(lively music)
- Hello. Welcome to the channel.
- Today, we are teaming up with Maldon Salt,
whose sea salt we been using ever since Sorted Food
was a glint in Ben's eye.
- Yep, using salt can really transform our cooking.
So today, we're asking our normals
to taste test different dishes
and approaches to see where it can really make a difference.
Before we even begin, we have been using Maldon Salt
since day one.
How much do we actually know
about what it is and where it comes from?
(crickets chirping)
- The sea?
- [Ben] Maldon is a lovely little town
on the coast of Essex about 40 miles from our studio.
Maldon is fed by the river Black Water,
which is tidal and the ebb
and flow of the tides bring sea water to the flats.
It's collected, filtered.
The water is slowly and carefully evaporated
and you're left with salt crystals
which once dried, are ready to package.
But much like the crystallisation of sugar in jams,
syrups, and caramels, and the tempering of chocolate
with the crystal structure of cocoa butter,
it's the careful and top secret combination of time,
temperature and raking that still all done by hand,
that means Maldon salt has a very unique pyramid structure.
- I didn't realise Ebbers
was such a seasoned pro.
- Oh.
- So lots of things to taste test today.
Should we start with number one?
- Yes please.
- Bring it.
(upbeat music)
- [Ben] You've got two plates.
- Oh, oh.
- [Ben] Identical.
However, the second plate, B,
has already been seasoned with Maldon salt.
So, what we'd quite like you to do is enjoy plate A,
but the key here is, the sea salt has been added to B
about 20 or 30 minutes ago, and the use of sea salt
and the time at which you imply it, is really important.
- We're gonna take what you saying
with a pinch of salt,
purely because we've used salt loads of times.
We know salt inside out, but this shouldn't surprise us.
- And it might not, but what we will do today
is talk about the little things
you can do that should transform it even based
on what you know.
- Seasoning tomatoes...
- Yep.
- has been one of the biggest revelations
I've had in the last couple of years,
of just even in a sandwich, whatever it is,
just make sure bit of salt on the tomato,
really brings out the flavour.
- And the reason being, tomato is full of natural glutamate.
And if you add salt,
you're essentially making monosodium glutamate.
- MSG!
- There's a colossal difference.
- It was already delicious, but that is exciting.
It awakens the senses,
suddenly you can really taste the tomato.
- [Ben] And the reason being, yes, you're seasoning it,
but you are also drawing out the water from the tomato.
So, it's kind of acts like osmosis,
which makes it slightly crunchier,
but it also accentuates the natural sugars in the tomato,
and the natural acids in the tomato.
- So what is the advantage of using sea salt
over table salt?
- Good question, Jamie.
- Yes, it would still have done the same thing,
to draw out the moisture and it would've made them salty,
but it wouldn't have added in all the minerality
that we love about sea salt.
Plus, because table salt
is typically fortified with iodine nowadays,
it can even give off a slight bitterness.
And while we're on the topic
of sort of light summery seasonal salads,
this is something else we've tried recently,
and we wanna bring it back into the studio;
whipped butter at room temperature,
radish, crisp, but washed that's all and sea salt.
- [Barry] In my 12 years at Sorted,
I didn't think I would be wowed by a bowl of butter
with some radish's dipped in it.
- [Ben] Another one of those things
that is so obvious to people who have grown up doing it.
- Yeah.
- But it was kinda new to us.
- Yeah. Completely new.
- You know what? I didn't get much salt on that.
I got mostly butter and it really needs the salt.
- Yeah it does actually, doesn't it?
- Mm.
Otherwise it just greasy radish.
- That's a really good point.
- You're eating the leaves too. It's really important,
and it is the reason we've started with salads,
because, salt has been harvested from the coastline of Essex
since Roman times.
Romans were given a solarium,
Roman soldiers, literally a ration of salt.
It's where we still get the word Salary from,
they were literally paid in salt,
and the soldiers would add salt
to bitter leaves to make them more palatable
and more balanced and more seasoning.
And that's where we get the word Salad from.
