The Internet-Famous Salt You Can Now Buy at Walmart—But It Won't Be There For Long
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Salt has always been elemental in cooking, but in the past few years, the wide world of salt has opened up to home cooks. Where your options used to be iodized, kosher or sea salt, now you have an array of shapes and textures (flaky salt, coarse salt, fine salt), a variety of colors (white, pink, gray, black) and tons and tons of flavors (smoked, spiced, sweet, truffled).
This seasoning revolution has played out in spice shops, specialty grocery stores and on social media, where you can find brands like OSMO, which was co-founded by celeb chef, cookbook author and Master Chef finalist Nick DiGiovanni.
Related: Nick DiGiovanni's Trick to the Best Turkey Ever
DiGiovanni decided to get into the salt business in 2021 as a way to connect with his many fans (13 million on YouTube, 11.6 million on TikTok and 2.3 million on Instagram) and to help them get a little taste of the chef life at home. "We ended up landing on salt as something that I could really play around with, experiment with, be creative with and it's this accessible thing that we can ship anywhere around the world," he says.
Over the past two years, OSMO has sold Persian saffron salt, sriracha salt, creamy butter salt, vanilla bourbon salt and many many more. Up until a few days ago, you could only buy the salts via the OSMO website, but for the next month or so you can find three of the most popular OSMO salts at Walmart.
This holiday box set includes a jar of OSMO Flakey White, Roasted Garlic and Hickory Blend and costs $24.97. The trio, which will be available at select Walmart locations until December 22, makes a great gift for yourself or the cook on your shopping list. You can also break up the set and have three great stocking stuffers.
When we chatted with DiGiovanni about the holiday collection, we quizzed him about how and why he chose these three salts and how best to use them. Here's what he had to say.
Related: 8 Benefits of Himalayan Pink Salt
OSMO
Flakey White Salt
"This is our go-to basic classic salt that has that perfect light, flaky texture," says DiGiovanni. "This one is super well-loved. I've been throwing this everywhere."
"We went through a lot of different flaky white salts to find this one, and this one for me was the perfect texture. There are some salts out there that have the mega flakes, and sometimes that's just way too big. I don't want to get hit with that much salt at once. So this for me is just that perfect balance, that perfect size."
This is an all-purpose all-star. The little black dress of salt, if you will. You can use it on pretty much any protein or vegetable and it's a great finishing touch for chocolate chip cookies.
Related: Best Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies
Roasted Garlic
"This one smells exactly like roasted garlic, and that's how it's made. It's literally just roasted garlic and sea salt," he says. In addition to the flavor, DiGiovanni loves this salt because it helps you save time in the kitchen.
"So if you wake up and you make scrambled eggs and steak and you feel like you want some roasted garlicky flavor on them, and you don't want to go through the effort of making roasted garlic, then this is just that easy way to do it."
Try adding the roasted garlic salt to burgers, shepherd's pie, mashed potatoes, garlic bread or pizza.
Related: Best Homemade Garlic Bread
Hickory Blend
"This one is my favorite smoked salt that we have so far," says DiGiovanni. "I just open it constantly and smell it because it smells so good—it's aromatherapy." He also says that this salt is another great shortcut ingredient.
"Getting that smoky flavor is great, but sometimes not practical for a lot of people if you live in an apartment or if you don't have a smoker. And so our smoked salts are a really fun way to get that smoky flavor really quickly without needing to spend all that time. Obviously it's a totally different experience than smoking something overnight, but it does do a really great job of giving that smoky flavor."
DiGiovanni uses the hickory blend on any and all proteins and most recently used the salt on a piece of salmon that he brushed with a little mayo, sprinkled with smoked salt and cooked in the air fryer. The mayo helped the fish brown and also kept it moist and the salt added a nice quick hit of smoked flavor. This delicious air fryer salmon experiment highlights exactly how he'd love folks to use OSMO salts.
"I just play around with all of the salts," says DiGiovanni. "And that's exactly what we want you to do if you have some of the salts. Just experiment and find what works for you."
