Recipes with rock salt

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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 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.

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 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 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.

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: 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.

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: 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.

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.