The Absolute Best Finishing Salt To Elevate Your Steak

Forget the fancy marinades and steak sauce. If you're grilling up a quality filet mignon or ribeye, all you need to play up its natural flavor is a good finishing salt. The seasoning should be light, flaky, and crystalline, but still able to maintain its structure and crunch by the time you bite into your forkful of beef. Beyond the fact that salt can help sharpen the taste of your steak, working to balance out its fat and acidity, it also provides a nice textural contrast when the meat hits your tongue.

While there are quite a few carnivore-approved steak finishing salts out there, including the popular Maldon brand salt flakes hailing from the shorelines of Maldon, England, there's one that Tasting Table considers the best of the best, and that's Vancouver Island Flaky Sea Salt. Hand-harvested from the glacier-fed waters off the coast of Canada's Vancouver Island, the sea salt goes through a micro-filtering process to ensure prime purity, and is then boiled and evaporated until flaky crystals form.

The resulting pyramid-shaped crystals have a larger surface area and stronger structure, so they are able to last longer on the crust of a steak (or any other warm dish). In our own tasting test of various finishing salts, we found that the Vancouver Island brand sea salt offered a perfectly delicate crunch, along with just the right amount of salinity to complement the meat without overpowering it.

We're not the only ones who favor the Canadian harvested sea salt when it comes to topping off our steak — among other things. As one Amazon reviewer writes, "The flavor it brings out in meat is a game changer if you've been eating beef with table salt." Another buyer raves, "It [is] delicate and light but packs a wonderful crunch ... briny rather than harshly salty. Amazing on steak, veggies, and on chocolate ice cream."

On that note, we'd like to point out that this finishing salt isn't just for sprinkling over a tender cut of steak, Salt Bae-style. Indeed, this light and flaky seasoning also makes for an excellent addition atop veggies, from grilled asparagus to caramelized carrots to a colorful medley of roasted root vegetables, serving the same purpose of amping up their flavors and intriguing your palate. And lest we forget the irresistible merits of a sweet-and-salty flavor profile when it comes to desserts. You can use our favorite Vancouver Island Sea Salt to temper the sweetness of a boxed chocolate brownie mix, enrich the taste of an Oreo-crusted chocolate and caramel tart, or add a well-rounded finish to a caramel sauce-topped ice cream sundae. Whether you're using them to upgrade your plate of steak, side of savory veggies, or desserts, all you need is a light sprinkle of these pyramid-shaped sea salt crystals to take your meal's flavors a long way.