We have to talk about salt
My top three cooking necessities are, in no particular order: 1) a good knife, 2) tongs, and 3) salt. Probably #4 is a heat source of some kind, but even that sometimes feels kind of optional in the grand scheme of things.
Salt is not optional, it is essential to cooking. It is one of the primary tastes we can detect, but it also serves to enhance other flavors. It has effects on health, food texture, spoilage, and hydration. I’m not going to get into all of the details of the cultural and historical significance here (go read this great book if you want a deep dive on that), but I do want to discuss the kinds of salt I use regularly in cooking, and why.
A little about me: I cook a lot, mostly dinner at home for my family and friends but sometimes for massive parties of upwards of 200 people. I’ve been doing sous vide cooking since 2010. I run a food blog called Unselling Convenience (also @unsellingconvenience on Instagram if you’d rather follow along there), which is mostly an inspiration board and memory database of things I’ve enjoyed cooking and probably want to cook again. I believe that shortcuts are great, but not at the expense of quality. I administer the Everyday Sous Vide and Instant Pot Love groups on Facebook. I’ve been writing about food for a few decades and have started collecting the good stuff at https://counter.kitchen. If you buy something from one of the links, I probably get a small commission which won’t even come close to defraying the amount of money I’ve spent on these things over the years but which will make me happy anyway.
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Kosher salt
Kosher salt (named that not because it is kosher itself but because it’s commonly used for koshering meats) has emerged as “the default salt” for most recipes and serious cooks. Most kosher salt in the US is commonly one of two brands — Diamond Crystal or Morton’s. These two products are radically different and not even close to interchangeable.
Diamond Crystal is my salt of preference for general purpose cooking. It is easy to sprinkle evenly by hand and has lighter grains than Morton’s. From the package, Diamond Crystal is 2.8 grams per teaspoon while Morton’s is 4.8 grams per teaspoon.
NB: The weights of different kinds of salt are pretty hard to measure with precision, underscoring the point that a tablespoon is actually a very haphazard way to measure salt granules which pack unpredictably and have a large margin of error. The density of packing seems to have more to do with crystal shape than the size of the crystals. I measured out a tablespoon in grams of different kinds of salt and got pretty inconsistent results with separate measurements and the stated package measurements. Still, this is somewhat useful to see the relative nature of the crystals and the range of where they weigh out.
Beyond the weight, the difference in crystal size means they have different distribution properties and they spread and dissolve differently throughout the food. If you’re fully mixing the salt in and it has plenty of time to dissolve, that may not make a difference. If you’re sprinkling it on top and incorporating it by hand, it can.
Price is of course an issue as well. Prior to the pandemic, around here Diamond Crystal was around $3/box for 3 pounds and Morton’s was around $2/box for the same weight. For a while, Diamond Crystal shot up to around $12/box but Morton’s was still $3. For that price differential, it was worth it to switch to using Morton’s in places where it didn’t make that much difference and save the Diamond Crystal for where it was really needed. More recently Diamond Crystal has been on sale periodically for around $8/box and Morton’s has crept up to $7–8/box, so it doesn’t make sense for me to keep both on hand and have to decide, and I’ve gone back to all Diamond Crystal.
Table salt
For a long time, “table salt” was the default. It has free-flowing small crystals, and it’s what you’ll find in salt shakers. Often it is supplemented with iodine (iodized salt). Iodine is a vital nutrient for health, and getting it from salt is important if you don’t have a varied diet that includes enough of it (seafood, eggs, dairy, and some common vegetables are high in iodine). But iodine can sometimes affect the flavor of baked goods, and it’s much denser than most of the kosher salts. I mostly only use it for serving at the table in a salt shaker, and never for cooking with.
Grinder salt
For a salt grinder, there’s no point is using more expensive fancier salts — use the cheapest one you can find with crystals that will fit in your grinder. Once you’ve ground/shaved the salt into a powder, it’s just… salt (plus whatever additives it has).
Finishing salts
Sometimes you want to use salt as a highlight instead of just mixing in into a dish to provide background. For that, you want to use a “finishing salt”. These typically have very large crystals with some texture of their own, and are meant to serve as a garnish.
Maldon Flake Salt
Maldon is very popular, but often for me the flakes are too large and I find it a little overpowering despite being fairly low density (on par with Diamond Crystal).
Fleur de sel
My preference for these kinds of uses is often fleur de sel. Harvested by hand from specific regions in France, it is considered one the of the fanciest varieties of salt. I don’t know if it’s “worth” the price, but it is a nice indulgence and the crystals are very pleasing.
Sel gris (gray salt)
Sel gris has a high mineral content and is noticeably more moist than most salts. It is nice if you want a bit of a softer texture, it’s great on seafood.
Hawaiian Pink Salt (Alaea)
Hawaiian Pink Salt is very popular, the natural volcanic mineral content affects the flavor. This is also closely related to Himalayan Pink Salt (which I don’t have). Both of these are fairly trendy.
Australian Flake Salt
Another one I picked up from somewhere, it’s a nice finishing salt. This is the least dense salt variety I have.
On a whim, I bought some fancy salt crystals with a rasp for finishing. This is overkill, but they are decidedly salt. It’s a little difficult to use them without feeling like the moisture from your fingers is dissolving them as you go. This is fun gimmick, but I can’t recommend doing this.
Using Salt
Normally I keep a few kinds of salt in a salt pig next to my stove, for pinching and easy measuring. Right now this is Fleur de sel and Diamond Crystal.
For sprinkling at the table, I use my Grandmother’s vintage yellow spring top salt shaker. I don’t know where you can buy one (check thrift shops!), but I wanted to include it anyway.
Salt to Taste!
Recipes often include the instructions “salt to taste”, but what does that really mean?
We can taste salt, but the reason it’s in nearly everything is that it works as an enhancer for other flavors, at the “right” concentration. Too low and you won’t notice it, but when you get the concentration right, it’s like shining a flashlight on the other flavors. If you use too little, you won’t see what you’re looking at. If you use too much, it’s like shining a flashlight directly in your eyes.
Food that is properly salted should “sing”! It should taste like the best version of itself. This comes with experience, but more or less the rule is to add salt until just before it tastes salty, unless you’re intentionally trying to taste the salt. With practice you’ll learn how to go right up to that line without going over it.
The easiest way to familiarize yourself with how this works is to taste foods plain, and then successively with increasingly small amounts of salt. Tomatoes and steak are good things to try this with, if you like those. When it “sings” is the point at which the flavors are boosted and more prominent, but the salt flavor isn’t dominant. Of course there is some personal variation here, and the “right” amount depends on a lot of factors, but getting this correct is incredibly important. If the salt level is off, nothing else in a dish is going to work well.
Feedback is welcomed! Leave a comment here, or find me @fields@hachyderm.io on mastodon or @unsellingconvenience on instagram or threads. If you found this helpful, check out my other writing about food and home cooking at counter.kitchen.
