Bourbon On The Rocks With Iburi Jio Cherry Smoked Salt Food

SAVORY POPCORN SALTED SIX WAYS

Steps:

• Heat the oil in a large, heavy pot over high heat until it just starts to smoke. Add 3 kernels of popping corn and, when they pop, add the rest of the popping corn. Cover the pot and shake gently until the corn starts to pop. Shake vigorously over the heat until the popping subsides, cracking the lid occasionally to allow the steam to escape. (Trapped steam makes the protein in the corn toughen.)
• Remove from the heat and pour the popcorn into a serving bowl. Drizzle the butter over the top and toss with tongs or two butter knives to coat evenly. Divide the popcorn into six bowls and sprinkle one type of salt over each (see below). Serve immediately.
• A flavor combination of super-buttered movie theater popcorn, amusement park caramel corn, and something you might nibble on in the plush shadows of the Ritz Bar in Paris.
• The savory one-upmanship of pasta speckled with Parmesan cheese, minus the pasta Parmesan: the Platonic form of umami.
• The one-salt remedy for impromptu cocktail parties when you forgot the cheese, fruit, and prosciutto; lavished with sweet cream butter, and speckled with fleur de sel de Camargue, popcorn radiates your love and hospitality.
• It's like trying to eat scrambled eggs off a subwoofer of a surround-sound movie about Mount Vesuvius erupting over the cowering residents of Pompeii. Envelop yourself in the exotic sensations of faraway lands . . . as they are being destroyed.
• Flavors hover between the animate world and the eternal brightness of the elements, like stepping from an Arctic blizzard into a brothel.
• Nature's contraband in snackable form. Lick your fingers, don't bite them.

BOURBON ON THE ROCKS WITH IBURI-JIO CHERRY SMOKED SALT

Steps:

• Fill a rocks glass half full with large ice cubes. Pour the whiskey over the rocks; it should come not more than two-thirds of the way to the top of the ice. Sprinkle with the salt. Inhale. Imbibe.