Learn where where you can buy the pure salt flakes for your table
On a quiet afternoon in their kitchen in Washington, Georgia, Lydia and Denny Lange watched a pot of seawater transform. What began as an experiment in boiling brine crystallized into possibility. “That first scoop of salt out of the brine, we looked at each other and said, ‘Oh my goodness, we’ve made salt,’” Lydia recalls. It was the moment the couple realized they were onto something.
In 2015, a diagnosis of POTS, an autonomic nervous system disorder, required Lydia to increase her salt intake dramatically. Three years later, on a trip to Iceland, the couple encountered Icelandic flake salt, which Lydia began using to spike her water—and eventually to finish almost every dish. Many salts on the market in the US contain heavy metals, additives, and chemicals like bleaching and anticaking agents. “Salt is so villainized, but nobody educates us on the difference between bad sodium in packaged foods and the essential mineral our bodies actually need,” she explains.
In the Lowcountry, the Langes uncovered their inspiration and their source. They hand-harvest seawater just outside Charleston, accessing a fast-flowing area at high tide through a private landowner. The brine is filtered five times down to 0.2 microns after traveling to their Georgia saltworks. The result is a clean, third-party-tested “non-detect” for heavy metals sea salt. Their process yields two signature varieties: “Pure Flake,” a delicate, flaky finishing salt with small and large pyramids, and “Kosher,” which has smaller crystals suited to cooking and baking. “Clean salt should not have heavy metals,” Lydia says. “We want something nourishing going onto people’s tables.”
Much of that purity comes from their study and persistence: the couple is self-taught, researching the history of salt-making and experimenting for two years before bringing their product to market.
In a year, Lange Salt Co. has garnered national attention for its heritage-inspired packaging and built a cult following among chefs and home cooks. Their Lowcountry-harvested flaky salts have become favorites in kitchens such as The Dabney in D.C., Little Bear in Atlanta, and Merci and Vern’s here and appear in local shops like Goat Sheep Cow and Harvest Market. They’re also stocked from St. Simons to the Hamptons and Los Angeles.
As they grow, the Langes hope to move their full operation to the Charleston area. “The minerals in the Atlantic Ocean near Charleston really shape the flavor and terroir of our salts,” Lydia notes. “People say it tastes like Charleston in the best way.”
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