(lively music) - Hello. Welcome to the channel. - Today, we are teaming
up with Maldon Salt, whose sea salt we been
using ever since Sorted Food was a glint in Ben's eye. - Yep, using salt can really
transform our cooking. So today, we're asking our normals to taste test different dishes and approaches to see where it
can really make a difference. Before we even begin, we
have been using Maldon Salt since day one. How much do we actually know about what it is and where it comes from? (crickets chirping) - The sea? - [Ben] Maldon is a lovely little town on the coast of Essex about
40 miles from our studio. Maldon is fed by the river Black Water, which is tidal and the ebb and flow of the tides bring
sea water to the flats. It's collected, filtered. The water is slowly and
carefully evaporated and you're left with salt crystals which once dried, are ready to package. But much like the
crystallisation of sugar in jams, syrups, and caramels, and
the tempering of chocolate with the crystal
structure of cocoa butter, it's the careful and top
secret combination of time, temperature and raking that
still all done by hand, that means Maldon salt has a
very unique pyramid structure. - I didn't realise Ebbers was such a seasoned pro. - Oh. - So lots of things to taste test today. Should we start with number one? - Yes please. - Bring it. (upbeat music) - [Ben] You've got two plates. - Oh, oh. - [Ben] Identical. However, the second plate, B, has already been seasoned
with Maldon salt. So, what we'd quite like
you to do is enjoy plate A, but the key here is, the
sea salt has been added to B about 20 or 30 minutes ago,
and the use of sea salt and the time at which you
imply it, is really important. - We're gonna take what you saying with a pinch of salt, purely because we've
used salt loads of times. We know salt inside out, but
this shouldn't surprise us. - And it might not, but
what we will do today is talk about the little things you can do that should
transform it even based on what you know. - Seasoning tomatoes... - Yep. - has been one of the biggest revelations I've had in the last couple of years, of just even in a
sandwich, whatever it is, just make sure bit of salt on the tomato, really brings out the flavour. - And the reason being, tomato
is full of natural glutamate. And if you add salt, you're essentially making
monosodium glutamate. - MSG! - There's a colossal difference. - It was already delicious,
but that is exciting. It awakens the senses, suddenly you can really taste the tomato. - [Ben] And the reason being,
yes, you're seasoning it, but you are also drawing out
the water from the tomato. So, it's kind of acts like osmosis, which makes it slightly crunchier, but it also accentuates the
natural sugars in the tomato, and the natural acids in the tomato. - So what is the advantage
of using sea salt over table salt? - Good question, Jamie. - Yes, it would still
have done the same thing, to draw out the moisture and
it would've made them salty, but it wouldn't have added
in all the minerality that we love about sea salt. Plus, because table salt is typically fortified
with iodine nowadays, it can even give off a slight bitterness. And while we're on the topic of sort of light summery seasonal salads, this is something else
we've tried recently, and we wanna bring it
back into the studio; whipped butter at room temperature, radish, crisp, but washed
that's all and sea salt. - [Barry] In my 12 years at Sorted, I didn't think I would be
wowed by a bowl of butter with some radish's dipped in it. - [Ben] Another one of those things that is so obvious to people
who have grown up doing it. - Yeah. - But it was kinda new to us. - Yeah. Completely new. - You know what? I didn't
get much salt on that. I got mostly butter and
it really needs the salt. - Yeah it does actually, doesn't it? - Mm. Otherwise it just greasy radish. - That's a really good point. - You're eating the leaves
too. It's really important, and it is the reason
we've started with salads, because, salt has been harvested
from the coastline of Essex since Roman times. Romans were given a solarium, Roman soldiers, literally
a ration of salt. It's where we still get
the word Salary from, they were literally paid in salt, and the soldiers would add salt to bitter leaves to
make them more palatable and more balanced and more seasoning. And that's where we get
the word Salad from. - I had never thought
that Salad and Salary would be from the same word. - It was also the Romans, who would cure their pork
products with salt too, and make salami, also the base of salt. - This is blowing my mind
from a linguistic perspective before I've even eaten anything. - So simple. So delicious
and very naughty. One strong start. - Yeah. One down and
that's already fascinating. - But I can't think where
this is gonna go next. - Then we better move on to round two. - How foreboding. (upbeat music) - More salt in front of you, and something different under the clash. - [Barry] That is a bowl of raw tuna. - Simplicity at its best. Some sustainable yellow fin tuna. All we have done is dice it up and toss it through with
some good quality olive oil. So you have got the pepperiness and grassy notes of
olive oil with the tuna. Try it on its own first, and then we'd like you to
season it with smoked salt. - That is stunning. - A lot of olive oil, grassy, as you said. - And let's be honest, we've deliberately asked the food team not to season anything, which has been more
difficult than you imagine because it's just second nature, but we really want to show the difference between, if you season
it with a smoke salt, and in particular, a smoke salt
with that pyramid structure, that has that really soft crunch. So you're adding texture
to what is otherwise, very soft tuna. - And when it comes to
