Sea salt from the East Algarve

The natural iodine content is on average 630 micrograms per kg.

Real sea salt is better
Anyone who pays attention to the quality of their ingredients and cooks with care should not spoil the result of their efforts with pure sodium chloride. Let's leave the seasoning with chemicals to the industry - in their products, table salt is just one of many and perhaps the most harmless. Real sea salt, left natural after harvest and of course without anti-caking agents, simply tastes better thanks to its mineral bouquet. It was therefore valued for use in the kitchen 2,000 years ago and was preferred over rock salt. Common medicinal salt applications at the time were also limited to sea salt and Pliny the Elder reported twelve different qualities with different areas of application.

Our salts are obtained through natural evaporation in the “Sapal de Castro Marim” nature reserve and harvested by hand. The Algarve with its micro climate, characterized by dry, hot summers and a constant wind, favors the harvest of our sea salt. Due to the high degree of purity of the Atlantic in this protected coastal area and the traditional extraction, natural sea salt of a quality that is second to none is created without any further processing steps. When dried only by the sun, it has a natural residual moisture content of five to eight percent. Our sea salt contains over 80 minerals and trace elements that can be found in sea water and are particularly important for the human organism. In addition to magnesium, potassium and calcium, it contains the trace elements selenium and iodine from the decay of algae living in seawater. The natural iodine content is on average 630 micrograms per kg.

Our natural sea salt is regularly checked for microbiological and chemical purity, including by the organic control body of Nature & Progrés, the Portuguese Food Authority and the Portuguese Ministry of Agriculture. The analytically detectable content of heavy metals, pesticides, nitrites, nitrates, microplastics and germs that are harmful to health is below the detection limit.

Our sea salt is natural and contains no additives.

Important ingredients: 96% NaCl, 0.74% Mg, 0.16% Ca, 0.14% K

It depends on the location
The seas are polluted - that is undoubtedly true. However, it is wrong and naive to assume that there were no environmental catastrophes 200 million years ago and that everything untouched by humans was inherently healthy. It is not just the correct location and guaranteed origin that are important, but also the verifiability and transparency of this information.

Traditional salt culture makes sense
Not only the raw material, but also the method of production is crucial for the quality: In a saltworks that is traditionally managed by hand, the "salt blossom" (Flor de Sal) is not only skimmed off daily in small crystallization tanks, but also a sea salt is harvested every 14 days that no one has requires further cleaning. It contains all the elements that the body needs and that give the right flavor when cooking. This traditional sea salt (Sal Tradicional) is "washed" in the basins in its magnesium-containing mother liquor. This is not drained and remains as residual moisture even after drying by the sun and wind. The natural crystals are easily soluble and do not clump - unlike sea salt, which is usually harvested mechanically from the large harvest ponds (Sal do Mar). Its crystals are more compact because they are only harvested once a year at the end of the season.

Salt - an industrial raw material
Around 95 percent of the world's salt production - rock salt from deposits or sea salt from salt mines - is processed by industry as a raw material into a variety of chemicals that reach consumers in the form of detergents, PVC, welding electrodes and much more. The starting material is highly pure sodium chloride (NaCl), also called “table salt”. It is called that because it is cooked during production, and not because it is used for cooking. No extra salt is boiled for human consumption. Not even with sea salt: Industrially obtained sea salt is refined, which means that it is at least washed after harvest and artificially dried at high temperatures. It achieves a NaCl content of over 98 percent. The famous British “Maldon salt” is nothing more than pan-boiled salt (and therefore table salt in terms of production) made from sea water. After all, this salt, like the Luisenhall pan-evaporated salt and the Pakistani "crystal salt", lack free-flowing agents - that alone makes it more bearable and superior to the usual industrial products.

Rock salt is not the salt of the ancient seas
We find no trace of the valuable mineral mix in seawater in the rock salt. Every chemistry book says this is impossible because of how it was created, and otherwise we would have neither rock salt nor potassium salt deposits. Rock salt, including crystal, Himalayan and “primeval sea” salt, is always the result of a separation: the original one
Components of sea water that dried up millions of years ago. Due to this separation it consists mainly of NaCl; However, with varying degrees of contamination from iron oxide, petroleum and natural gas to heavy metals such as arsenic.