

Types of Culinary Salts

Unrefined salt would include the popular sea salts. Sea salts, known as Fleur de sel, vary in flavor due to the minerals the salts contain. Raw sea salts are collected through small basins of salt water that evaporate, leaving the salt behind, or through the mining of rock salt. Salt that is totally raw is not usually eaten, however, because of the bitter taste, but is often used in bathing salts and cosmetics. Sea salts can be found in smoked varieties. Beautiful pink Himalayan mineral salts are also available. Hawaii, with its large number of beaches, is a perfect spot for harvesting Hawaiian salt.

What you normally will find in kitchens is refined salt. After gourmet salts are collected, it next goes through a refining process. This entails removing impurities through recrystallization, after which the refined salt is kiln-dried. Anticaking agents may be added, as might iodine, fluoride and folic acid. Table salt is a type of refined salt. Kosher salt is a refined salt that usually contains no additives.

Benefits That Come From Using Salt

Salt offers many benefits that come from its use in a wide variety of ways. Refined salt is used not only for cooking, what it is likely best known for, but also in industrial processes that include making paper and soap as well as dying fabric. Salt is one of the four cationic electrolytes that the body needs to stay alive, and humans need the right amount of salt so that their bodies function properly. Safe household cleansers can be made with salt as one of the main ingredients, a major benefit to everyone who prefers to not be exposed to harmful toxins in cleaning agents. You can simply put table salt on a damp sponge and use it to scour your sink, then rinse with water. For a cleanser to clean kitchen counters and bathroom surfaces, you can try a mix of plain white vinegar and salt. This can be placed in a spray bottle to make it easier to use. Copper pans can be polished if you dissolve a teaspoon of salt in a cup of plain white vinegar, and then add white flour to make a paste. By rubbing the paste on the copper pot, then letting it sit for an hour followed by rinsing in warm water, you will find that the copper surface is cleaner and you can polish it dry to bring up a nice shine. These are just a few of the many benefits that come from having sea salts available for use around your home.

Salts from Starwest Botanicals

Starwest is proud to offer a unique variety of sea and mineral salts including: Alaea Sea Salt, Himalayan Pink Mineral Salt, Hiwa Kai Sea Salt, Sel Gris Sea Salt, Yakima Smoked Sea Salt and mineral salts among many others.