Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes [A Cookbook]

Easily one of the most inspiring cookbooks I've read, and I've been blowing through them a couple a week for a while now.The amount and variety of slats listed. combined with the elegant, bold and deliciously clever writing make Bitterman's Salt book an absolute delight. You gotta read all the way to the end to learn how and why industrialised salt is such an egregious crime, and you will have to pay attention and read the little pull-out boxes to learn why we iodize salt, why we shouldn't be afraid to enjoy salt and some fun tidbits about the specific practices of harvesting salt.

I knew some of the history of salt, but Bitterman's was enlightening and comprehensive. He describes everything about this essential element from the formation, mining, harvesting, and drying, to cooking on it and with it. The varieties of (salts, color taste and consistancy) around the world is mind boggling, and he explains all of it well in Salted. There are salt artisans...who knew?! He provides a Quick Reference Guide to these specialized salts. There is comprehensive Salt Reference Guide with photos, description, flavors and uses, and then in-depth descriptions. Bitterman also provides some tasty recipes that use salt to preserve (lemons), brine (poultry and fish), cure (salmon), etc. and explains what every good chef knows...how important it is to salt beef well.This Book is a James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner, and well deserved.

I bought this book for a "foodie" friend of mine after watching a television show. I bought a set of various salts to go with it. A great gift combination.

This book a must read for ANYONE who enjoys cooking and eating.I have gifted more than a dozen to friends and family.

I've been cooking for a long time - never professionally. My cooking improves and plateaus and improves again. This book triggered another improvement as I really started to explore the core of what makes up some of the base flavor of my cooking. I have always used salt, but I have never used salt as effectively as I am learning to. I have never tasted it as much as I do now - and how it can be used in more interesting ways than I have so far.Of course, learning to taste things means that your tastes shift. Be prepared to start spending more on silly hand-harvested sel gris for every day use, fleur de sel for finishing salt, regional specialties for interesting characteristics...Yeah, I have 12 kinds of salt next to my stove right now and I'm just getting started.

Everything about this book deserves praise, i started reading with a bit of dread...a book about salt! Each page was a delight, it kept me totally engaged, informative, funny, odd, cute it had everything. Read it, love it, you won’t be disappointed

As a senior citizen and reasonably well-read and traveled, it is such a joy to come across something so simple and basic as salt and discover I knew almost nothing about it! Bitterman's treatise on the subject is both compelling and entertaining, informative and just plain fun. Do yourself a favor: Buy the book (or borrow it at the library), but by all means buy some finishing salts and discover that "plain old salt" is not such a simple, plain thing after all.

And if you are going to tell the history stuff, get a little below the surface. Skipping like a stone across the surface of information is like eating half a cookie (better to not have the cookie at that point).But overall, solid effort and the passion of the author for the topic is evident. But passion for a topic does not necessarily translate into good story-telling and writing. I just suggest a little more work be done there, else hire a helping hand.That said, the images are good and helpful as well. Overall, I liked it and it filled in some of the information gaps that I had, cooking-wise.