Photos By Gail (Except Where Noted)
It’s a fact: salt is the smallest ingredient in any meal, and yet it makes the biggest difference. Don’t get me started on how cooking rice and pasta in boiling salted water completely transforms the finished product. Even in baking, a pinch of salt significantly enhances the flavor of ingredients like chocolate. While most prepared foods certainly don’t need any added salt, much of what we cook from scratch would be rather tasteless without it. The thing is, not all salt is created equal.
There are different kinds of salt to choose from — Himalayan salt, Sea salt, regular Table salt — but I was unfamiliar with Desert Salt until being introduced to Oryx Desert Salt at this years Summer Fancy Find Show. Oryx Desert Salt boasts an impressive list of benefits, not only in taste but in sustainability — which is important. They offered to send me a sample so that I could taste the difference for myself, and soon I received the following:
Oryx Desert Salt in a ceramic grinder, plus a generous rock salt refill.
Oryx Pepper Corns in a ceramic grinder with generous refill. What a great addition to my kitchen spice rack!
Image Courtesy of Oryx Desert Salt
What I learned is that Oryx Desert Salt — which comes from the Kalahari Desert of South Africa — is a natural, crystal-white salt; unrefined, sun-dried, and free from additives, anti-caking agents and free flow chemicals. Here’s how it differs from the three most popular types of kitchen salt:
Sea Salt: Sea salt is filled with micro-bead plastics and other contaminants from ocean pollution.
Table Salt: Industrialized, highly processed and refined, and sometimes bleached, with free flow chemicals and anti-caking agents: Sodium chloride with chemicals is not salt.
Himalayan Salt: This salt is derived from a non renewable resource, and dynamited-out due to high demand, leaving a chemical residue.
By comparison, Oryx Desert Salt is naturally organic and mineral rich, sourced from an ancient, unpolluted underground sustainable salt lake in the remote, uninhabitable Kalahari Desert of South Africa. The salt is harvested from underground rivers which flow through 250 million year old rock strata, leaving it rich in essential minerals and micro-nutrients.
Containing essential minerals and trace elements as balanced perfectly by nature. It is unrefined, unprocessed, unbleached, with no chemicals added. Oryx Desert Salt has a unique and exceptional taste, which enhances and enriches the flavor of your food. It also grinds much finer that typical granulated salt, which I think gives it a gentler, fuller flavor.
Speaking of the attractive, reusable grinders, their ceramic heads mean they won’t grind plastic into your food, which would definitely be unhealthy. They’re environmentally responsible as well, being long-lasting, refillable and reusable 20x or more, saving substantially on cost, as well as taking care of the earth. Oryx figures they’ve saved 476,000+ bottles and heads from ending up in a landfill last year alone. #RefillNotLandfill is their motto! I’m so happy to have found this company so I could bring news of their products to all of my readers.
Oryx Desert Salt and Pepper Grinders, plus refills, are available from Amazon at This Link.
Image Courtesy of Oryx Desert Salt