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Coarse sea salt
Guérande coarse sea salt has always been hand-harvested using traditional methods and is well known for its culinary virtues. It is naturally grey as it crystallises on contact with the clay from which it takes its high trace element content. Less salty than Mediterranean salt, Guérande salt is softer on the palate and richer in flavour which makes it the salt that cooks prefer for salting stocks and the water used for cooking vegetables, and also for barbecues and meat and fish cooked in a salt crust. Unwashed, unrefined and additive-free, it adds flavour to traditional family cooking.
Coarse salt is harvested every day in summer when mild weather combines wind and sun on the Guérande peninsula. In the late afternoon, under the effect of evaporation, the salt is concentrated to a level of to 250 g/l, when it then crystallises and is deposited on the clay in the “œillets”. The salt worker uses a wide wooden rake known as a “las” to push the salt to the edges of the pond. He then pulls it on to the “ladure”, a round platform made of clay, where it is left for the night to drain. Next day, the salt worker uses a wooden wheelbarrow to carry the 60 kg of salt per “œillet” to the large stockpile of salt known as the “mulon”.