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To toast the buns, grill them, cut sides down, directly over the heat for 1 to 2 minutes.

If serving immediately, transfer the patties right from the grill to the buns. If the burgers will sit, even for a few minutes, keep the burgers and buns separate until just before serving.

Just before serving, sprinkle each burger with the remaining salt, or, alternately, serve with a dish of sel gris at the table for diners to pinch from.

BRINING

The cook cares not a bit for toil, toil, if the fowl be plump and fat —Horace

Brining has been around for millennia, and is such an integral part of our cuisine that no one remembers where or when it first came into use. Soaking meats in a simple mixture of cold water, sugar, and salt before roasting will dramatically increase their juiciness and tenderness, but brines are especially helpful with poultry, pork, and seafood, because these meats dry out and get tough relatively quickly.

Brines work in two ways. First, salt loosens the muscle fibers that cause muscles to contract, making brined meats noticeably softer and, if not overcooked, more tender. Second, salt unfolds the spiral structure of protein molecules, exposing more bonding sites for water. That means that brined meat can absorb as much as 10 percent moisture from a brine. Cooking dehydrates meat by about 20 percent. By bulking up the moisture through brining, you can effectively cut the net loss of juices in most cooked meat by half.

DRY BRINING WITH SEL GRIS

Try sel gris as a koshering salt. Pat it around the outside of the Thanksgiving turkey or spring chicken and let the bird rest in the refrigerator for twelve hours before roasting. Some call this technique “dry brining.” The moist salt draws a small amount of moisture from the poultry, gently denaturing some of its surface proteins, and allows the bird to reabsorb the lost moisture, along with natural salts and minerals from the sel gris. When you’re ready to cook the bird, pat its skin to remove the remaining salt, dry it, then rub it with olive oil and roast it as you normally would. The full mineral arsenal of the sea will come to the aid of the meat, for a surprisingly rich, hearty flavor.

Brines also season proteins. When water from the brine enters the meat, any flavorful components from herbs, spices, or flavored liquids dissolved in the brine are also absorbed. Meats absorb brine from the outside in, so the fibers closest to the surface get most of the benefits. But it’s the surface that dehydrates most during cooking, so even a short period of brining can make meat noticeably juicier and more flavorful.

Like any cooking technique, it pays to do it right. Incomplete brining yields less juicy results, but overbrining poses far greater problems. Brines that are too salty (a medium-strength brine uses about one tablespoon of salt per cup of liquid) and/or leaving meat exposed to brine for too long makes the protein coagulate and forces moisture out of the muscle tissue; you end up with meat that is even drier than it was before it went into the brine. This potential drawback makes it especially important to monitor your brining times.

FIRST PORK

A Mesopotamian tale tells of a wounded pig that ran into the ocean and drowned. After being recovered from the ocean, where it was saturated in the brine, the pork was found to taste better than unsalted meat.

SMOKED SALT-BRINED BARBECUED PORK RIBS

SERVES 4

Barbecued ribs are a delicacy born of the ingenuity of the poorest—the slaves and servants who were tossed bones by their masters and transformed gristly, fatty “spare ribs” into a complex delicious, finger-sucking feast—the New World equivalent of the French potage. The trick to cooking ribs is keeping them moist: brining is a must. Even the most delicious house-made bacon would envy the subtle woodsy notes infused from the smoked salt used in this brine. Bacony ribs glazed with a rich and spicy sauce: it’s like Christmas