Smoking Salt:

A Salt Smoking Primer

The FrankenSmoker: This is the smoker that I use to smoke salt. it is basically a modified Weber kettle grill, with an extension added to allow me to add multiple racks and a barrier to allow for better indirect heating. It may look awful - but it makes mean bbq.

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Getting Started:

Before we get started on the "how to" there are six basic recommendations I have for the first time salt smoker outlined below. if you follow these basics you should have decent luck making up some great salts.

1. Use Long Smoke Times
Smoking salt take time, salt doesn't absorb the smoke - or cook and react in the warm environment the same way meats will. Salt absorbs flavor as the smokes resins coats the grains, and this take some time. In my experience, depending on the coarseness of the grain, salt needs at least 4 hours in the smoker, but my best salts spend 24 hours smoking.

2. Use Cool Heat, and Always Cool Your Salt in the Smoker
Heat is tricky, I have made some decent salts at regular barbecuing temperatures (around 225°) but have had better luck when the temperature is much lower. My experience suggests that smoking at temperatures below 100° F or cold smoking works best. Partly because if you are smoking at 225°F and you get a spike in your temperature to grilling temps - for virtually any length of time at all you're gonna have to start over - as higher heats appear to burn off the smoky resins and leave you with salt that pretty much tastes like salt. In short - tend your fire. Finally leave your salt in the smoker until the smoker goes cold. I have 't the slightest idea why this makes a difference, but it does. Salt cooled in the smoker has a better aroma and a smoother smoke flavor.

3. Soak Your Wood
This is the only time you will ever hear me suggest soaking your wood before you smoke with it. Every time I hear someone on TV or the Web say to soak our wood chips before you put them on your fire it makes me cringe - soaked wood makes nasty, bitter meat in my opinion. However when you're smoking salt - and only when you're smoking salt - it seems to work pretty well. Moisture plays a role in Salt smoking and while I have had some luck with using a pan of boiling water in the coals, my best luck has been when I soaked my wood. With salt it doesn't make for a bitter taste.

4. Use Coarser Salts
Coarser grain salts smoke better. The smoke can move through the grains more easily and the smoke seems to stick to the grains better. I mostly use a grain size I can put in my salt grinder, it seems to work best.

5. Resist the Urge - Smoking Salt when Your Smoking Other Foods is Not a Good Idea
Fastest way to mess up your smoked salt? Smoke it with a pork butt, a slab of ribs, or god forbid a fillet of salmon. Don't do it! Salt takes up the flavor of cooking meat faster than it does the smoke - and the effect is not good. If you are thinking "oohhh! bacon salt!" this isn't the way to do it, trust me. Yuck.

6. Store Your Product in an Air Tight Container
Finally, when your done, seal the salt in an airtight container. The smoky flavor you have carefully layered into your salt is sensitive to oxygen and looses it's tang, smoke flavor and aroma as the essential oils oxidize and evaporate.. Seal it up tight as soon as it leaves the smoker. I use big mason jars that folks use for canning.

Equipment - Setting up a Smoker:

The first thing you are going to need to smoke salt is a smoker. Smokers pretty simple to build - in fact there are DIY guides on building basic home smokers from everything from metal garbage cans to flower pots. Pretty much any smoker that can effectively smoke meat or fish can smoke salt. I built my smoker out of junk I found around town - an old weber kettle grill, a copier stand, a piece of galvanized sheet metal and some woodstove gaskets. I love it - I built it real early on Thanksgiving morning and smoked two, yes two, 25 pound turkeys on it by dinner. I have been smoking with the unit for over a year now and it works great - especially considering it was basically free. Of course you can also spend big bucks on a smoker - it's up to you, but as long as your rig can perform as a smoker is supposed to you should be able to smoke salt.

The only special equipment I use for salt smoking is a screen - a stainless steel mixing bowl (when I am using a boil pan - I don't always), and heavy duty aluminum foil .
For the screen I use a "splatter guard" screen I got from Walmart (see figure 1.), it had a plastic handle, until I hit it with a hammer - then it didn't. The only thing to avoid with screens is painted, or plastic screens (duh) for reasons that should be obvious., and pretty much any all stainless mixing bowls (see figure 4) should do the trick..

I find that the best way to get my salt evenly smoked, without having to mess with it too much, is to channel the smoke directly through the salt (see figure 6). I do this in my smoker my wrapping foil around the outside of my grill grate, leaving a hole in the middle of the grate roughly the size of my screen (see figure 1.). In fact I usually leave it a bit smaller, so that I can overlap the screen a bit and make sure that little smoke escapes around the edge. If I am doing several types of salt I will skip the foil step, it still works, but I have to stir up the salt more, as the smoke tends to go around the salt more - the smaller the grain of your salt the more this is true (see figure 7).

After I have the grate wrapped and screen in place, I slide the wrapped grate into my smokers extension and pour the salt over the screen. (see figures 2 and 3)

I usually get my fire started in a chimney style charcoal starter (about half full) - I generally use Kingsford charcoal, and chunk wood of whatever type I am smoking with - in this case it was mesquite. I place my mixing bowl filled about halfway up with water in the center of the grill and pour the burning coals around the outside of it and then add my soaked wood chunks (see figure 4).

Next I slide the center smoking chamber into place - I have it sized so that it fits right in place on the Weber (see figure 5). I put the lid on and smoke - generally overnight. I keep an eye on the smoke, and when it starts to fade (usually about an hour and a half or so, I remove the top portion of the grill mix the coals and add more wood, and water if it is needed. I try to keep the temperature below 110° by adjusting the air intake on the bottom and the top of the grill. I use a remote sensor thermometer with a temp alarm, so I can go inside I set it at 115° so I know if I am getting to hot. Ultimately you want to keep a very small fire going - I do this by carefully controlling the air intake, that way I can add more fuel (coals and wood) while keeping a low heat smoldering fire - this way I have to tend it less often.

I look for color and aroma in the finished salt (see figure 8) to determine "doneness" when it gets where I want it, I stop feeding the smoker fuel and over an hour or so it burns itself out, and an hour or so later has cooled off. Then I remove the salt and put it in an airtight jar right away.