Visiting the saltworks
Personally, I am a big fan of the sea salt from the Icelandic company Saltverk. I think the large flakes bring out the flavor wonderfully; I find it tastes more interesting than if I season the whole dish uniformly with the usual small-grain household salt. And because I'm such a big fan, I visited again with the Saltverk family during our last stay in Iceland.
Saltverk is a small company in Reykjanes in the Icelandic Westfjords. The place here is ideal for salt production because there is hot geothermal water right next to the sea, so you can use this water to heat the sea water and thus extract the salt. The Danish King Christian VII had salt boiled here in the 18th century - but salt production was given up again at the end of the 18th century after financial problems.
Björn Steinar Jónsson, one of the founders of Saltverk, is an engineer and, while studying in Denmark, had the idea with two friends to revive the traditional craft of "saltari", the "salt cooker", and to produce climate-neutral, high-quality sea salt in Iceland win. After the financial crisis, his father, Jón Pálsson, who had previously worked as a self-employed construction contractor, joined his son's company and together they developed the local production facilities.
This is basically the entire production facility - on the right is the large house where the seawater is "pre-boiled" in large tanks, on the left is the small boiling house. As part of a tour of the salt works, for which we had to pay 2000 ISK per adult, we were able to visit the company, which is about 130 km from Ísafjörður.
The production process was shown on this display board in the salt works:
The sea salt here in the Westfjords has an average temperature of 32-42 °F (0-6 °C) and the salinity is around 3%.
Here in this house the water from the sea is piped into large pools, the pools hold around 400,000 liters. The hot water that comes from the earth here in Reykjanes at a temperature of around 205 °F (96 °C) flows through special devices and thus heats the cold sea water, which is also referred to as "pre-boiling". The salt content of the water is increased to a maximum of 25%.
The house is warm and humid, it definitely has something of a "sauna" about it and reminded me of the inhalation rooms in spa clinics and sanatoriums, where patients breathe in air containing brine and thereby heal or at least alleviate their respiratory diseases. The Saltverk employee who showed us around the facility also pointed out the health-promoting effects of his workplace. However, the moist, salty air also has certain disadvantages - the iron of the operating devices rusts extremely quickly and the pipes etc. have to be replaced every few years because otherwise they would rust through.
The photo here shows the pools with the sea water and the heating system - unfortunately it is a bit blurry, especially at the edge, as our photo lens naturally fogged up immediately in the hot, humid air.
The salt is then “crystallized” in the boiling house, which means that the brine is boiled in special “pans” using the heat of the geothermal water until small white salt crystals form on the surface. First, calcium salts crystallize, which cannot be used and are skimmed off. At a salt content of 28%, the desired table salt finally crystallizes.
Then the salt is "harvested", drained...
... and dried.
The salt is then packaged in different pack sizes. Production takes around three weeks, from pre-cooking to packaging.
In addition to pure sea salt ("sea salt flakes"), Saltverk also sells algae salt, birch smoke salt, licorice salt, lava salt and a type of salt with arctic thyme. Our guide explained to us that the salt crystals are mixed with the other ingredients purely mechanically. However, this work process does not take place directly in the production facility in Reykjanes.
The salt is then delivered to customers and end users in different pack sizes.
A pack of packaged sea salt, which you can now buy in practically every supermarket in Iceland. The consumer salt, which is sold primarily in Iceland, Denmark and the USA, is available in 125 and 250 g packs.
The restaurants in Iceland and Denmark that purchase their salt from Saltverk are supplied with the product in large 1.5kg bags. Saltverk's customers also include top Icelandic restaurants such as Dill, Mat Bar, where we were already invited to eat, or Slipurinn on the Westman Islands.
The salt from the second and third "harvests", which is not quite as high quality as that from the first, is sold to commercial kitchens in large 10-kilo bags.
Saltverk currently has 12 employees, "Saltari", who, in addition to their other tasks in accounting, sales, etc., have all actually worked and can work as "salt cookers".
Back in the days of the Danish king, there was a rule for salt workers that they couldn't be married, our guide told us - but the working times and locations were certainly not particularly family-friendly, perhaps this was intended to reduce potential problems.
This is the small shop at the front of the boiling house, where visitors can try and of course buy the different types of salt.
I thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Saltverk, even though it was my third visit there, and in fact our children (14, 12 and 7) also enjoyed the visit there as they found it much more interesting than they expected.
By the way, our youngest child received a small pack of lava salt as a gift because he was the youngest visitor and because he had persevered and participated so well. He was very happy - but he also really enjoys cooking with me and has been dreaming for two years of wanting to be a chef when he grows up. Let's see what else we can do with his salt!
Incidentally, the lava salt does not contain any pieces of lava, but rather the sea salt is mixed with activated carbon. By the way, our guide explains that activated charcoal is good for the body; it detoxifies the organism. In fact, activated charcoal is used in medicine to remove toxins from the gastrointestinal tract. Well, in the case of acute poisoning, a larger amount of activated carbon is used, the salt doesn't contain nearly as much, but our guide was convinced that he was feeling better since he started using this lava salt regularly. And the black salt also looks good!
Outside of Iceland, you can buy Saltverk salt over the Internet, on the one hand via the Saltverk homepage, but also on Amazon, for example, which now also has it in their range.
PS:
In summer it is possible to visit the saltworks and be guided through production by an employee. Guided tours are offered from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. They cost 2,000 ISK (just under €16) per adult and free for children up to 15 years of age. The shop is open daily in summer from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. After a tour, you can sometimes get up to 25% discount on purchases in the shop.
Have fun - and bon appetit with the Saltverk salt!
[Translated from here.]
