Why France's Most Expensive Salt Costs 230 Times More Than Table Salt | Insider Business
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2023
- Fleur de sel is a rare, unrefined salt made in western France by evaporating seawater slowly in 2-centimeter-deep ponds. Fleur de sel is a salt that dissolves slowly, so its taste lingers in the mouth. But just about every step of the process to get this salt is difficult. Before harvesting, the wind has to be perfect. And during the harvest, salt producers need to be ready to collect the precious salt at any moment, or they won't make a profit. Even if they seize the right moment, the salt has to dry for an entire year before it can be sold. In France it costs 230 times the price of table salt, and can sell for $420 per kilogram in the US. So, is it always worth it to produce fleur de sel? And why is it so expensive?
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Why French Fleur De Sel Salt Is So Expensive | So Expensive | Insider Business
What makes it expensive are simply because it's involving a manual labour in a develped country.
yup, "himalayan" pakistani salt requires as much labor and it's just as rare, but they can get away with paying the miners like $2 usd a month.
Plus storage for a year after harvesting and before selling it.
Just look at that guy's salt harvesting outfit.
In the US that’s the only kind of cheap labor there is
fancy can and packaging too.
Exactly the same thing is done in Aveiro, Portugal and Algarve, Portugal (there might be more). It's even called the same thing, but in Portuguese - "Flor de Sal". But instead of $420 per kg, it's usually around $6 to $10.
i'm french and i don't know how can they say $420, it's 20€ per kg in supermarket
@@juju-od3qx 420 dollars is abroad, and the video shows a small glass jar of like 50-100 grams, so if they can sell 50 grams for 21 dollars or 100 grams for 42 dollars at some super expensive health store in Los Angles or something, then it costs "up to" 420 dollars per kg
I guess business insider is just as bad as the people who marked up the price ..they know the price is inflated up ridiculously..yet they just take it as the truth and report it as such...its just sea salt ..that tastes salty
@@juju-od3qxThe same way free springwater can be sold for a dollar or two in a bottle.
@@cummerou1 in Quebec we pay like $9 CAD for 125g, so that's $72 CAD for one kg. One of the boxes I saw says it was handpicked too...
this channel has taught me that in france, food products cost extra when the producers don't wear gloves.
cuz french people think they are so pure and fancy, they have the worst language, sounds like someone trying to use mouthwash and they know it, so they have to charge 100X the price for common stuff
They use their hands instead of toilet tissue 💀
Vice versa with India 🇮🇳
where else could we get such connection to nature!?
@@turbopower7308no we don"t
I live a few hours drive from this place. I use this salt all the time. It’s not expensive if you buy it from the place. Definitely the best salt I’ve ever tasted. I believe it’s called Celtic salt in the states.
I wonder why. Cause only one French region that is Celtic. Brittainy.
@@balls9420 The Celtic peoples existed all over Central Europe, all of the British isles and even down into the Anatolian and Iberian peninsulas. A really wide ranging cultural group.
@@Syrkyth I'm talking about surviving Celtic regions. Of course they were across most of Europe. They are the natives of most of Europe.
@@Syrkyth The Celts settled in Europe as far as western Romania, search on wikipedia "Celts in Western Romania".
@@balls9420I believe you'll find it's spelled Brittany, or Bretagne in French.
Subtitle mistake at 3:01, he doesn't say that it is a role of patience, he say it's a role of passion.
they defrenched him! honhonhon 🤬
there's also an error when he talk the moist content of dried salts. He said "6 to 8%"(6 à 8%) and they wrote "6, 7 or 8%".
whats the difference@@yosie89
dudes workin in sneakers, jeans and shirt, truely a french citizen. Even at work he doesnt neglect his style.
Workmen's clothes?
*_Sacrebleu!_*
It’s the French buff. Lots of undeveloped areas are using similar way to make salt but earn like a dollar a day. 😅 Advertising, collab with chiefs, fancy packaging, labour intensive work in a developed country make it expensive.
So... should developed countries stop doing things like farming, woodworking, or salt collection if it is cheaper in other countries?
I will never not love hearing people talk about their work with the kind of pride that this man does.
