Salt & Spice. Oh So Nice

BY ALYSSA GRABINKSKI

OR SOME, COOKING IS A CHORE. A HARD TASK

that requires patience, instructions and a very critical attention to detail. But for Jessica Helgeson’s mother, cooking was the opposite.

Take Christmas dinner, for example. Guests were mingling. People were hungry. And the tenderloin was baking in the oven. Instead of meticulously checking the meat and its temperature, Helgeson’s mother could tell that it was ready another way. Despite having macular degeneration, which results in vision loss, Helgeson’s mother could sense this culmination just by the sound of the sizzling steak and the strong smell wafting through the air.

“She goes, ‘Oh the tenderloin’s done,’ and we pull it out,” says Helgeson. “And it’s the most beautiful, medium rare, you know, light, little crust on it.” This innate ability to flawlessly cook any meal was not a rare occurrence either. Throughout the course of her life, Jessica and her single mother, who sometimes worked as many as three jobs, used the act of cooking to both bond and find beauty in everyday moments. To Jessica, opening the fridge to find random foods and ingredients presented a challenge. But to her mother, everything came naturally. “It’s what her passion has always been and her love language and how she serves others,” says Helgeson. “And she just has a way about her for making you so grateful for what you have and seeing the beauty in it.” This ultimately led mother and daughter to share their love for cooking and food through multiple means. Before they launched their own brand of finishing salts, or fleur de sel—which translates to “flower of salt” from French—which are very different from run-of-the-mill-table salts, they actually began sharing their recipes with the world on YouTube. As they continued to post recipe videos, they began to receive more and more questions from people inquiring F about finishing salts. “Well, what is that? And what do you mean by finishing salts? And which ones do you recommend? And that really got our wheels turning even more,” says Helgeson. All that was left to do was grab their Frenchspeaking friend, get in contact with someone from Île de Ré, an island off the west coast of France, and figure out a way to get the salt to the U.S. So, they did just that. The mother-daughter duo officially launched See Salt in 2015. With Jessica as the force behind the entrepreneurial responsibilities and her mother getting her hands dirty to create the various flavors, they began to sell the same exact finishing salt they had been using for years prior in their own kitchen. • www.seesalttaste.com, @seesalttaste