Black Lava Salt: Sea Salt Colored With Activated Charcoal, Not Lava

Despite the name, every black lava salt we found gets its color from charcoal, not lava. It’s sea salt turned black with activated charcoal, and it’s a finishing salt, bought for color and crunch. Stir it into a soup and the color, the whole reason you bought it, is gone. Don’t mix it up with Indian black salt (kala namak), a kiln-fired salt that smells of sulfur.

At a glance

What black lava salt is

Two products go by the name.

Hawaiian-style black salt. In the Swiss Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office’s 2016 analysis of 25 salts, the one black Hawaiian salt listed its ingredients as salt, active coal and taro. The same report quotes a marketing claim for another black Pacific salt saying it’s made by adding highly purified active coal.¹

Cyprus black salt. The Meadow, a salt merchant, sells a Mediterranean flake salt from Cyprus made from sea salt and activated charcoal, and describes it as thoroughly suffused with the charcoal.⁴ Saveur’s 2008 guide to specialty salts listed a “Cyprus Black Lava” salt that gets its color from activated charcoal.⁵

You’ll often read that traditional Hawaiian black salt got its color from lava, or that Cypriot black salt was once gathered from volcanic areas. We found no source for either. Every product we could check names charcoal.

Hawaiian salt making

The Hawaiian word for salt is paʻakai, which the University of Hawaiʻi glosses as “to solidify the sea.” Hawaiians harvested sea salt on a larger scale in man-made shallow clay ponds, and salting fish and octopus was essential for storage and for ocean voyages. The University of Hawaiʻi describes that salt as white, with some mixed with red ʻalaea clay to make alaea salt.⁶

Flavor

It’s mostly sodium chloride, and it tastes like salt. The Meadow describes its Cyprus flakes as intensely earthy, tannic and bold, with a distinctly earthy taste of carbon from the charcoal.⁴ That’s a merchant’s description, not a measurement, and we found no sensory test. Some writers call black lava salt smoky or sulfurous. Indian black salt’s sulfur note comes from hydrogen sulfide,¹ and no source we read reports hydrogen sulfide in charcoal-colored salts. So black lava salt won’t stand in for kala namak.

How black lava salt is used

Finishing. It’s all about contrast. The Meadow notes that its large crystals give a toothsome crunch and resist dissolving even on moist foods, and suggests it on pasta, baked potatoes, Cobb salad, chèvre, caprese salad and grilled asparagus. Saveur suggested sprinkling the Cyprus salt on flaky white fish for a dramatic effect.

Not for cooking. Dissolve it into a sauce or soup and the color, the whole reason you bought it, is gone. Use ordinary salt there.

Buying and quality

Read the ingredient list. It should say salt (or sea salt) and activated charcoal, sometimes with something else, like the taro in the Swiss sample. “Hawaiian” or “Hawaiian-style” on the label doesn’t, on its own, tell you where the salt was harvested. We found no source documenting where most black lava salt is made.

Storage

We found no shelf-life figure for black lava salt from a regulator or standards body. Keep it closed and dry, like any salt.

Safety and health

Activated charcoal. New York City’s health department tells food businesses that activated charcoal is only approved to filter food and isn’t approved as a food colorant or food additive. It adds that activated charcoal may cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or constipation, and may reduce how well you absorb certain nutrients or medication.³ The guidance doesn’t give an amount, and we found no measurement of how much charcoal is in a serving of black lava salt. Claims that the charcoal in it removes toxins, slows aging or relieves gas aren’t supported by anything we found.

Sodium. The black Hawaiian salt in the Swiss analysis was 36.7% sodium, and its potassium, calcium and iron were below the limit of detection.¹ Most sea salts are about 40% sodium.² The Swiss report concluded that specialty salts don’t have nutritional properties that would justify recommending them as a standard choice of salt.¹ The FDA’s Daily Value for sodium is less than 2,300 mg a day,⁷ and the World Health Organization recommends adults stay under 2,000 mg a day, naming raised blood pressure as the main health effect of eating too much.⁸

Iodine. Specialty salts like sea salt usually aren’t iodized.⁹ The Swiss sample had 34 µg of iodine per kilogram, a trace amount.¹

Substitutes and comparisons

• Black lava salt uses
• Black salt (kala namak) and black salt substitutes
• Hawaiian sea salt and alaea salt
• Smoked sea salt, sea salt, fleur de sel, Maldon sea salt