Making Sea Salt

Salt is cheap, so why bother to make it? For me it's just a part of the self reliant lifestyle thingy. First of all, I don't use much salt. But when I do, I prefer sea salt because if its wonderful taste. And by far, way out in front, is the flavor of our local salt. I was blown away the first time I tasted salt collected at Honomolino Bay. I've since had salt made near Honuapo and find that it is also wonderful. I've become a convert and now prefer the flavor of local salt.

I now make, or collect, my own salt. Collecting it is not as easy as it once was. I use to be able to go to the non-used shoreline of Honuapo and collect naturally occurring salt in the lava depressions. 

But now large numbers of locals and tourists use the area. Sadly, people have pretty filthy habits, so eating the salt is no longer appealing. But I can still use that salt for non-eating purposes.

This is how I make culinary salt:
1- Find a clean shoreline where there is active waves on the rocks. 

I go to an area where the water is constantly active, there are no quiet coves, people do not swim, and no one camps or otherwise uses the area. I usually collect several gallons. Since the ocean can be quite dangerous here, I use a small bucket tied with a short rope on the end of a long stick. I've used discarded fishing poles in the past, but currently am using an extension pole that I also use for fruit picking. It gives me quite a long reach. But I still take care to watch the waves and stand in a relatively safe zone in case a rogue wave crashes in.
2- Once my sea water is home, the first thing to do is filter out the particulate matter.

 Running the water through a coffee filter works well. There's lots of different ways to do that, but I'll just rubberband a filter to the top of the water jug, turn it upside down, and collect the filtered water into glass jars.
3- Now it's evaporation time.

 Since I run a wood burning stove each morning, and during the winter also in the evening, a free heat source is readily available. So I'll just put two pots atop the stove and add the seawater. When the stove is through burning and cools down, I'll just lid the pots until the next time the stove is burning. That way the water stays clean. Each time I will refill the pots as long as I have more seawater to evaporate, so over time the salt gets pretty concentrated.

I finally get to the point where I'm using just one pot and its about half full, though in this photo I was evaporating only my last couple cupfuls. 

I'll start seeing salt crystals forming. Very quickly there will be a mass of bubbling salt crystals. Now for the next five minutes I have to watch it carefully, waiting until I no longer see steam. Then I'll transfer the salt to a small frying pan for drying the rest of the way. The reason I do this is that the salt tends to adhere rock hard to my pot. But if I use a small clean frying pan for the final drying and stir it frequently with a wooden spoon, it does fine. In fact, it becomes quite fluffy and white. It only takes a few minutes to drive the rest of the moisture out. 

4- Final step. Spoon the salt into an airtight jar for storage. 

From 4 gallons of seawater I get one pint jar of fluffy salt. Plenty for my own use plus extra to give away or use as Christmas gifts.