Alaea salt, sometimes referred to as Hawaiian red salt, is an unrefined

sea salt Sea salt is salt that is produced by the evaporation of seawater. It is used as a seasoning in foods, cooking, cosmetics and for preserving food. It is also called bay salt, solar salt, or simply salt. Like mined rock salt, production of sea sa ...

that has been mixed with an iron oxide rich volcanic clay called ''alaea'', which gives the seasoning its characteristic brick red color. It is part of Native Hawaiian cuisine and is used in traditional dishes such as kalua pig,

poke Poke may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Poke (''Ender's Game''), a fictional character * Poke (game), a two-player card game * Poke, a fictional bar owner in the television series '' Treme'' * The Poke, a British satirical website Fo ...

, and

pipikaula Pipikaula ("beef rope") is a Hawaiian cuisine dish of salted and dried beef similar to beef jerky. Pipikaula was eaten by Hawaiian cowboys (paniolos). It was usually broiled before serving. History In the 19th century John Parker brought Mexic ...

(Hawaiian jerky). It was also traditionally used to cleanse, purify and bless tools, canoes, homes and temples. Once exported to the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...

to cure

salmon Salmon () is the common name for several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family Salmonidae, which are native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (genus ''Salmo'') and North Pacific (genus '' Oncorhy ...

, it saw a resurgence in popularity late in the 20th century in fusion style

cuisine of Hawaii The cuisine of Hawaii incorporates five distinct styles of food, reflecting the diverse food history of settlement and immigration in the Hawaiian Islands. In the pre-contact period of Ancient Hawaii (300 AD-1778), Polynesian voyagers brough ...

both on

Islands An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

and beyond.

History

''Alaea'', a

water-soluble In chemistry, solubility is the ability of a substance, the solute, to form a solution with another substance, the solvent. Insolubility is the opposite property, the inability of the solute to form such a solution. The extent of the solub ...

colloidal A colloid is a mixture in which one substance consisting of microscopically dispersed insoluble particles is suspended throughout another substance. Some definitions specify that the particles must be dispersed in a liquid, while others extend ...

ocherous Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced ...

earth, was used for coloring salt, which in turn was traditionally used by Hawaiians to cleanse, purify and bless tools, canoes, homes and temples. Alaea salt is also used in several native Hawaiian dishes kalua pig,

, and

(Hawaiian jerky). In the 19th century Hawaiians began producing large amounts of alaea salt using European salt making techniques and became a leading supplier to fishermen in the Pacific Northwest for curing

. It is claimed by one author that most alaea salt sold in the United States is produced in California, not in Hawaii. True Hawaiian-made alaea salt is expensive and before the rise of convenient Internet shopping was difficult to find elsewhere.

Colour

Alaea salt gets its characteristic brick red color from a volcanic Hawaiian clay called ''ʻalaea'', which contains some 80 minerals and is rich in iron oxide.

References

{{Salt topics Edible salt Hawaiian condiments

History

Colour

See also

References