What Is Rock salt and How Can I Use It?

If rock salt has turned up in a recipe or caught your eye at the store, here's what you need to use it with confidence and how to choose it, cook it, store it, what to substitute, and 16 recipes to try it in.

Recipes using rock salt

There are 16 recipes that contain this ingredient.

Country Vanilla Ice Cream

Country vanilla ice cream churned the old-fashioned way, with a rich custard of eggs, cream, milk, and real vanilla. Made in an electric rock-salt freezer for the creamiest, most nostalgic scoop of summer.

Oysters Baked with Garlic Pine Nut Butter

Baked oysters with garlic pine nut butter: fresh oysters baked in their shells under a compound butter of toasted pine nuts, garlic, shallots, fresh herbs, brandy, and lemon. A restaurant-grade appetizer.

Vegan Lasagna

Layers of tofu ricotta, herb-sautéed zucchini, golden mushrooms, and spinach stacked between artichoke lasagna noodles in a rich spaghetti sauce. A hearty vegan lasagna for 8 that's loaded with vegetables and bakes up bubbling and gorgeous.

Vegan Lasagna

Layers of tofu ricotta, herb-sautéed zucchini, golden mushrooms, and spinach stacked between artichoke lasagna noodles in a rich spaghetti sauce. A hearty vegan lasagna for 8 that's loaded with vegetables and bakes up bubbling and gorgeous.

Salt Baked Chicken

Cantonese salt-baked chicken buried in six pounds of blazing rock salt with ginger, garlic, and scallion stuffing. Hakka-style whole chicken technique that gives you impossibly juicy meat and silky skin.

Salt Roasted Shrimp With Scampi Dip

Salt-roasted shrimp with a scampi beurre blanc dipping sauce. A showstopper appetizer where shrimp cook shell-on over a bed of rock salt and get served with a buttery white wine dip.

Oysters Thomas

Oysters Thomas bakes fresh oysters on the half shell topped with lump crab meat, bearnaise sauce, and cream sauce under golden bread crumbs. An elegant appetizer.

Salt-Smothered Chicken

Salt-smothered chicken buried in a bed of red-hot rock salt with ginger, tangerine peel, and Szechuan peppercorn marinade sealed in the cavity. An ancient Cantonese technique that steams the bird to silken tenderness.

Panbroiled Steak with Whiskey Sauce

Pan-broiled steak with whiskey sauce sears peppercorn-crusted steak on rock salt in a hot cast-iron pan, then spoons over a whiskey-butter sauce. Steakhouse dinner made at home.

Two Brines for Smoking Fish

Two easy fish brine recipes for smoking: a basic salt-and-sugar brine and a stronger brown sugar cure. Customize with garlic, dill, or tarragon for smoked fish that keeps up to a year frozen.

Preserved Grape Vine Leaves

Preserved grape vine leaves for making dolmades all year. Fresh-picked early-summer leaves get bundled, blanched in salted water, then packed into jars with rock salt brine for long-term pantry storage.

Stu's Old English Prime Rib

Prime rib roasted in a rock salt crust that seals in every drop of juice, producing fork-tender, deeply seasoned meat. A showstopping Old English technique you crack open with a hammer.

Oysters in Champagne Sauce

Oysters in champagne sauce: plump shucked oysters cloaked in a silky butter-champagne sauce, broiled just until golden on a bed of rock salt. An elegant appetizer for New Year's Eve or any holiday table.

Burakovyi Kvas (Fermented Beet Juice)

Traditional Ukrainian fermented beet juice made with just beets, salt, water, and a slice of sourdough bread. Tangy, earthy, and ruby-red after one to two weeks of natural fermentation.

Fit for Life Pizza

Fit for Life Pizza: a dairy-free, cheese-less pizza on a whole wheat and white flour crust, topped with roasted eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms, and onions over pesto, finished with sun-dried tomatoes, olives, and fresh basil. Hearty, Mediterranean-style vegan pizza night.

Salted Eggs

Homemade salted eggs brined in rock salt water for three weeks until the yolks turn firm, golden-orange, and richly savory. Just three ingredients and patience. Serve quartered with rice or congee.

All 16 recipes