seasoning quantities for something like this, how much salt are you
actually using as a chef? - You've gotta be sensible with it, right? So, our bodies need salt to survive and your body can't create salt, so you have to consume
it, but in moderation. I would say if you're
enjoying something as premium and delicious as this, you
want enough of that salt in there to take it to a level that is quite heavily seasoned to play off the irony kind of tuna, and those grassy peppery
notes of olive oil. - This dish just gets exciting. Beforehand, it was a
delicious bowl of tuna, now it's jumping back
outta the bowl at me. - Not only can I taste the olive oil, I can now taste the tuna... - Yeah. - where I couldn't taste the tuna before. And even better than that, the tuna has had a couple of cigars whilst we've been sitting here. And that smokiness takes
it to a different level than just the saltiness would've done. Plus you get the little crunch from biting into the flakes. - Although this is super
simple, just three ingredients, the smoked salt is also really
nice in like, marinades, where you might want
that lick of smoke inside that you would often get from a barbecue, or a tandoor or even a pizza oven. You can get some of that
smokiness from that salt. Like a Chicken Tikka Masala
kind of marinated chicken on a skewer with that salt... - All meat. - Sensational. - Wow. (upbeat music) (indistinct) - [Ben] Number three. - [Mike] A nutty seedy mix. - Some dukkah. - Yes! The Dukkah mix, I think traditionally Egyptian,
it's absolutely delicious. It is a combination of lightly
toasted seeds and nuts. But what we're basically saying is make an incredible flavoured salt, and you can do it yourself with sea salt, a pestle and mortar, and you can grind up all sorts
of herbs or citrus into it. Or in this case, we're just going to mix in a combination of salt and
seeds and nuts and lemon zest, and you have a seasoning
mix that is just unreal. So many different applications
for flavoured salts. It could just be the zest, and you can go for things
like pink grapefruit, lime, lemon, you can put loads
of herbs through it, and actually with a pestle and mortar turn the salt almost,
green, pink pepper corns. In this case, we've gone for dukkah, one of our favourites here. - So, dukkah, seedy, nutty, cuminy, mix of stuff. I tend to put it on meats. - Grilled meats, grilled fish, hummus, whipped ricotta. - That is punchy in a good way. Both the lemon and the salt are bringing their big game to the match. - You absolutely need the lemon though. - Yeah. - Don't you? Otherwise it could- it almost verges on too salty and then the lemon comes and
just gives it a smoothness. - Bearing in mind what we've made there is kind of a seasoning salt on steroids. It's not supposed to be
eaten off a teaspoon, it's supposed to be
sprinkled over something. Would you like something? - I would like something. - Guys, guys? I think
it's time we swapped. - Same, same. - Holy moly. - [Ben] What you've got there
is a bed of whipped ricotta, new potatoes, asparagus,
and some seared steak. Again, painful, not sort
of seasoned any of that during the cooking, but, if you've got delicious, seasoned and flavoured salts at home, you can dip into them whenever you want. - [Mike] Oh, wow. - So now rather than
just eating a teaspoon of your dukkah mix perhaps a tablespoon sprinkled over the entire
dish will be lovely. - [Mike] Oh yeah. - Cheers. - Fantastic. - Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. - Again, it's adding texture,
whilst it's also seasoning, whilst it's also taking
what could be the same salad you have a few nights in
a row to different places, depending on different flavoured salts. - Wow. - [Barry] And how long would
that flavoured salt last for? - So, because you've zested
the lemon really fine, that essentially dry out
with the salt in there. So, for ages and forever. - Okay good. - I mean, the spices obviously
will deteriorate over time, but it's not gonna go off. The other way of doing it would be to take the whole
peel off of the citrus, dry it out in the oven, blend
it up and then put it through, so you get a dried citrus peel through it. But if you zest it, the salt kind of dries and cures it anyway. - [Barry] Okay. - [Ben] Salt is there to preserve. - This is transformative. Whipped ricotta, and
then anything you like, dunk, doof. - [Barry] Dukkah. - And it tastes amazing. - To duke. - To dukkah something. - You'd know your duke. - Duke a dukkah. - That tastes amazing. What I like about the way
that this video is going is that there's no difficult
techniques involved. - Absolutely not. - It's use this and combine it with this, or use it in this way. And all of them are completely achievable, and all of them will help
me improve my cooking, duke. We're in the duke crew. (Jamie chuckling) - [Ben] Right. Number four. Number four. This is a bit
of a thought experiment. Let's see how it goes. - Oh, whoa, whoa. Why am I
here for your experiment? - I like that, you stay there. - Am I the control? - [Barry] Oh, it looks like an experiment. Pink pizza? - [Ben] What we've given you
is some homemade flat breads, with a beetroot hummus, some cress, some cheese and some toasted hazelnuts. The one on the left, A,
have a slice of that. - Did you go all in one? - Do you not? I got some beetroot, I got the creaminess of the mozzarella. - [Barry] Quite sweet, isn't it as well? - Mh. Quite sweet. And some pepperiness from the cress. - Very nice. - Try a slice from flat bread two. - It looks exactly the same. - [Barry] I'm looking
for flakes of sea salt and I can't see them. - No. There's lots of eyebrow
