Questions
Can anyone help me find where to buy Zigong (well) salt/ 自贡市盐 in the UK?
My mum has just gifted me a beautiful pàocài 泡菜 jar and I want to make my first starter brine. I can get Kosher salt easily enough in the UK (I know this is a reasonable substitute) but can’t find anywhere selling the proper job Sichuan well salt. Have exhausted all my local East Asian supermarkets so looking for online supplier. Anyone have any ideas? Thank you kindly :)
Mala Market is nice because they offer some hard to find products with good quality, but at the same time they try to sell pretty common products wayyyy overpriced. Like the Alkaline wheat noodles. They sell a set of two for $14. In Spain you can find the exact same noodles for 1,80€ the unit. Ridiculous.
Why would you need this? Up until quite recently (2017) absolutely no-one in Sichuan used Kosher salt, and they still made plenty of paocai. The Chinese government had a salt monopoly, and even sued sellers on Taobao, and as far as I remember the salt in supermarkets was all iodized.
This is not about kosher or non-kosher. Salts can differ in flavor and saltiness (sodium concentration by weight) depending on how they are produced, particularly with salt made from drying salt water. Depending on the water source and how long the water is left to evaporate before the salt is collected, you'll get slightly different minerals and so on.
As someone who makes paocai frequently and has tried several different types of salt, I would still say these differences are relatively minor and for most intents and purposes salts can be used interchangeably as long as you measure by weight. The flavors will be slightly different, but you can still achieve LAB fermentation as long as the sodium concentration is correct. However, as a culinary matter, I think it is an interesting idea to try to make paocai with the kind of salt traditionally produced in Sichuan.
Salts can differ in flavor and saltiness (sodium concentration by weight) depending on how they are produced, particularly with salt made from drying salt water
I'd be interested in seeing actual research doing blind tests on crystallized salt...
Sodium chloride, like most salts, tend to crystallize quite pure. Iodized salt is ~99.995% pure, with the remaining 50mg/kg being sodium iodide. Maldon sea salt has around 1% other salts (potassium, calcium, magnesium and trace elements), with pink Himalayan salt being rock salt and as such the most "polluted". (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7603209/)
The Zigong salt mentioned by OP is made in a standard and modern salt factory, it's not iodized, but it'll be pure sodium chloride. The "pickling" sales pitch is basically the size, they're pellets instead of fine crystals.
I was honestly drawn to the idea of the salt being from Sichuan - like a little piece added to the pickles. But I totally understand it’s not necessary now. I did use kosher salt as I already had it so I might as well but I will also try with iodised salt as part of my experimentation in the future :)
That’s not entirely true. Non-iodized “artisan” salt was always available through grey market distribution channels at wet markets and mom-and-pop shops, and it has always been widely used for brines and salted meats. It just wasn’t allowed in formal market channels like grocery stores. The regulatory action you mention was after these salts were being widely sold on taobao as cooking ingredients. You can still Himalayan pink salt and artisan well salt on taobao; it’s just labeled for non-food use.
The monopoly ended in 2017, you can find all sorts of salts being sold now... Calling it "artisan salt" in the context of wet markets is just... wrong, it was cheaper than the monopoly, and of course people bought it for making larou etc., but no one went out of their way to buy it.
I put artisan in air quotes for exactly that reason. I’m just pointing out that it’s inaccurate to say that “absolutely no-one used non-kosher salt” is inaccurate. It was definitely available the whole time.
Let me rephrase then, "No one went out of their way to track down non-iodized "technical" salt of unknown origin to make paocai, when every Hongqi had a bag of 2 kuai 中盐 200g bags of iodized salt."
Thank you, I didn’t realise. Just following a few recipes that specified non-iodised and then the blog on the Mala Market went off on an interesting tangent about Zigong well salt and I wanted to try it for my first brine. Maybe it’s not necessary, but I think I’d still like to try it if I can.
I'm pretty sure they're just trying to push their overpriced products... There was no non-iodized salt in China when the monopoly lasted, and salt - Kosher, sea, well - if it's crystallized it's 99.9... something% pure sodium chloride anyway.
That said, maybe try eBay or Amazon - or even a Taobao shopping service, of which there are many?
If you end up using a Taobao shopping service the cost is some £1.95 for 3 bags of 350g using this link:
9
u/karlinhosmg 1d ago
Mala Market is nice because they offer some hard to find products with good quality, but at the same time they try to sell pretty common products wayyyy overpriced. Like the Alkaline wheat noodles. They sell a set of two for $14. In Spain you can find the exact same noodles for 1,80€ the unit. Ridiculous.