On the Massive Importance of Salt

It occurs to me that, as much as I’ve talked about salt in the past few years, I’ve never really laid out a totally coherent/comprehensive post dedicated to this ingredient many of us take for granted. Forgive me for the length, please – but I would like to get all of this on table, so to speak.

There are essentially three types of culinary salt:

• iodized table salt (the familiar round canister)
• kosher salt, and
• sea salt. Some distinguish a fourth type, fleur-de-sel, but it’s really just a kind of sea salt, so we’ll make do with these three.

A fourth category of salt, the blended finishing salt, or flavored salt, is especially important to breakaway cooks. More on that below. But first things first.

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Iodized Table Salt — The Enemy of Good Food

In every country on earth, salt is the most widely used ingredient, and for good reason: it makes food taste a lot better. But its proper use is kind of tricky. Proper use of good salt will make an average meal exceptional. Conversely, the use of iodized table salt in otherwise good food can turn a potentially fantastic meal into a grim one. The Salt Institute, which is kind of like the Rand Corporation of the salt world, says that about 70 percent of salt sold in the United States is iodized table salt.

Eons ago, I was one of the “salt is salt, bugger off” crowd who passionately believed that any differences in taste of various salts are purely in the mind of the taster, that the taste buds/neuroreceptors can’t tell the difference, and that the people who buy $12 little canisters of fancy French sea salt are being hoodwinked.

And then I woke up: iodized table salt is not only unhealthy – processed foods are LOADED with it — it just ruins food. It makes food taste hot, and nasty. It also tends to melt and go into solution in a general sense, salting the dish in toto,

Yes, I realize that iodine deficiency was a big health problem globally for a long time, and that’s why it’s added to table salt, but iodine deficiency is just not a problem for most people today; we get plenty of iodine through eating fish, dairy products, eggs, seaweed, and many more common items. There is no reason to consume salt that’s been sprayed with potassium iodate solution (which functions as a stabilizer) if you’re not worried about developing goiters. Table salt also contains anti-caking compounds (prussiate of sodium) to make it pour easily. These additives prevent table salt from absorbing water from the air, which is why it acts the way it does.

The net effect of table salt is nastiness. It makes everything taste like processed food.

So table salt is out, for all purposes.

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Kosher Salt — The Workhorse

The second type, kosher salt, has a much larger surface area/grain size than table salt does. It is harvested like table salt – i.e., by shooting pressurized water into salt deposits, capturing and evaporating that solution, and then collecting the salt crystals that remain – but kosher salt crystals are then raked, which give them much larger crystalline structure. These larger crystals absorb blood from slaughtered animals better than table salt does. And since Jewish dietary laws require blood to be extracted from meat before eating it, it became “kosher” salt.

For early stage cooking, I usually use kosher salt. It lacks the mineral notes of sea salt, but the oversized crystals are good for pinching with your fingers; they fall on food like little snowflakes. Because they have a surface volume many times larger than table salt, they don’t taste as “salty” as normal compact table salt does. It’s tasty, fun to work with, and dirt-cheap: you can get a large box of it for a dollar or two. It is the absolute workhorse of the kitchen.

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Sea Salt — Our Special Friend!

Type three, sea salt, is simply evaporated seawater. It contains all kinds of trace ingredients, and is generally les dense than table salt. It tastes like the ocean. All of the expensive fancy salts you see in a well-stocked market are sea salts. Many contain signature elements: Hawaiian sea salt, for example, actually contains clay; Indian black salt contains significant quantities of sulphur. Sel gris, by far my favorite type of salt, is a delicious, grey colored, large-crystalled salt, typically from Brittany, France.

I’ve done my share of blind salt tastings on finished food, and the results have been overwhelmingly conclusive: sea salt makes food taste better. Part of the attraction seems to be the trace amounts of other sea stuff that clings to it (notes of seaweed, maybe, or just a general “oceany” feel to it). But another major benefit is textural: the larger, crunchier crystals provide localized salt bursts that make food wake up and shine in your mouth. Larger crystals, resting atop the finished food, remain a separate component, not unlike an herb or piece of citrus zest.

For finished food, it’s sea salt. I keep two small ceramic bowls of it next to my stove. One is sel gris, and the other is a whiter, Mexican sea salt that has smaller crystals and that doesn’t taste quite as oceany. There is something satisfying and aesthetic about reaching into a bowl and pinching the exact amount you want. I never use salt shakers — they don’t make the holes big enough to accommodate my salt, and I have more of a “feel” for how much salt should be used by touching it with my fingers.

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Blended Finishing Salts / Flavored Salts

I also keep a half-dozen or so blended salts near the stove, each in its own little pretty ceramic bowl. Why do I bother blending salt with something else? Because you can achieve wonderful, symphonic flavors with them with virtually no work.

These blends couldn’t be easier to make – you simply add about a ¼-cup of sel gris to about a teaspoon of your ingredient of choice, and pulse it a few times in a cheap electric coffee grinder. Why sel gris? Because it has a very high water content. When you blend sel gris with some other ingredient, the resulting flavored salt is intensely vibrant both in color and in taste.

Typically, I have on hand:

• matcha salt (ceremonial, superfinely powdered green tea)
• lavender salt
• tangerine salt
• smoked paprika salt
• kaffir lime salt
• saffron salt

The color palettes and flavor profiles of these six salts are, I think, exquisite. They can turn the most ordinary of dishes – poached eggs, steak, a block of tofu, grilled chicken, corn-on-the-cob – into sublime taste sensations, with no work other than simply pinching some and sprinkling it on. This is my kind of cooking!

If you take away just one thing from this website and from my books, let it be this: good salt is your friend! It can elevate your cooking from the predictable and  mundane into something lofty and invigorating.