Making Salt

Being a person who likes to produce a lot of my own food, I was inspired by my friend, Wren, to make salt. I've been working on this idea for about 6-8 months, trying to determine the best way to do it entirely carbon-neutral. The pan was difficult because I couldn't afford to give up one of my baking pans for three weeks and I didn't want to buy a new one. But luckily I happened upon an old aluminum pan when exploring a storage room at my previous house. As Wren noted, a Pyrex glass pan is probably best for scraping, but this pan was free and not being used.

[The first batch]

Next, I had to acquire the salt water. Not difficult. I found some not-being-used capped plastic bottles on a beach, kayaked out into the blue water (that's an actual term to describe water where you can't see the bottom) and submerged the bottles, filling them with subsurface water.

Then I poured a liter into the pan and let evaporation do the rest. The most challenging part of staying carbon-neutral came next. It's hard to get the last bit of moisture out of the salt, particularly because I live in a humid place and the salt keeps sucking moisture back out of the air. So I put the pan in my solar oven mid-afternoon through early evening until the salt was thoroughly baked. I quickly removed the pan (after learning my lesson a couple times), scraped the salt off, and sealed it in a small airtight container.

[My third batch evaporated untouched for three weeks and the salt crystals that formed were huge - averaging 1/4'' square, but some as large as 3/8'']

Each batch nets about five tablespoons of salt. This doesn't quite keep up with my consumption (especially when I give it away), but that's not my purpose. I can buy 2.2 pounds of salt at the store for a dollar so this is something I just do because it's fun. And local.