Indian food is incomplete without a dash of namak and masalas. Can you imagine having your favourite curry without salt or chaat without spices? No, right? One of the most popular ingredients used for chaats and many Indian summer coolers is black salt or kala namak. Come summer season and you’ll find a host of refreshing beverages like jaljeera, aam panna and nimbu paani making their way to our daily diet. While all these drinks have several different ingredients, there’s a common element that binds all these together and that is kala namak. Black salt is used in a number of Indian summer drinks, as it adds taste to them. But did you know how it is made in India? A recent viral video shows exactly how.
A video by food blogger Amar Sirohi - uploaded on his YouTube channel Foodie Incarnate - shows how kala namak is made from scratch. And it is too interesting to miss. It takes about 24 hours to make kala namak, and the process involves a lot of risks. Yes, you read that right. The video starts with the arrival of a truck full of sambar namak from Jaipur, Rajasthan, which is used to make black salt.
Sambar namak is filled in 38 matkis that are spread all over a ‘bhatti’ with cow dung cakes and charcoal as a base. The matkis are completely submerged in charcoal and then filled with sambar matkis. On top of namak, the covering of almonds is also added to the matkis, which are covered and cooked for 24 hours. The matkis are covered completely so the heat doesn’t go out. Take a look at the video:
After 24 hours, the matkis are taken out and one can simply figure out from the red-hot look of matkis how risky it must be to touch. This is why the makers take it out with their feet. The salt is on the inside, which is then sold in the market. Not only is the process time and energy consuming, but it is also super risky considering it only involves fire. Once they come to normal temperature, the matkis are broken and the salt is sold in the market.
The video already has 832,497 views and people can’t help but marvel at the amount of hard work it takes to make black salt. Concluding the clip, Sirohi accepts that the process is unhygienic, but interesting. And we can’t help but agree. What do you think?