- I had never thought that Salad and Salary
would be from the same word.
- It was also the Romans,
who would cure their pork products with salt too,
and make salami, also the base of salt.
- This is blowing my mind from a linguistic perspective
before I've even eaten anything.
- So simple. So delicious and very naughty.
One strong start.
- Yeah. One down and that's already fascinating.
- But I can't think where this is gonna go next.
- Then we better move on to round two.
- How foreboding.
(upbeat music)
- More salt in front of you,
and something different under the clash.
- [Barry] That is a bowl of raw tuna.
- Simplicity at its best.
Some sustainable yellow fin tuna.
All we have done is dice it up
and toss it through with some good quality olive oil.
So you have got the pepperiness
and grassy notes of olive oil with the tuna.
Try it on its own first,
and then we'd like you to season it with smoked salt.
- That is stunning.
- A lot of olive oil, grassy, as you said.
- And let's be honest,
we've deliberately asked the food team
not to season anything,
which has been more difficult than you imagine
because it's just second nature,
but we really want to show the difference
between, if you season it with a smoke salt,
and in particular, a smoke salt with that pyramid structure,
that has that really soft crunch.
So you're adding texture to what is otherwise,
very soft tuna.
- And when it comes to seasoning quantities
for something like this,
how much salt are you actually using as a chef?
- You've gotta be sensible with it, right?
So, our bodies need salt to survive
and your body can't create salt,
so you have to consume it, but in moderation.
I would say if you're enjoying something as premium
and delicious as this, you want enough of that salt
in there to take it to a level
that is quite heavily seasoned to play off
the irony kind of tuna,
and those grassy peppery notes of olive oil.
- This dish just gets exciting.
Beforehand, it was a delicious bowl of tuna,
now it's jumping back outta the bowl at me.
- Not only can I taste the olive oil,
I can now taste the tuna...
- Yeah.
- where I couldn't taste the tuna before.
And even better than that,
the tuna has had a couple of cigars
whilst we've been sitting here.
And that smokiness takes it to a different level
than just the saltiness would've done.
Plus you get the little crunch
from biting into the flakes.
- Although this is super simple, just three ingredients,
the smoked salt is also really nice in like, marinades,
where you might want that lick of smoke inside
that you would often get from a barbecue,
or a tandoor or even a pizza oven.
You can get some of that smokiness from that salt.
Like a Chicken Tikka Masala kind of marinated chicken
on a skewer with that salt...
- All meat.
- Sensational.
- Wow.
(upbeat music)
(indistinct)
- [Ben] Number three.
- [Mike] A nutty seedy mix.
- Some dukkah.
- Yes!
The Dukkah mix,
I think traditionally Egyptian, it's absolutely delicious.
It is a combination of lightly toasted seeds and nuts.
But what we're basically saying
is make an incredible flavoured salt,
and you can do it yourself with sea salt,
a pestle and mortar,
and you can grind up all sorts of herbs or citrus into it.
Or in this case, we're just going to mix
in a combination of salt and seeds and nuts and lemon zest,
and you have a seasoning mix that is just unreal.
So many different applications for flavoured salts.
It could just be the zest,
and you can go for things like pink grapefruit, lime,
lemon, you can put loads of herbs through it,
and actually with a pestle and mortar
turn the salt almost, green, pink pepper corns.
In this case, we've gone for dukkah,
one of our favourites here.
- So, dukkah, seedy, nutty,
cuminy, mix of stuff.
I tend to put it on meats.
- Grilled meats, grilled fish,
hummus, whipped ricotta.
- That is punchy in a good way.
Both the lemon and the salt
are bringing their big game to the match.
- You absolutely need the lemon though.
- Yeah.
- Don't you? Otherwise it could-
it almost verges on too salty
and then the lemon comes and just gives it a smoothness.
- Bearing in mind what we've made there
is kind of a seasoning salt on steroids.
It's not supposed to be eaten off a teaspoon,
it's supposed to be sprinkled over something.
Would you like something?
- I would like something.
