The latest salt craze sweeping the nation

A friend of the blog just alerted me to a trend referred to as "mineral block cooking" in which you can cook a slab of meat on top of a slab of "Himalayan" salt. This totally set me off unexpectedly. Luckily blogging has gotten me in touch with my rage and you, the lucky reader, reap the benefits!

I have a lot of issues with the latest salt trends. The most obviously infuriating is the supposed healing qualities of so-called "Himalayan salt lamps". When I first learned of these things I was incredulous that this salt could possibly actually be imported from the Himalayas. It would be downright irresponsible of me as a well-respected blogger to go off on a rant without fact checking, so I have to admit that according to Wikipedia, this "Himalayan" salt is actually imported from the Khewra Salt Mine in Pakistan, the second-largest salt mine in the world.

When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong.

That said, there is no way putting a AAA battery-operated light inside a block of salt is going to cure what ails you. I'm all for some pointless rituals to get some good vibes going in your home, but whatever happened to just burning some sage instead of shipping a heavy rock that someone literally toiled all day in the salt mines for halfway across the world?

Now, I won't dispute that cooking with salt makes food taste great, so by extension cooking something on top of a giant block of salt probably will make food taste good. But I still have a lot of problems with this scheme. Ideology aside, how on Earth do you wash a salt block that you have cooked a bunch of raw meat on? Doesn't it dissolve? Basically, this whole concept is dumb and these people should just cook their meat in a pan and put a ton of salt on it like the rest of us.

But before you reach for your gourmet-organic-artisan salt blend (you know, that stuff that comes in a weird grinder container), I'm not through yet! I hate that stuff too. I'm no chump, and if I have to go through the extra work of grinding my salt into small particles and pay more for it, something doesn't add up. Salt is salt, if you ask me. Good old sodium chloride.

Now, I'm no monster. I love a good pretzel complete with big grains of kosher salt. I'll even recognize that there's probably a fancy imported salt out there that's super tasty in some recipe that involves handmade caramel or truffle butter or something like that. I have a sophisticated palate. But when I'm making up a couple fried eggs for dinner on a Tuesday night, you better believe I'm sprinkling them with old-fashioned table salt.

There may be some fancy salt fans out there who would say "But Nicky, that processed salt out there doesn't have all the minerals I need, and the way it's processed is so unsustainable!" To them I say, your energies are probably better spent coming to terms with your own mortality and the near-certain destruction of planet Earth at the hands of the human race. In the meantime, take a multivitamin and cancel the 2-day shipping order on your Himalayan salt lamp.