Cook’s Science:

Salt is imperative for far more than cooking. It’s essential for life. For digestion and respiration, for the transportation of oxygen, and nerve transmission. Your heart would not beat without salt. The amniotic fluid that surrounds us as we begin life is salty. Salt has been part of religion and mythology for centuries. It’s associated with fertility. It’s been a driver of commerce and of war. It’s inspired countless engineering feats.

There are many intense-tasting sea salts on the market, and more than one way to make them. At Maldon Salt Company in Essex, England, they simmer concentrated brine until pyramid-shaped crystals form on the surface and sink to the bottom, where they can be raked off and dried in industrial ovens. In Guérande, France, highly prized fleur de sel (flower of salt) forms on the surface of shallow marshes of seawater concentrated through solar evaporation. Once the seawater brine is fully saturated with sodium chloride, all it takes is a gust of wind to evaporate a small amount of additional water at the surface, causing crystals to form, or “bloom.” These delicate crystals are gently raked from the surface before they can settle to the bottom.

And believe it or not, the ocean is not the only place to source seawater for sea salt.

Settle in for a long but very interesting read on one of the things you rarely think about but can’t live without.