We had planned to be in Iceland about now—until the late summer flareup of the novel coronavirus. We had hoped to go to Reykjanesi way up in the northwest quarter of Iceland called Westfjords. The plan was to visit the Saltverk (saltverk.com) facility there, founded in 2011 by Björn Jónsson and Gísli Grímsson. (If you caught the Iceland segment in season three of Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, it’s Gísli who shows the Scottish chef around.)
Sea salt harvesting has a long history in the Westfjords, where the king of Denmark established a saltworks in the late 18th century. It used geothermal energy, since Iceland is basically one craggy cap on a rift in the earth that leaks hot water, steam, and sometimes lava. The Danes needed a lot of salt to process salt cod.
We’re not sure why, but the Westfjords saltworks ceased production a few decades after being established. Enter Jónsson and Grímsson, who wanted to create a business that paid homage to Icelandic tradition. We won’t trouble you with the details of how they use hot springs to turn sea water into flaky salt. The company’s own video shows all of that.
What we can attest to is the flavor of Saltverk products. The basic salt enhances some of the simplest, most perfect tastes of summer. For example, our garden is bursting with ripe tomatoes. With a judicious sprinkle of salt, they become ambrosial. We happen to have about a zillion different kinds of salt on hand, but Saltverk’s pure flake sea salt may be the best companion for tomatoes. It has a pure mineral salinity that hints at sweetness. That’s the photo at the top of the blog.
It’s also a dandy companion for fresh corn, especially when the corn has been rubbed lightly with butter.
Saltverk does make five additional variations on the pure sea salt. We’re looking forward to experimenting with them all: Arctic thyme, black lava salt, birch smoked salt, seaweed salt, and licorice salt. Like many Nordic people, Icelanders are huge fans of licorice. The salt blends flake sea salt with ground raw Persian licorice root. Think of it as an accent salt with sweets (crème brûlée, caramel, dark chocolate cake, etc.). The Saltverk folks also recommend it with steamed beets.
The salts are available via the online store at saltverk.com, from Amazon or from Food52.com.