I would like to watch a reaction video of other salt producers watching this one ... listening to how he describes the differences in salt and how much they sell for. Offhand i think ive seen versions from japan, korea, indonesia, phillipines.
yup...bamboo salt or volcanic sand salt much more interesting for me
한국에는 대나무소금도 있지만 영상같은 염전도 존재하는데 염전노예를 사용하기때문에 가격이 아주 저렴하다 생산지역에 가까이가면 노예로 잡혀간다
Yeah, this just a bunch of marketing spiel. Are there differences? Sure
Are most people gonna know? NOPE.
Still, the coarse french salt vs the real fine does make a difference in the final taste.
Just not 400 bucks/euros worth!
yeah.. asian contries' salts were far more better than what they produce, people should not always think that because its from a "european country" or from "america" is its instantly a "premium quality" grade. smh
@@MrJTL19 somehow I feel like it is the opposite
Haven't tried fleur de sel, but the clay salt, sold as atlantic sea salt, truly tastes much better than plain salt (it has a different unique taste) and not that expensive. It's more coarse and has more humidity. This salt is not meant to replace regular use of salt mixed in cooking, it only makes sense sprinkled over a finished plate.
If you like trying these kind of different salt, I much recommend fleur de sel, it's very nice! It's expensive per kg, but we never use that much salt, a small box can last you easily for a year for a family. Sprinkled on top of a steak or a salmon, it's perfect 👌
What do you mean by humidity?
@@AlexanderTheGreat91 It's more sticky and not like a dry powder
I switched from table salt to the Himalayan salt. It's really good on everything!
Funny thing is that this is perfectly replicable with a pressure vessel and ordinary salt but no one would buy it that way
good luck pressurizing this volume of water at an industrial scale for the same price as nature is doing it here
Only the texture might be replicable but ordinary salt does not contain a significant amount of minerals and impurities besides sodium chloride, which makes it just salty, without the extra unique flavor.
So are you also going to replicate the minerals in the water, and mud.
@@curlyhairdudeify Sure can.. How do u think they make Alkaline water lol they infuse active minerals with the water anything is possible. But morons rather spend trillions on war that's coming out of the people's pockets taxing everything when a fraction of that money can be used to stop cutting corners in farming or over priced bs as if extracting that salt is such hard job lol. Dude just comes and sweeps it with a broom thing.. im sure 99% of people can sweep some salt above the water lol but no lets stick with gmo farming and move away from organic better for the earth farming.. Keep cutting corners.
I'm sensing clone meat levels of work here.
every salt "farmer" says their salt is nothing like others
I love this series because they tell you exactly why it’s so expensive and then ask the question “what makes it so expensive” I’m guessing it’s so expensive because of everything you just said.
Mf really thinks that salt can get 230 times more expensive because it dissolves a bit slower and has a crunch instead of the worker not coming from a third world country
very well spoken worker, great commentary!
Sprinkle 3 grains of Fleur De Sel Salt on a McDonald's fries in front of a customer and you can charge that person $6,000 for the fries.
Fleur de fries 🍟 💸 💰
@@loanokaharbor8303 Sprinkle salt on the soft serve ice cream and call it McFleury
lol@@loanokaharbor8303
French-ier Fries
In India this method of salt extraction is being used for thousands of years n now these salts doesn't cost more than $1 for 5 kgs
Its funny how they justify just about everything by attaching a higher price tag
It’s the white-supremacy of it all. If it’s made by hand in France or Spain or Italy, it’s ~boutique~ but the same process in colonized countries is “unrefined” or “backwards” and “unsanitary”.
@@dikshantbali3529 especially the Japanese in this matter.
It's because we value our labor unlike your third world country lmao
in india, it costs extra if the producers wear gloves. in france, it costs extra if they don't.
Next on Business Insider: why is everything so expensive?
I use it in cookies (with a high fat ratio) where I don't want to have the flavour of salt dissolved evenly into the dough.
really interesting, did know the standard evaporating pools, but not about harvesting of the fleur de sel from the water only.
One benefit of maintaining that harverting method is also the conservation of the landscape in the region.
This is just a particular variety of what they call flakey salt and there are factories that can produce finer/coarser flakes, with added minerals if desired, as required. Like so many other things on this channel, fleur de sel is mostly marketing and romanticization of manual labor that don't actually translate to a better product.
