Without seasoning, without salt, the best barbecue is bland, the heartiest soup is unsatisfying, and even the freshest, crispiest French fry is a disappointment. Yet many mass-produced spices and salts lack potency and punch. Thankfully, the province is home to a number of hyper-local salt and spice producers who don’t cut corners when it comes to process or product. They are spicing up customers’ lives and meals with their seasoning blends, all while celebrating the bounty of B.C.

Making seasoning to reduce waste
For many of these producers, reducing waste is at the heart of their craft. Spice mixes and salt blends often begin as a creative solution to use surplus ingredients — transforming what might otherwise be discarded into something delicious.

Take Tofino Hot Sauce Co.’s spiced seasoning salts. While cooking for Tofino Ucluelet Culinary Guild, chef Lise Richard concocted her first hot sauce using excess produce; and, Tofino Hot Sauce Co. was born. The fruit and vegetable pulp left over after making a batch of sauce is so loaded with flavour and nutrients, it cannot be simply discarded. Given her background in environmental science, Richard was determined to use her skills to make a positive impact on the planet.

To turn food waste into something new, she dehydrates the pulp and mixes it with salt. Now Tofino Hot Sauce Co. sells its salts in the same flavours as its sauces: Mango & Turmeric, Lime & Cilantro and Hibiscus & Tamarind. For those who can’t quite take the heat of the sauce, the salts give a warm hum without the burn.

A similar purpose
A similar story unfolded at Klippers Organics in Cawston, B.C. Annamarie Klippenstein started making dried seasonings as a way of managing food waste from the sixty-acre farm she and her husband, Kevin, founded in 2001. They sell produce at farmers’ markets around the Lower Mainland.

“We would have stuff leftover at the market,” Klippenstein says. She dries basil, onions and garlic and grinds them into concentrated, flavour-packed dusts while celery is dried and mixed into salt.

Klippers Organics also transforms fresh fruit into sweet seasoning blends such as apple sugar. From the Klippensteins’ point of view, the labour has already gone into growing the fruit, vegetable or herb, so they might as well make the effort to ensure the end product is edible, as well as sellable.

Garden grown excess for good
Even small gardens can produce more herbs than one household can handle. That’s how Bowen Island Herb Salts began. Founders Lisa Rainbird and Bernd Florin started drying herbs and edible flowers from their large garden, sharing their creations with friends and family.

They also decided to turn their excess crop into dried spices. They liked what they made, so they also began sharing it with family and friends. The feedback was positive. “We racked up quite a bit of encouragement,” Florin recounts, and so they started selling their seasoning at local farmers’ markets.

Bowen Island Herb Salts has four signature blends, and it has also branched out into wood-smoked salts, flavoured sugars and mulling spices. Despite its growing popularity, the pair isn’t keen to expand operations.

“We really enjoy how we’re doing it now,” Rainbird explains. Plus, their current small scale means they can maintain superior quality, which is one of the reasons demand is so high for their products. With mass-produced spices, preservatives are often added. Some additives prevent clumping or changes in colour, while others stop spoilage. Ingredients such as flour, cornstarch or even salt may also be added as fillers. With larger production, these additives may be necessary, but they can impact taste.

Exploring salt’s merroir
For Kunal Gupta of Masala Factory, the journey into spice-making began with a craving for authenticity. As a child growing up in Delhi, Gupta spent time at his grandfather’s house near Asia’s largest wholesale price market: Khari Baoli. There, raw ingredients are measured, roasted and ground in front of customers — a practice that ensures a fresh and unadulterated final product.

After moving to Canada six years ago, Gupta began noticing the difference between North American ingredients and Indian ones. Something wasn’t the same. The flavours were not quite right, and he began experiencing digestive issues such as heartburn. He had a realization: “The ingredients are not super clean.”

So he started making his own dried spice blends. Now, he is a full-time digital graphic designer and part-time spice-maker. Gupta intentionally sells smaller portions of his spice blends to help educate his customers that buying smaller amounts of a fresher product ensures the highest quality.

Masala Factory’s spice blends offer shoppers the opportunity to bring home everything, from the flavours of India to the true taste of what has been referred to as B.C.’s merroir.

“Just like wine has terroir, salt has merroir,” notes Vancouver Island Sea Salt’s chief salter, Scott Gibson. “The local marine ecosystem, tides, water temperature, mineral content, even the weather — all of these shape the final taste.”

Of course, a celebration of West Coast flavours must include those from the powerful Pacific Ocean. Vancouver Island Sea Salt saw the potential in the pristine shoreline of Vancouver Island and became Canada’s first sea salt harvestry in 2009.

Tofino’s treasures
The same waters contribute flavour to another locally produced seasoning. The prime habitat for growing kelp is Tofino, which is where Naas Foods produces its line of dried kelp seasonings. Like the salt sold by Vancouver Island Sea Salt, the umami-rich kelp at Naas Foods is harvested by hand, the latter from Clayoquot Sound. Both companies harness the Canadian Pacific Ocean to produce superior seasonings, processing them with the utmost care to ensure the best final product.

The choices consumers make when stocking their pantries impact the flavour, nutrition and quality of their food. They also have reverberations for the businesses we all support, which transform the abundance of British Columbia, what would be waste, into flavouring through creative innovation. By savouring ingredients, and taking time with production, these local salt and spice producers preserve the taste of B.C.’s terroir and merroir. It’s clearly a sign that you should spice up your life, locally.