
Maldon has a classic sea salt look, and can make a real feature at the dinner table. If you do need to add salt during the cooking process, it is better to use ordinary table salt, rather than wasting expensive sea salt. For this reason, Maldon sea salt is best sprinkled over the dish after cooking, preserving its taste and structure. The subtle trace elements will be crowded out by other flavours, and the crunchy, tasty crystals will dissolve. Unfortunately, these unique features will be lost during the cooking process. The secret to Maldon’s unique taste is in the trace elements from the local seawater, its crunchy pyramid texture, and its flat, pyramid-shaped structure that spreads the flavour across the tongue before melting. Maldon sea salt is used as a finishing salt, meaning it is added to the dish after cooking. Like the regular flakes, Maldon smoked sea salt flakes are prized for their lightness of touch, adding just a hint of smokiness to food without overpowering it. Maldon salt has graced the shelves of such prestigious outlets as Harrods and Fortnum and Mason, and in 2012 the company received a Royal Warrant as official purveyors of salt to Her Majesty the Queen, meaning they are now permitted to display the royal coat of arms on their packaging as a seal of quality.Īs well as their regular salt crystals, Maldon produces a range of smoked sea salt flakes, which can be used to add a subtle smoky flavour to your dishes. The method, which involves evaporating seawater until it forms large crystals of salt, has remained basically the same since the days of the Roman occupation, although these days the process is hurried along a little by modern technology.įor the past hundred years or so, the salt has been harvested by the Maldon Crystal Salt Company, which was founded in 1882, and has been run by four generations of the same family since 1922. Salt has been harvested from the Blackwater estuary in Maldon for millennia, and the salt pans used to extract the salt even get a mention in the Domesday Book. This, combined with large, pyramid-shaped flakes and an irresistible crunchy texture, makes Maldon a truly superior salt.

These trace elements give Maldon a uniquely clean, fresh taste - a light saltiness that teases the taste buds without overpowering. Like all salt, Maldon is made of the chemical compound sodium chloride, but it also contains a unique combination of trace elements from the local seawater that make it taste subtly different to other types of salt. Maldon salt, from the small coastal town of Maldon in the English country of Essex, is a particular favourite of European chefs including Ferran Adrià, Jamie Oliver and Nigel Slater.