I love using Fleur De Sel (not this guys brand). People think I'm crazy spending money on expensive salt but it really boosts your cooking as a finishing salt.
I give Fleur de sel as gifts. Until people try it, they don't believe that a finishing salt can make a difference.
If I could cook more (I'm disabled, so it's really hard), I'd _love_ to try out that smoked salt. Sounds like it would add a nice smoked flavor to things without a bunch of nitrates and nitrites that make my IBS flare up.
The reason it's so expensive is because people are willing to pay for it...
is it just me or insiders videos comfort me???????
I don't understand why people are so upset. It doesn't make your salt any more expensive and you don't have to buy it or try it. It's a business and he's doing it right.
Messolongi in Greece also produce flower of salt.
Probably the best show in an excellent series.
In Chile, there is a place where they "harvest" salt, it's called Cahuil -near Pichilemu, the surfing venue.
When I was a kid, they had "salt ponds" like this in San Francisco Bay near the Dumbarton Bridge. They are now part of a wildlife refuge and I suppose they don't harvest salt there anymore.
8:48 "There are a lot of people who say salt isn't good for your health. But it's not salt that's bad for your health. It's bad salt that's bad for you." Absolutely no. It's the amount of salt you eat that's bad for you. You need sodium to survive and to function normally, since sodium plays a central role in the way our nervous system works but no matter the quality of salt you're consuming, all of them have sodium chloride and if you eat too much of it, it'll most likely impact your cardiovascular health
It is not really just the technique, salt from different waters, rock taste different. It is not table salt or kosher salt. Until one try it, one cannot really say they are all the same. Also, these kind of salts are more as a garnish which enhance the taste of some delicate food. But if you eat fastfood, deepfried food or curry only, your tastebud will have been so saturated with heavy stuff that you will not be able to tell the difference.
Smoked Salt sounds like it would be amazing.
So amazing. I love how his eyes light up
Maldon salt flakes cost like 3 eur for 125g box where i live - and that is already an expensive premium product. Nope, not paying 20 eur for that little jar - in the end any salt is the same old sodium chloride.
Sounds like a good life style choice.
This is so amazing, someone putting such effort into producing perfect salt
by "such" you mean "precisely zero" right? Because that's what happening.
I bought some 20 years ago on the advice of a French coworker. I found the taste to be virtually the same as kosher salt. There's was no value in the much higher cost, except it came in a little ceramic container that I now use to store regular salt. I like nice containers.
All the flavours... why so salty kosher man?
@@ovilondon3589 Just saying that 100g of fancy salt is never worth $13 (not even 20 years ago).
@@cshubs it's not fancy salt It's "Fleur De Sel Salt" 🙃
.... they are both salts. But fleur de sel, and even flakier variants, linger more (due to shape) as finishing salts and as a result you could use less and get the same level of perceived saltiness. The finer versions of fleur de sel (like the ones in this video) aren't going to linger much more than your typical kosher salt though.
Me too always have im a container lover
Fascinating occupation
Surprised this channel has never covered Qiviut since it’s finer than cashmere and the most insulating natural fabric.
i'm french i swear i have like 250g of it bougt directly to the producer at 10euros
I was just on holiday in Batz sur mer and you can buy fleur de sel on the side of the road, straight from the paludiers for 25€/kg
Yeah they are straight up lying, Fleur de sel isn't as expensive as they make it to be, it's at most twice the price of table salt
Put a French name on Any product it values is x10 Time valuable !
Haha! Well this one's actually made in France so I guess it makes sense it gets a French name :)
Even Bed Bugs
I loved this production! Wow this guy really knows his stuff!! I truly admire the expertise hes gained from his devotion and persistence. a nice reminder that hard work does indeed pay off. 😊
i especially took a liking to his chemical breakdowns of the salts, minerals and their environment. truly someone who has honed the varying aspects of their craft.
now.. if i heard right.. one of these salts was 23 euros for 100grams.. sign me up!!! im do excited to try this! 😊
Mate, you are too excited for fuckin' salt.
