Flavor Profile
Our Smoked Bourbon Barrel Salt has a hearty, provocative aroma and the flavor provides complex smoke and oaky notes in addition to salt’s characteristic flavor. This smoky flavor enhances the sensory attributes of other foods and spices.

Smoky flavor is popular in U.S. style barbecue, as well as in Mexican, Latin American and Tex-Mex cuisines. Smoked salt is a simple and easy way to add smoked flavor to any food without the need to break out the smoker or grill. Smoked salt's intoxicating aroma adds a delectable complexity to meats and vegetables. This is an excellent way to add a robust, smoky flavor with a gourmet twist to your dishes.

Exploding Demand
In the last several years, we’ve watched the popularity of smoked salts, spices and pepper grow each year. In particular, the demand for smoked salts has literally exploded in this time period, so much so that our suppliers are having an increasingly difficult time keeping up.

We always get the same reaction at our facility when we have customers smell any of our smoked salts for the first time. Their reaction is almost always “Wow! This is a VERY intense aroma”. One of our wholesale customers even calls our smoked salts “campfire in a jar”. I would agree with him that this is as close as you can get to the smell of a campfire without standing in front of a roaring fire.

The Story Behind this Smoked Salt
A little over a year ago we were inspired by several of our customers who asked us to source a higher quality of smoked pepper than what they had be able to find at the market. We sampled numerous smoked black peppercorns and none of these possessed enough acceptable smoky flavor for us to want to sell them. Until that is, we came across this artisan supplier in the bluegrass state of Kentucky who has perfected cold smoking pepper.

He slow smokes cracked black peppercorns over the wood of aged Kentucky bourbon barrels. The result is a robust, intoxicating aroma with wonderful hints of smoke and oaky flavor, in addition to the gentle characteristic heat that black pepper provides.

The key to a good smoked chile, pepper or salt is the slow, cold smoking process. Our Bourbon Barrel Smoked Salt is slowly cold smoked for 3-5 days. The time depends upon the amount of smoke that he gets from a particular batch of wood. The wood comes from bourbon barrels which, by Kentucky state law, can only be used once in the making of bourbon. These barrels have been used to hold bourbon for a minimum of seven years. During this time, bourbon slowly soaks into the wood. Our supplier describes this as the barrel “marinating” in bourbon while the company Jim Beam calls this the devil's cut. 

Another Kentucky state law says the barrels used to age bourbon must always be constructed from American Oak.

Naturally Smoked Salts
A naturally smoked salt is completely different from smoke-flavored salt, as the “flavored” salt contains a smoke flavored additive called liquid smoke which is not classified as a natural salt product.

Now, even naturally smoked salts are not all created equal. Unlike smoke-flavored salts, top quality naturally smoked salts become infused with the subtle flavor characteristics of the wood they were smoked with – typically this is apple, cherry, hickory or mesquite. Sometimes the wood is from barrels such as chardonnay wine or bourbon whiskey. 

Where to Use
We’ve found ourselves using this smooth and sultry Bourbon Barrel Smoked Salt just about everywhere we love smoky flavor - burritos, grilled chicken, corn on the cob, eggs, mac and cheese, salads, tacos, roasted and steamed vegetables, soups, spice rubs and stews. 

Shipping is not included in the purchase price. For more information on our shipping policies please see our Shipping Policy page.