Archive for May, 2009
If you have any experience cooking meat, you’re probably familiar with the concept of basting and marinating. These two processes greatly enhance the flavor of your meat, and they can take a dry and otherwise dull piece of meat and convert it into a flavorful meal. To that end, a meat rub can come in two major forms. They can either be a dry rub or a wet rub. A dry rub is simply a combination of dry spices, while a wet rub includes some kind of liquid (oil, lemon juice, etc.) to make the solution into more of a paste.
Dry rubs can either be physically rubbed into the meat itself, or it can merely be sprinkled on top. Wet rubs often involve the meat being marinated or basted in the liquid mixture. Spices most commonly used in rubs are lemon peel, ginger, garlic, paprika, chili pepper, cayenne, and more. The thing to remember with rubs is that you should season with a light hand. You don’t want to overpower the natural flavor of the meat.
Hawaiian red sea salt, also known as alaea salt, has been used for centuries on the Hawaiian Islands for blessing ceremonies as well as seasoning of native Hawaiian dishes such as kalua pig, poke and Hawaiian jerky. You can also find it being used in exfoliating scrubs due to the high levels of anti-oxidants and fatty acids found in the salt. It is mellower than most sea salts and it gets its distinctive color from volcanic baked red clay that enriched the salt with iron oxide.
Hawaiian red sea salt imparts to food far more than one of the five basic taste sensations (sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami); it enhances other tastes.
While all salt has its origins in the sea, organic sea salt has to be the best. There are enormous salt mines all around the world, and while the salt mined from these locations is quite high quality, it just lacks the punch of sea salt. When people think of salt, most people think of small white grains, but sea salt comes in several different colors in various consistencies. You will find that sea salt can be fine or coarse, and can range in color from red, to black, to white. No matter what kind of dish its used on, sea salt makes for a delicious addition.
Sea salt comes from several different locations (all on the sea of course), and some of the most famous coastal locations for sea salt include California, Hawaii, and Australia. These areas are famous for production of fine sea salts, and the salt from these areas is used in thousands of different products manufactured by various companies, for example, the delicious sea salt and vinegar potato chips!