That sounds great, but I’d add some garlic in there as well. You can’t be too careful.
9 Likes
Absolutely right. Even better, salt your steak the day before and leave it (uncovered) in your fridge. When you salt meat, it brings out the moisture (which is bad), but if you leave it long enough (more than an hour), the salt dissolves and the liquid reabsorbs into the meat, basically salt-brining it for you. Leaving it uncovered in the fridge further dries the outside of the steak, guaranteeing a good sear.
On the topic of salt in general: Alexander’s offers a plate of about 20 different salts to try wth your steak - trying them all side-by-side really showed me how mineralized salts change the taste of food. I’m definitely a believer. However, there are lots of cheap, delicious mineralized salts from all over the world - you don’t need the fru fru ones.
5 Likes
Chicken Salt all the things!
6 Likes
Heck, depending on your mineral needs, your local feed store will have them in white (no additives), yellow, red/pink, or brown. And no, I don’t remember what’s in what. You’d have to ask a large animal DVM that.
2 Likes
I’m betting that a lot of this has to do with the humidity where you live (and whether the block dries between uses).
2 Likes
I see you’ve been reading the 1 star reviews too - all 4 pages of them.
1 Like
If you buy this, I bet you’ll put it in the dishwasher too.
1 Like
I thinking you are probably right. Ground salt with just a touch of water will produce an environment that a hygrometer will read at around 75%. Humidity is partially dependent on temperature, so living in the South during summer a large block of salt could easily absorb enough moisture that “drying” it could take an hour or more. Also I remember reading in either a Scouts handbook or perhaps the North American Field Guide to Rocks and Minerals that you should never use sedimentary rocks to circle a fire for the same risk of explosion due to moisture.
2 Likes
I’m… not sure that chicken counts as a mineral. 
6 Likes
…checks ingredients…
Nah, s’all good. It’s vegan and everything.
7 Likes
Okay, musings from the pro-salt-block bleachers:
I love mine. Got it at CostCo of all places, for $14.
Went to the trouble to obtain an iron support frame from Amazon, which makes handling the block much easier.
It’s great for slow-broiling fish. The trick is to let the block heat very slowly in the oven for awhile. (The exploding block reviews were probably people heating it too quickly. Although those reviews seem, um, fishy to me.) I’ve tried a lot of different salting methods, and the block is the easiest. It’s more subtle, but very nice.
When it’s cooled down, do a quick scrub with a teeny amount of water. And you’ll have to wait a bit, because it really does retain heat for a long time. You’re actually going to clean the block by dissolving a thin layer of the salt off the top and carrying away oils and debris. If it gets really wet, it will start to dissolve and will leave a big indent. Over time, the top will have a small indent where it’s been used and then cleaned.
1 Like
I’ve had shrimp grilled that way at Korean places. Its awesome.
Better effect from coating the potato in oil and rolling it in salt to coat. All round salt coverage draws out a lot more moisture from the spud. Giving it special potato flavor powers. And then you get to eat a skin that’s basically the potato equivalent of a pretzel. Deeply browned, crisp, and covered in chunky salt.
If you’ve never had carpacio off one of these things you’re doing it wrong. Very thin proteins basically just ever so slightly cure on these slabs. End up perfectly seasoned and a little firmer but still raw. Its nice.
Hippies tell me that can cure cancer. No seriously.
I’ve heard the nail doesn’t do anything. Cooks Illustrated, who sometimes have their issues, tested it. Test seemed well engineered this time. They found a nail, skewer, or “potato spike” (that being the over priced version) didn’t have enough mass to really effect the cooking time. Forget how big a chunk of steel they needed to shave even a few minutes off. But it was impractical.
Same thing happens rolled in salt. But having done both. Rolled in salt wins. More consistent, easier, delicious salty skins. And it takes less salt. A big effect from the various salt cookery techniques is the good thermal mass, and low conductivity of a mass of salt. It soaks up a lot of heat and pumps it into food slowly and evenly. Think of it like a flavorful pizza stone. With a potato you don’t really need that, and you aren’t getting much out of it when its limited to once side. Coating the whole potato you get the water leaching and seasoning power of salt over the entire surface area. Which lets it work faster and better. But you also maintain the even all round heat of cooking the whole damn thing bare on a rack.
For more potato fun. Boil some of them little guys in water seasoned with a shit ton of salt. It ends up looking like this:
And its the greatest thing you can do with potatoes.
Its a well known risk with these things. Combination of flaws in the slab itself. Its a chunk of natural rock salt after all. Trapped moisture from use/cleaning. And thermal shock. Slow heating and keeping it the hell away from water are the two big ways of making sure it cracks instead of detonating.
1 Like
I love chicken salt.
2 Likes
(Patiently waiting for someone from the Carolinas or Kansas City or Texas to take umbrage with the word “barbecue” in the context of “grilling.”)
2 Likes
I just substitute with a water softener block, or a deer saltlick. Works great, much cheaper.
/troll
1 Like
This is entirely off topic, but with this big snow storm about to hit my house any minute it happens to be on my mind. Few years back there was a crazy big snow storm coming to my area. With very little notice. Shovels, snow blowers, generators. And the only thing I was out of: road salt and sand. Sold out massively. In need of some salt, and not finding any I went to the Home Depot. If anyone was gonna get a last minute truck load of salt out here it was gonna be a big box store.
Sold the hell out. But as we were walking out one of the employees waved me over. And he said “Try this: Go down the water heater isle and find the blue bag.” That blue bag was a 40lb sack of natural sea salt crystals for water softeners. It cost less than half what the road salt had been going for. And inside were the biggest, most consistent salt crystals I’ve ever seen. You could watch these mother fuckers burn through the snow. And they linger for days, fucking up your ice like Kurt Russell in a John Carpenter movie.
We’re still using that stuff for the driveway to this day. I just bought a new bag to prep for the storm. To round it back around to the topic at hand:
I think you could cook with this stuff. Its labeled as 100% natural sea salt, made through evaporation. Its from the same company that makes your kitchen salt. There are no warnings on the bag. Its meant to go into a water softener, where it will dissolve, and you will drink it. I’ve yet to try though. But I should at some point. We’re talking 1/2" square crystals here. The possibilities.
ETA: Photo with US penny for scale
5 Likes
Sold out of bananas?
6 Likes
Never heard or seen it before, i think it is worth giving a try.
1 Like
Largest coin I could find in the various cans of scrap hanging out in the garage.
That’s how I make these big ‘Himalayan salt candle lamps’ some people really like.
Buy a good shaped ‘cow block’, use the Dremel, wrap in nice paper, tadaa… a nice and affordable present. 
6 Likes
