silver
Blue Chalk Media
In “From The Source,“ award-winning chef and restaurateur Katie Button explores the stories and uses behind different delicious ingredients and shares her knowledge of cooking techniques to inspire others to be more curious, creative, and joyful cooks.
Each episode is devoted to a different ingredient, and here we focused on salt, perhaps the most important ingredient in cooking. To learn the essentials of salt, Katie visits Jacobsen Salt Co. on the Oregon coast and helps detail-oriented saltmakers through a carefully controlled process that renders seawater into flavorful, delicate, crystals of pure sea salt. She then demonstrates how to best use this essential seasoning, and prepares a meal that showcases the many properties of salt, gaining an appreciation for this naturally processed ingredient, and the dedication that goes into making i
Katie has learned that great food happens when you take an exquisite ingredient, like salt, and treat it simply. But salt itself is anything but simple — it contains a story of history, culture, and human imagination and that is the idea we wanted to explore in this episode.
The challenge was to find an amazing ingredient story about salt, then film Chef Katie Button learning hands-on how the ingredient is made, and demonstrate how viewers could best use the ingredient in their home cooking.
Since a large part of this story was filmed outdoors, we knew the weather had the potential to throw even more challenges our way. For example, our production coincided with an “atmospheric river” that meant we lost power one night and had to scrap our plans for filming an outdoor group dinner.
For this episode, we opted to film in Oregon with Jacobsen Salt Co., who harvest their salt from the waters of Netarts Bay on the Oregon Coast.
While we considered featuring salt producers in other parts of the U.S., we were ultimately sold by not just how good their product is, but also by how great Jacobsen’s story is. Plus it allowed us to film in our beautiful backyard, the stunning Oregon coast, which we knew would look incredible on camera.
We filmed with Ben Jacobsen and other saltmakers as they showed Katie the seemingly simple, yet incredibly complex process of turning seawater into sea salt. We then demonstrated to viewers the proper way to season meat and showcased a series of dishes that each used salt differently.
Given the time of year we were filming, we also took time to prepare for weather changes, which meant that we were able to quickly pivot to filming our group dinner indoors when the “atmospheric river” forced us to change or plans.
The episode was well received by the client, so much so that its success contributed to the renewal of the series for a third season. It was also widely enjoyed by Magnolia's audience and led to creative collaborations between our host, Chef Katie Button, and Salt Co. founder Ben Jacobsen.
Jacobsen Salt Co. is a beloved Pacific Northwest brand, Choosing them as our producer allowed us the rare opportunity to bring our NC-based host, Chef Katie Button, to Oregon,
Our show is about the HOW of amazing ingredients, but more importantly the WHY. In casting, we look for producers who do something different, people who are driven by a pure desire to improve on an ingredient they love. Founder Ben Jacobsen perfectly embodies that. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Ben had his first taste of artisan sea salt while studying in Denmark, and he’s never looked back. In 2009, after moving back to the Pacific Northwest, he began experimenting with producing salt straight from Netarts Bay on Oregon’s coast. A unique confluence of features including millions of oysters and no land-based freshwater inputs meant this natural bay had some of the saltiest, purest seawater in the PNW Two years later, he founded Jacobsen Salt Co.
This episode is truly one of our favorites, not only because salt is such an important, yet overlooked ingredient, but also because it was just a pleasure to show off the rugged beauty (and fickle nature) of the Oregon coast. One last small note is that after this episode, we started a new production ritual — anytime we were at PDX airport on our way to film another episode, we picked up a few bags of Jacobsen’s Flaky Finishing Salt to bring as gifts for the episode’s subjects, literal pieces of Oregon we could share with the next amazing food producers we were filming with.
No.
No