- Guys, guys? I think it's time we swapped.
- Same, same.
- Holy moly.
- [Ben] What you've got there is a bed of whipped ricotta,
new potatoes, asparagus, and some seared steak.
Again, painful, not sort of seasoned any of that
during the cooking,
but, if you've got delicious, seasoned
and flavoured salts at home,
you can dip into them whenever you want.
- [Mike] Oh, wow.
- So now rather than just eating a teaspoon
of your dukkah mix perhaps a tablespoon
sprinkled over the entire dish will be lovely.
- [Mike] Oh yeah.
- Cheers.
- Fantastic.
- Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.
- Again, it's adding texture, whilst it's also seasoning,
whilst it's also taking what could be the same salad
you have a few nights in a row to different places,
depending on different flavoured salts.
- Wow.
- [Barry] And how long would that flavoured salt last for?
- So, because you've zested the lemon really fine,
that essentially dry out with the salt in there.
So, for ages and forever.
- Okay good.
- I mean, the spices obviously will deteriorate over time,
but it's not gonna go off.
The other way of doing it
would be to take the whole peel off of the citrus,
dry it out in the oven, blend it up and then put it through,
so you get a dried citrus peel through it.
But if you zest it, the salt kind of dries
and cures it anyway.
- [Barry] Okay.
- [Ben] Salt is there to preserve.
- This is transformative.
Whipped ricotta, and then anything you like,
dunk,
doof.
- [Barry] Dukkah.
- And it tastes amazing.
- To duke.
- To dukkah something.
- You'd know your duke.
- Duke a dukkah.
- That tastes amazing.
What I like about the way that this video is going
is that there's no difficult techniques involved.
- Absolutely not.
- It's use this and combine it with this,
or use it in this way.
And all of them are completely achievable,
and all of them will help me improve my cooking, duke.
We're in the duke crew.
(Jamie chuckling)
- [Ben] Right. Number four.
Number four. This is a bit of a thought experiment.
Let's see how it goes.
- Oh, whoa, whoa. Why am I here for your experiment?
- I like that, you stay there.
- Am I the control?
- [Barry] Oh, it looks like an experiment.
Pink pizza?
- [Ben] What we've given you is some homemade flat breads,
with a beetroot hummus, some cress,
some cheese and some toasted hazelnuts.
The one on the left, A, have a slice of that.
- Did you go all in one?
- Do you not?
I got some beetroot,
I got the creaminess of the mozzarella.
- [Barry] Quite sweet, isn't it as well?
- Mh. Quite sweet.
And some pepperiness from the cress.
- Very nice.
- Try a slice from flat bread two.
- It looks exactly the same.
- [Barry] I'm looking for flakes of sea salt
and I can't see them.
- No.
There's lots of eyebrow raising, what we getting?
- There's more than salt in that.
- Yeah.
- There was salt, the same amount in both.
- What did you do to it?
- It's all about where you stick it.
- Where you put it.
- No way.
- It's on the bottom.
Barry, it's on the bottom.
- Which, when you eat a slice of flat bread or pizza
it's the first thing that hits your tongue.
So, the other one also had the same amount of sea salt in it
but you can see it's on top.
It's covered with everything else,
and whilst it is seasoning it for you,
and it is giving you the taste of beetroot,
and in the taste of cress,
you're drawing out those flavours.
- No way.
- The second one, the salt hit your tongue,
thought experiment worked,
and you get a different reaction.
- I didn't think it would make that much of a difference.
- My only problem with this is, in real life
you gotta be really organised for this to work,
'cause usually you plate something
and you go, ah seasoning, oh no, the bottom.
- As with making any flatbread or dough,
we didn't put salt in the dough,
which again feels a bit odd.
But to put salt into the dough,
you have to put a fair amount in.
This way, you then roll it out,
and we just put a sprinkle of salt in the pan
that we cooked it in.
So you put it in the pan, you put the bread down,
and it kind of sticks to the dough as it cooks.
One is just seasoning,
where one is giving you the sea salt kick
'cause it's touching your tongue first.
