San Juan Island Sea Salt - Madrona Smoked Salt - 6 oz Jar
$16.00
Madrona Smoked Salt
The Pacific Madrona (Arbutus menziesii) is a beautiful and interesting native tree that grows here on the island. It grows on rocky slopes, in forest clearings and it's shape is never twice the same. We collect fallen branches of the tree on the island and use them to cold smoke our sea salt. This smoked salt has a hearty, smoked salmon like aroma, with a soft brown caramel color. A few great ways to use this salt are on a slice of a fresh garden tomato, on roasted root vegetables.
ABOUT:
Our business began with a formative experience: when I was in college I made sea salt for Christmas gifts with my friends by boiling seawater on my parents stove. It took forever, made a huge mess and wasted tons of electricity. But seeing those crystals form hooked me! Fast forward to 2012 and I had been working on a vegetable farm outside of Seattle, and that memory drifted back to me. I figured I might be able to use my skills at building greenhouses to make salt a better way!
My now wife, Leah, heard me discussing this idea and not long after shared a food network video she saw about a business doing just that. And since 2012 was supposed to be the last year ever, I was in a very impulsive mood and decided to try it out! We built our first evaporation house in August of that year and made our first batch of sea salt. In December we took some jars to a farmers market and made $700 on our first day. We were stoked!
Fast forward to now and we currently have 14 evaporation houses, producing around 20,000 lbs of salt a year. We have come out with about 30 unique products, and keep trying to push ourselves in terms of the flavors we use and the design we put into our packaging. We are still very much in the adolescence of our business as we try to figure out what the heck we are doing, but we are having a blast!
