Ingredients · Salt
Himalayan Sea Salt
Sodium chloride (halite)
What it’s like, and how to use it
How to use it
Swaps one for one with table salt in cooking. In curries, dals, soups and baking. The fine grind is the everyday one; coarse is for a grinder or a salt block. It is not iodised unless it says so.
With food
Everything. It suits Indian and Pakistani cooking particularly, which is where most of it is eaten.
With spices
Black pepper. The base of any blend it is in.
With tea
Not a tea ingredient.
Its story
Where it comes from
The Salt Range in Punjab, Pakistan, south of the Potohar Plateau and north of the Jhelum. Its rocks carry marine fossils back to the Ediacaran, as much as 570 million years old. The three big mines are Khewra, Kalabagh and Warcha; which one our lot came from is unconfirmed. A 2020 analysis of 31 pink salts sold in Australia found one sample exceeding the national limit for lead, which is an argument for a known supplier.
What happened
The Salt Range has a good story that is not about salt. In the eleventh century the scholar al-Biruni stood at Nandana, a hill fort on its eastern edge, and worked out the circumference of the Earth. The same decades saw Mahmud of Ghazni mine the fort's walls and take it in 1014, carrying off elephants, arms and a large quantity of wealth as war spoils — the fort had become the seat of the Hindu Shahi rulers after Jayapala's defeat near Peshawar in 1001. A conqueror and a scientist on the same hill, above the same salt.
On the shelf with it
Sold on its own, and in these blends.
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Himalayan Sea Salt, Fine
Regular price From $5.99 CADRegular price -
Himalayan Sea Salt, Coarse
Regular price From $7.99 CADRegular price