- It's because your tongues on the bottom, isn't it?
- Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
- That's where your taste buds are.
- I didn't think it made that much difference,
second time around it tasted like there was honey in it
or something, it all tasted sweeter.
But that's because I was hit with salty first,
with everything else then laid on top of it,
that tasted sweet.
- So there are lots of times when,
where you put the salt is important
in order to get the same seasoning kick,
you'd have had to use almost twice as much salt
in the first one for it to have the same effect.
And we know that while salt is required by the body
we should also moderate it.
So perhaps putting on the bottom of pizzas
and flat bread might mean you get that lovely kick
that you want, but with less of it.
- Ebbers top tip.
(upbeat music)
- [Ben] Last one.
- End strong. End strong.
- Oh yes!
- Obviously salt is typically associated with savoury,
but it doesn't have to be.
- Salt and chocolate, no brainer.
Oh, there's caramel.
- What you have is some lovely profiteroles.
So choux pastry filled with caramel custard,
and topped with dark chocolate.
- [Barry] Oh my.
- This is not by any means a first or new,
we've done dark chocolate with sea salt before.
We've done caramel, as salted caramel, before
but, I'm not sure we've ever done
the two side by side, before and after.
- Cheers.
So this is son's salt.
- [Ben] Yep.
Which again, even a pastry chef would tell you,
is odd to make choux paste without salt,
but we have done in this instance.
- It tastes good, but do you know what?
It tastes like a normal made it, it tastes homemade.
Like it is all there and you go, "That's nice",
there's no wow factor,
there's just a, "Oh yeah that's nice".
- Well, do your magic.
(lively music)
- Well, cheers.
Wow! That is amazing actually.
Love the fact that,
thinking about it just this ingredient
that everyone uses all the time.
You don't have to do anything to it.
You just put it on something
and it makes a colossal amount different.
- It's still such a backwards way of thinking
that something that's really sweet needs a bit of salt
to help improve the flavour.
- Yeah. And that's about not adding a flavour,
it's about adding the seasoning
that brings out-
- The flavours that-
- It just ups the volume levels
of all the flavours that are already in the dish.
- I'm glad you said that
because we were hoping that the salt
would make it more caramelly
and sort of draw out those caramel tones,
the rich dark chocolate,
that kind of anxiousness, more than just make it salty.
Interestingly salt on things like fruit
is also really nice, on tropical fruit,
a little bit of salt in a Mango Lassi
or a Banana Lassi is amazing.
You can put salt around the rim of glasses
in cocktails that are particularly sweet
and fruit juice, and with lime.
What it does each time
is just bring out the flavours
of what is already in it.
- I know it makes a difference.
So I've learned nothing here,
but I've experienced the difference,
and I've never sat down
and tried something before seasoning and after.
- No.
- And that's what's been really fascinating about this
'cause it just sort of accentuates
the value of using the right salt in the right places.
- But what I also like
is that we've found out that it's not necessarily
about the amount that you add.
- No.
- it's when you add it and where you add it as well.
- And something like sea salt,
I would still stand and say, "Don't put in everything".
If you're making a brine
or you are salt crusting something,
or you're seasoning a big pan of water to boil vegetables,
I don't think it's gonna make any difference,
there's gonna be a no small difference
in the flavour and the minerality,
and the soft textural crunch.
You won't get any of that 'cause it's all dissolved.
It's still in all of the applications today
a finishing salt, but it is about the when,
the where and the how,
and what it's doing to give you more than just saltiness,
sodium chloride, but minerality as well.
- So a big thanks to Maldon salt
for helping us dig into an ingredient
we've been using for over a decade.
- If you wanna find out more about Maldon
all the links are in the description box down below.
- And we'd love to hear how you use sea salt at home.
Comment down below. Let us know.
You turn your head sideways though, a lot of the time.
- But gravity-
when you do that your tongue goes sideways as well.
(laughing)
- He's changing, like he's tryna get..
I don't really know. Doesn't make any sense.