raising, what we getting? - There's more than salt in that. - Yeah. - There was salt, the same amount in both. - What did you do to it? - It's all about where you stick it. - Where you put it. - No way. - It's on the bottom. Barry, it's on the bottom. - Which, when you eat a
slice of flat bread or pizza it's the first thing
that hits your tongue. So, the other one also had the
same amount of sea salt in it but you can see it's on top. It's covered with everything else, and whilst it is seasoning it for you, and it is giving you
the taste of beetroot, and in the taste of cress, you're drawing out those flavours. - No way. - The second one, the
salt hit your tongue, thought experiment worked, and you get a different reaction. - I didn't think it would make
that much of a difference. - My only problem with
this is, in real life you gotta be really
organised for this to work, 'cause usually you plate something and you go, ah seasoning,
oh no, the bottom. - As with making any flatbread or dough, we didn't put salt in the dough, which again feels a bit odd. But to put salt into the dough, you have to put a fair amount in. This way, you then roll it out, and we just put a sprinkle
of salt in the pan that we cooked it in. So you put it in the pan,
you put the bread down, and it kind of sticks to
the dough as it cooks. One is just seasoning, where one is giving you the sea salt kick 'cause it's touching your tongue first. - It's because your tongues
on the bottom, isn't it? - Yeah, I think so. Yeah. - That's where your taste buds are. - I didn't think it made
that much difference, second time around it tasted
like there was honey in it or something, it all tasted sweeter. But that's because I was
hit with salty first, with everything else
then laid on top of it, that tasted sweet. - So there are lots of times when, where you put the salt is important in order to get the same seasoning kick, you'd have had to use
almost twice as much salt in the first one for it
to have the same effect. And we know that while salt
is required by the body we should also moderate it. So perhaps putting on the bottom of pizzas and flat bread might mean
you get that lovely kick that you want, but with less of it. - Ebbers top tip. (upbeat music) - [Ben] Last one. - End strong. End strong. - Oh yes! - Obviously salt is typically
associated with savoury, but it doesn't have to be. - Salt and chocolate, no brainer. Oh, there's caramel. - What you have is some
lovely profiteroles. So choux pastry filled
with caramel custard, and topped with dark chocolate. - [Barry] Oh my. - This is not by any means a first or new, we've done dark chocolate
with sea salt before. We've done caramel, as
salted caramel, before but, I'm not sure we've ever done the two side by side, before and after. - Cheers. So this is son's salt. - [Ben] Yep. Which again, even a pastry
chef would tell you, is odd to make choux paste without salt, but we have done in this instance. - It tastes good, but do you know what? It tastes like a normal
made it, it tastes homemade. Like it is all there and
you go, "That's nice", there's no wow factor, there's just a, "Oh yeah that's nice". - Well, do your magic. (lively music) - Well, cheers. Wow! That is amazing actually. Love the fact that, thinking about it just this ingredient that everyone uses all the time. You don't have to do anything to it. You just put it on something and it makes a colossal amount different. - It's still such a
backwards way of thinking that something that's really
sweet needs a bit of salt to help improve the flavour. - Yeah. And that's about
not adding a flavour, it's about adding the seasoning that brings out- - The flavours that- - It just ups the volume levels of all the flavours that
are already in the dish. - I'm glad you said that because we were hoping that the salt would make it more caramelly and sort of draw out those caramel tones, the rich dark chocolate, that kind of anxiousness,
more than just make it salty. Interestingly salt on things like fruit is also really nice, on tropical fruit, a little bit of salt in a Mango Lassi or a Banana Lassi is amazing. You can put salt around the rim of glasses in cocktails that are particularly sweet and fruit juice, and with lime. What it does each time is just bring out the flavours of what is already in it. - I know it makes a difference. So I've learned nothing here, but I've experienced the difference, and I've never sat down and tried something before
seasoning and after. - No. - And that's what's been
really fascinating about this 'cause it just sort of accentuates the value of using the right
salt in the right places. - But what I also like is that we've found out
that it's not necessarily about the amount that you add. - No. - it's when you add it and
where you add it as well. - And something like sea salt, I would still stand and say,
"Don't put in everything". If you're making a brine or you are salt crusting something, or you're seasoning a big pan
of water to boil vegetables, I don't think it's gonna
make any difference, there's gonna be a no small difference in the flavour and the minerality, and the soft textural crunch. You won't get any of that
'cause it's all dissolved. It's still in all of
the applications today a finishing salt, but
it is about the when, the where and the how, and what it's doing to give
you more than just saltiness, sodium chloride, but minerality as well. - So a big thanks to Maldon salt for helping us dig into an ingredient we've been using for over a decade. - If you wanna find out more about Maldon all the links are in the
description box down below. - And we'd love to hear how
you use sea salt at home. Comment down below. Let us know. You turn your head sideways
though, a lot of the time. - But gravity- when you do that your tongue
goes sideways as well. (laughing) - He's changing, like he's tryna get.. I don't really know.
Doesn't make any sense.
