Everything You Wanted to Know About Salt but Were Afraid to Ask

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I’m not exaggerating when I say that salt is the most important seasoning of all time. Sure, it makes things taste salty, but it also makes them taste better, and more importantly, salt is a powerful preservative and natural antimicrobial. Long before the advent of refrigerators – back in Ancient Egypt – salt protected meat from spoilage, which, in turn, allowed people to eat longer. And while salty processed foods don’t have the best reputation, sodium is an essential nutrient needed to maintain fluid balance and smooth muscle and nerve function. Salt is important.

We don’t live in Ancient Egypt, and nowadays it’s pretty easy to keep electrolytes where they are needed for normal brain and body function. So while the modern eater may be a little jaded with salt, its taste is not trivial. Chefs have strong opinions about brands and crystal sizes (as do I), but the salt you stock in your kitchen should match your cooking needs.

Here’s what you need to know about salt, from standard iodized table salt to various kosher products.

What is salt?

Let’s start with something simple. What we call salt is sodium chloride. In a broader sense, salt is a chemical compound consisting of a positively charged ion and a negatively charged ion. Table salt is a halide, most often consisting of a positively charged sodium ion and a negatively charged halogen chloride in a one-to-one ratio, although potassium chloride is sometimes added to reduce the sodium content. (However, potassium chloride itself has a rather bitter taste and is not at all “salty” and is usually added to bulk it up.)

Sodium gives salt its flavor, but pure sodium is an unstable, highly reactive metal not easily found in nature, so the ionized form attaches to negatively charged ions to form a stable salt. (Flavouring a pot of soup with pure sodium would be a disaster; it reacts violently with water .)

What is iodized salt?

Iodized salt or table salt is the most common, or at least the most widely accepted, form of cooking salt. “Table salt” may sound like any condiment you’d want on your table, but the term refers to highly refined salt with a small crystal size that flows out easily from a salt shaker. Table salt (and therefore iodized salt) is mined from underground deposits, then processed to remove other minerals and then fortified with iodine.

Iodized salt is made by spraying sodium chloride with a small amount of iodate or potassium iodide solution to combat iodine deficiency, a global health problem that can lead to metabolic problems such as goiters, thyroid problems and congenital birth defects. Some people think that iodized salt has a bitter taste compared to pure sodium chloride, but you need to have a very sensitive palate to notice the difference, especially in small quantities.

Iodized salt has a small, compact, uniform crystal size that allows it to really pack in the sodium, which is why it tastes “saltier” than kosher salt and sea salt, ounce for ounce.

What is sea salt?

There are two places where you can find salt: land and ocean. Sea salt is sodium chloride that is obtained from the ocean or other salty bodies of water. It is made by evaporating salt water, leaving behind crystals of sodium chloride, as well as some other minerals and impurities. It’s less processed than table salt, and hippies and marketers like to call sea salt “healthy,” even though there’s no real scientific evidence to back it up. (In fact, iodized salt can be a real life saver in places where other iodine-rich foods are not available.)

The taste and color of sea salt can vary depending on what other minerals were in the body of water from which it was obtained. It has a larger, irregularly shaped crystal than table salt, which is why some people claim it tastes “less salty”—a teaspoon of sea salt contains less sodium than a teaspoon of table salt.

What is kosher salt?

Kosher salt is not salt blessed by a rabbi, nor mined from special salt mines or sacred seas. It gets its name from its use in the koshering process , where it is used to extract blood from meat. This is different from ” certified kosher salt “, which is mined, processed and packaged according to strict Jewish regulations.

Kosher salt is prized for its large crystals and clean flavor, although some are purer (and prized) than others. There are two major brands of “kosher salt” – Morton Kosher Salt and Almaz Kosher Salt – and they are not interchangeable. According to Samin Nosrat , the processes used to make them could not be more different:

There are two main brands of kosher salt: Diamond Crystal, which crystallizes in an open container of brine to form light-colored, hollow flakes; and Morton, which is made by rolling cubic crystals of vacuum-evaporated salt into thin, dense flakes.

You might think that cereal is a cereal, but the shape of the cereal makes a huge difference. The thin sheets lay flat, allowing you to pack more sodium chloride into any given volume, while Diamond’s pyramidal crystals are arranged a little more randomly and take up more space in the scoop. Denser Morton crystals also take a little longer to dissolve.

Of all the salts I have in my kitchen (and I have a lot), Diamond Kosher Salt is by far the “least salty” because I have to use more of it to achieve the same level of saltiness. (However, this is pure sodium chloride, unlike Morton’s, which contains anti-caking agents.)

