Greg Who Cooks
Executive Chef
I'm just curious what other DC members think about the benefit (if any) in baking a potato on a bed of coarse sea salt.
The theory is that it allows moisture to escape from the potato and yields more even cooking.
I live in an area with a large Asian (particularly Korean) population, and big bags (5#, 10# even bigger) of sea salt are incredibly cheap, so the cost of salt is almost nothing. (Isn't that an ironic twist on history! Since the word "salary" came from "salt" back in antiquity when salt was a hard to get commodity, and if I'm not mistaken it was one of the first seasonings -- also used to preserve foods.)
Also, what do you think about entirely enclosing the potato in salt?
BTW an additional benefit is the salt is reusable although it can gain some potato taste overtones, not always necessarily a detraction.
The theory is that it allows moisture to escape from the potato and yields more even cooking.
I live in an area with a large Asian (particularly Korean) population, and big bags (5#, 10# even bigger) of sea salt are incredibly cheap, so the cost of salt is almost nothing. (Isn't that an ironic twist on history! Since the word "salary" came from "salt" back in antiquity when salt was a hard to get commodity, and if I'm not mistaken it was one of the first seasonings -- also used to preserve foods.)
Also, what do you think about entirely enclosing the potato in salt?
BTW an additional benefit is the salt is reusable although it can gain some potato taste overtones, not always necessarily a detraction.