You’re not a real 🥩 lover until you season it with this salt
also good on a chocolate cake
gate keeping steak
And some bed bugs
When I went to Portugal, we went to a producer of this salt and they were selling it for 10-15$ per kilo. They built their factory right in the middle of their salt pans, so you can see where it comes from. It’s also artisanally made.
The price is mostly due to proper (national) marketing. Same with wine.
Probably the most disastrous take I heard in a while !
My dude please don't talk about wine. You are clearly not worthy
@@lachevremagnifique7664 got to love all these anonymous internet know-it-alls.
Salt at its basic level has a simple taste.. only the French could make you believe that the wind could make it taste different.
I swear this is the 10th different kind of expensive salt ive seen here
Never heard so much fuss about table salt. But if you can convince your customers to overpay...good sales tactic !
Funny to see you proud of being ignorant
The different varieties of salt are distinguished by the types of wind that day? thats an impressive. It just shows how dedicated he is to his craft. I've had Fleur de sel and nothing I've had compares to it!
Did it taste salty?
If anyone wants to try this, costco sells butter cookies with this salt on them. They just taste like a stronger salt taste
that's my place !!
Just bought some. It was on sale tor only $10 per 125 grams. Makes my George Foreman steaks taste extra fancy.
Seems like it would pair well with desalinization. Brine water is a problem until you turn it into a product.
Watching all these films makes me conclude that salt is the most expensive thing on Earth
What's your salary?
You know, having had himalayan salt...i really cant judge until i tried it. It must taste amazing. There is Just something that makes it sought after. I still like my local sea salt but sometimes there is a delicate profile to these things that make it more palatable
He should try mesquite, hickory or applewood saw dust.
Me gusta todo lo q enseñan en estos videos
I use Mexican Spring Salt which is made using the exact same method.
I would bet the average person couldn't tell the difference between this and regular table salt.
Did the editors like Cédric dumping white salt on a white table while we're supposed to see the difference between the salts? LOL
Exactly the same ponds, water from top 3 cleanest oceans in the world and the price is 10 times lower than price in this video. I am talking about Croatia. I am not sure why they are charging those abnormal prices. I bet that salt from Croatia is better than this one here. Go and check it out if you think I am wrong.
Out of all the salts created in the world, which is the most expensive, and which is the most rare
They made a video on some 9x black bamboo salt or something like that and said that was the most expensive
I always buy it near Camargue park. On east side there’s a huge fleur de sel “park” also making this type of salt.
Can anyone who've tried both tell me, what's the difference (if any) between fleur de sel and Maldon Salt, taste wise?
Maldon is flakier with bigger “sheets” that is comparable for the most coarse varieties of fleur de sel. The finer versions of fleur de sel can be comparable to coarser versions of kosher salt.
It’s all along a spectrum of salt/surface area/moisture content/mineral content
its salt folks, its just salt. salt is salt is salt is salt is salt. 100000$ vs 1$, its just salt.
not even close to true. i bet you buy the cheapest spices/aromatics you can and then over season your food.
This stuff is freaking delicious! It took about 7 tries to nail it, but I just make it in my kitchen with the large pebble sea salt, a hot plate, and a pyrex dish. My biggest pyramid shaped crystals are about 2 cm wide at the base and a cm tall.
There are so many different kind of salt around the world with different flavor and texture, and that's just salt. Now I'm wondering what other flavor that I have not discovered yet from the taste buds in my mouth. It must be like listening to a new piece of music for my ears but instead, for my mouth.
Well you can have fleur de sel in any salines it's doesn't have to be french...
Unlike so called himalayan salt, this fleur de sel might be a better value proposition niche salt
I like this video
The narrator does a great job at pronouncing the French terms !
Thank you!
@@q_ayyah what is it actually you?
@@arethas1387 yes!
this salt makes humans immortal
I would be shocked if it didn’t cost more than that you’re in France 🇫🇷 😅culinary hotspot of the world
Sodium chloride is sodium chloride. Chemistry doesn't lie. The only thing that can cause a difference in taste is impurities in the salt. But the salt itself IS the same.
for the video editor please increase the audio.
its just bit annoying to turn volume up everytime i switch from others video to insider video.