All this makes Diamond an excellent table salt for beginner cooks, since the danger of oversalting is close to zero. Not only are the fluffy flakes easy to sprinkle on, but their faster dissolution time means you’ll get a more accurate and quicker understanding of how salty your dish is, since you won’t have any undissolved granules lurking around waiting to surprise you later. They’re also a little more grippy than Morton’s flat flakes, so they stick to meats and the like a little better.

However, using Morton’s salt will not spoil the food. If your recipe calls for one salt instead of another, it’s easiest to use the salt listed, but you can convert different salts if you know their mass (and I do).

How to convert between salt types

Sodium chloride is sodium chloride, but as I’ve said ad nauseum, the size and shape of the crystals make a big difference when measuring salt by volume, so it’s best to think about the mass of salt you use in a recipe rather than the mass of salt you use in the recipe. than the number of teaspoons.

According to America’s Test Kitchen , a tablespoon of Morton kosher salt weighs 16 grams, a tablespoon of Diamond kosher salt weighs 10 grams, and a tablespoon of “standard” table salt weighs 23 grams. These are big differences. If a recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of Morton and you only have Diamond, you can find the amount needed by multiplying it by 1.6 since we know you need 1.6 times more Diamond to make the same amount of chloride sodium by weight. .

It’s easy because the number 10 is easy to work with. For more complex conversions, such as table salt to Morton’s salt, you can turn to my old school buddy in dimensional analysis . For example, if your recipe calls for 2 teaspoons table salt, but you only have Morton’s, you can calculate it like this:

2 teaspoons table salt x (1 tablespoon/3 teaspoons) x (23 grams NaCl/teaspoon table salt) x (1 tablespoon Morton/16 grams NaCl) x (3 teaspoons/1 tablespoon) = 2, 87 teaspoons of Morton’s salt, which you round up. up to 3 teaspoons

Calculating this way will help you make sure all the units are cancelled, so you know you’re calculating correctly. (You can, of course, use whatever math you like, but dimensional analysis has never failed me when converting dimensions.)

Other salts you may encounter

Table salt, sea salt and kosher salt are the big three, but you can buy sodium chloride in a variety of shapes and colors. For example, Maldon salt is a “finishing salt” with huge pyramid-shaped crystals. This would be terrible table salt—you’ll need a lot of it—but if you sprinkle it on at the last minute, it creates a fun textural element (you can also get a smoked version).

Fleur de sel is a French finishing sea salt made by evaporating salt water into flakes so delicate that they are traditionally harvested by women (considered the “fairer sex” by the French). Don’t cook with Fleur de Sel; it’s too expensive and will result in a loss of delicious texture.

In addition, the most popular are multi-colored salts, pink salt and sel gris. Pink Himalayan salt is mined from the Khewra salt mine, near the Himalayas in Pakistan. It is minimally processed and unrefined, and gets its pink color from naturally occurring minerals, especially iron. You can buy it in a variety of shapes and sizes, including shot glasses and big old blocks, but its most common use is as table salt. (If you want to cook with it, weigh out a tablespoon and then convert as needed as above.)

“Sel gris” means “gray salt” in French because it is a gray salt. Like Fleur de sel, it is harvested from salt water and gets its color from contact with the evaporating pan. According to Mark Bitterman’s book Salty: A Manifesto on the World’s Most Important Mineral with Recipes , it is a wet salt, typically retaining about 13% residual moisture. This makes it a poor choice for dry brining, curing, or any other culinary application where the salt is intended to draw moisture out of meat, but it has a richer, earthier flavor than refined salt.

There are other colors of salt, including black and red, but I think you get the idea. Color indicates impurities, usually minerals, although flavored salts (such as Pinot Noir salt) also take on the color of their flavorings.

Then you have pickling salt, pure sodium chloride, which is finer than even sea salt. For pickling, you can use any pure salt, however, the pickling salt dissolves like a dream. (When converting salt amounts for pickling recipes, use the ratio approved by the University of Wisconsin: 1-1/2 cups flaky kosher salt for every cup of pickling salt.)

Ice cream salt is inedible and should not be placed in or on ice cream. It is a rock salt used in making ice cream, where it helps ice and water drop to below freezing temperatures through what is called ” freezing point depression “. It’s not food grade, but it is sodium chloride, and if you lick it (which you shouldn’t), it will taste salty.

Shop Claire’s Favorite Salt:

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the types of salt you can buy and use, but it should be enough to get you started. Most kitchens don’t require more than one or two types of salt. Morton kosher salt is a good all-purpose salt for beginners, and it’s great for dry brining, but I always have a bucket of Maldon on hand to finish it off (and snack on), and I like to keep fine sea salt on hand for cooking (I’m like like my food is seasoned and Morton’s isn’t “salty” enough for my needs.) Also, don’t let the snobs tell you there’s anything wrong with plain old table salt. It’s cheap, salty, and consuming it will ensure that you always have plenty of iodine in your diet.

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