Lake Crystal Natural Lake Salt and Nigari - Lake Salt and Nigari harvested from a pristine 5 million year old salt lake in remote Western Australia

Nigari is the most commonly used coagulant for making Tofu and has been used for thousands of years in China and Japan. Read how Nigari is used as an ingredient for Tofu and see Lake Crystal’s easy to follow Tofu recipe.

Nigari is composed mainly of Magnesium Chloride (also known as Magnesium Oil), but also contains other mineral traces that are naturally occurring in natural lake salt brines.

Pink Lake Nigari comes from natural salt-lakes formed over 20,000 years ago. The salt crust of the lakes is 0.05 meters thick and during the hot Australian summer the surface of the lake appears pink in colour. This is why the lake became known as “Pink Lake”.

In the winter, rainfall of 700-900mm sits on the surface of the lake taking some of the crust of the lake into solution to make salty water or brine. Because magnesium together with a number of other trace elements is naturally occurring in the lake’s salt crust, these trace elements also naturally occur in the brine.

This brine, which is pumped from the surface of the lake, is a complex mineral salt containing several trace elements such as calcium, magnesium and potassium for example. The brine passes through a series of evaporation ponds where the heat from the sun evaporates the brine and as it does so several of the trace elements such as calcium, sodium chloride, magnesium sulphates “drop out”.

Because the Magnesium ions are the last element to “drop out” of the brine, the density of the Magnesium within the resulting Magnesium Chloride (MaCl2) or Nigari, increases.

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Read about our Lake Crystal natural lake salt - an organically certified fine food salt developed for the food enthusiast, discerning cook and the health conscious consumer.