One of the things I love about French apart from how beautiful it sounds, is that once in a while you’ll get an English word thrown in there like how he says ‘crunnnchy’ just before 8min 😹
Wonderful!
what a scam, Sea salt is everywhere. Same process for other country. 😂😂😂😂😂
imagine paying all this money for salt lmao
There were times when salt was worth more than gold....
There are people that pay such prices for water too when the tap water is perfectly fine...
With Bed Bugs
We’ve got these salt ponds in Mountain View CA, but not sure anyone would eat it…..😳
I live in Milpitas Ca. It wouldn't appeal to me to eat the salt from this area as it is just to polluted in my opinion.
I mean, aside from this top-grade fleur de sel, does this farm produce salt for lower-level culinary uses and/or industrial uses?
One of the few videos from this series where I don't think the product is worth its high price tag. Just fancy french marketing gimmicks from a salesperson.
He is a trickster "buy my very rare and expensive salt that is only produced during unusual south winds at the end of the season"
Of all the salts featured in this series, this one is the scammiest -- at least you could see the effort of bamboo salt being baked nine times. Well, in the end, salt is sodium chloride, all the other 'flavors' come from impurities, meaning you're paying a premium for contaminants.
Plain salmon right out of the water and smoked salmon. Which do you prefer? Which would you pay more for? The plain or the one with contaminants? A bowl of water and a bowl of soup. Which one do you prefer? The plain bowl of hot water or the bowl of hot water that's "contaminated" with spices and vegetables. Unless you have personally done a taste comparison you haven't really any right to label someone's very open and above board livelihood a scam. To me that's tantamount to defamation. It's only a scam if they tell you that you are buying "product A" and you get "product B" instead. If you are told that you are getting "product A" and what you receive is indeed exactly what you were told you were going to get then you have NOT been scammed. Also if you were listening, some of those "impurities" were things like potassium, magnesium and calcium. All of which are things that you need in your diet. Personally, even if I were a billionaire I wouldn't buy it unless the flavor was so ecstatically fantastic that I couldn't live without it. Then again I wouldn't be buying any $1,000 bottles of wine either. Not because I don't think that there aren't any bottles of wines that are worth $1,000 a bottle but because I'm not all that crazy about wine or fancy salt. Any thing that you purchase that has more in it than just the pure main ingredient in it is "contaminated" with impurities of one type or another. It is these contaminants and the labor that goes into collecting and combining them that cause us to be willing to pay more for that product. So I'm sorry but I just don't see your point.
The premium part of fleur de sel lies not in its composition, but its texture. The crystals that forms are hollowed, meanign you can bit in them and get a nice crunch, while not losing a teeth or two.
It's also way less expensive locally. 20 euros the kilo, and it lasts for a looong time. Normal thick grained salt is at 3,50 euros the kilo.
‘I don’t want extra flavours in my food, I want the purest chemical formulæ’ - things usually uttered by the consumers of the purest sugar with the purest ascorbic acid in their fizzy drinks.
Everything "French" is more expensive than normal ones, even French Fries in French.
You'll never understand the worth of fleur de sel until you've tasted it. Perfect with steak tartare, dark chocolate bars, and some other items.
Mmmmm microplastic salt.
Good 👍😊
Just to be clear. Are we talking $400+ per kg of microplastic here? Because in these days, to take water from the sea without any additional filters is basically taking microplastic.
Manufacturers have been synthesizing table-salt for over one hundred years to provide uniform distributions of any preferential granule size, and they probably still mine the salt ingredients.
"100g box" ma'am, that is not a box
Do love all the bollocks they come up with to make their salt "unique" and therefore charge more for. Fleur de sel is just sea salt it will dissolve at the same rate as any other sea salt, probably faster because it has a high surface area to volume.
Pretty much the only difference in salts that contribute anything to taste is grain size and crystal shape. Even highly mineralised salt like pink Himalayan salt is still 98% sodium chloride you aren't tasting anything else over that amount of salt.
It's around 20/25 euros per kilo retail price.
anyone else salivating during watching lol
Nice 👍
For those who live near the sea, remember that you have a huge quantity of it, it is free
It is totally worth it, but it is to be used for special occasions.
Hard working man
Does he have a website so i can buy in america
Put the french flag on top and you can sell absolutely everything expensive in the US 😂 Also there is so much tax paid in all stages of production