Of all of the foods that are considered ‘bad for your health’, the one I find the most challenging to avoid is not chocolate. It isn’t refined sugar or bacon either. It doesn’t even have a flavour all its own, but selflessly gives a small boost to all other flavours. It is salt, the high heel shoes of the culinary world. Much like heels, salt needs to be used in moderation. If you use it too often, your taste buds adapt, and you will require more salt to avoid your food tasting bland (or feeling short in a pair of flats….).
By avoiding processed foods and cooking from scratch, you are able to avoid added sodium (and so much more). Clearly we are big proponents of cooking from scratch, here at TCCK, but we also want the food you make to taste delicious, so that you WANT to eat it. How else are you going to get all of those cancer-crushing, bio-available nutrients into your body?
So maybe small amounts of high quality, mineral-rich, additive-free sea salt would be ok. Derived from the cleaner oceans of the world, where the air is warm enough to evaporate the water off naturally, so that no de-mineralizing boiling needs to take place.
With a little bit of effort, I think we can do even better. What about if we ground up a variety of sea vegetables (aka seaweed), also from cleaner oceans of the world, and added it to our salt?
We would be adding a wealth of minerals, including the illusive iodine (thyroid health!), potassium (dulse has 34 times more potassium by weight than an equally sized banana), and calcium (in case you were concerned about what a dairy-free lifestyle was doing to your bone-health). Sea veg is also high in protein and fiber. Kombu in particular is suspected in being partly responsible for Japan’s low breast cancer rate. Maybe it is because kelps in general (kombu, wakame) help to remove heavy metals and radioactive isotopes from the body.
So if we grind up some sea vegetables and add them to our salt, it will probably make all of our food taste like a giant surf wipe-out, right? Not if you don’t use a lot of salt. See where I’m going here? Seaweed-flavoured salt, means nutrient-rich salt and also salt that we use minimally. Using less salt means our taste buds adjust to less salt which means our single batch of ocean-y salt will last a long time and our bodies will stay hydrated and our veins will remain plump and juicy (also a good thing for frequent blood work).
Just because we are talking about salt, we may as well swing our leg right over, so that we can properly straddle the fence between feeding our body and feeding our face, and have some popcorn. Here’s a little treat. Kick off your shoes and enjoy!
- ½ c Unrefined Sea Salt (Himalayan or Celtic are good)
- 2 leaves of Kombu
- ¼ c Dulse
- 4 'branches' of Wakame
- (Any seaweed will do)
- ¼ c Popcorn kernels, air-popped
- 1 Tbsp Extra Virgin Coconut Oil
- ½ tsp Turmeric
- ¼ tsp Dried Garlic granules
- 2 tsp Nutritional Yeast
- Several grinds of Black Pepper (to enhance turmeric absorption)
- ⅛ tsp Seaweed Salt
- Grind the seaweeds and ¼ of the salt in a blender or food processor until fine.
- Mix it in with the rest of the salt.
- Use sparingly, as you would regular salt.
- Pop the popcorn, using an air-popper.
- Melt the coconut oil and stir in the rest of the ingredients EXCEPT the salt.
- Toss with the popcorn until it is uniformly(-ish) yellow, and then sprinkle on the salt and toss again.
- Be careful of your yellow fingers on the couch, your shirt, face, walls or dog/cat.
Thanks for the feedback Jaimie! I make this popcorn all of the time too :) My mother in law texted me the other day to ask what to do about her turmeric-stained nails. I really don’t know but I say embrace it, turmeric fingers are cool.
I make this popcorn at least once a week now and have permanently yellow nails. We serve it to everyone who comes over and they’re always amazed. The seaweed salt is awesome. I add it to almost everything that I’d normally add salt to. I did it in my food processor which was a bit messy and I couldn’t get it as fine as it is in your pictures, but it still works :) thanks!!