In April of 2011 I made my way down to the Yucatan with my friends Yunuen and Gabriel. The goal was to eat well, relax, get a tan and drink beer on the beach but inevitably we were drawn to the mercados and eventually to the salt marshes.

The locals have been collecting the salt in the same way for generations.

There were a few collectives in different parts of the coast but we found a group of women who seemed to do the best job and we've now imported salt from them.

I asked Yunuen if you were supposed to crush the salt in a salt grinder and she just laughed. No one in Mexico uses a salt grinder! You just throw an appropriate size chunk of salt into your pot and it dissolves quickly. This isn't intuitive for those of us who like precise measures but I've been using it for two weeks now and I haven't over-salted anything.

A small bowl of the stuff looks pretty cool around the stove. That never hurts!

Sal de Mar at Rancho Gordo.