A couple years ago my sister introduced me to the books of Jeffrey Steingarten, food writer for Vogue magazine. A former lawyer with a insatiable taste for research, Steingarten pursues all forms of good food with the reckless determination of Indiana Jones. He embraces cuisines high and low, writing with incredible pomp and energy. He’s one of my heroes.

In addition to trying to chemically recreate the tastes of expensive imported spring waters in his kitchen, he’s also written about the variety of gourmet salts available. For one, do they really taste any different? Though my memory is dim, I believe his article was somewhat inconclusive on this regard (texture may play a part), but nevertheless it is nice to know where to buy those salts on the Internet. Here we find that black salts taste of sulfer, and are used in authentic Indian cooking, and that celtic salts are “naturally moist salts harvested from the pristine Atlantic seawater off the coast of Brittany, France.” Did you know you can buy smoked salts too? I didn’t.

The rest of the Saltworks site is filled with all kinds of applications of salt. It’s fun. Check it out! My gut tells me there’s at least three or four elementary school science projects here, parents!