Alaea Salt

Alaea salt, also called Hawaiian red salt, is an unrefined sea salt mixed with alaea, a volcanic clay rich in iron oxide, which gives the seasoning its brick-red colour. It belongs to Native Hawaiian cuisine and flavours traditional dishes such as kalua pig, poke and pipikaula, the Hawaiian jerky. It was also traditionally used to cleanse, purify and bless tools, canoes, homes and temples. The salt was once exported to the Pacific Northwest to cure salmon, and in the late twentieth century it became popular again in fusion-style cooking, both in the islands and beyond. No naming system names it, because it is a mixed preparation of salt and clay rather than a single species or mineral, so the entry has no formal name.