I was watching “Good Eats” the other day, and the premise of this particular episode had the host stranded on a tropical island, where he demonstrated all sorts of good things you can cook should you happen to be in a similar situation.
At one point, he commented that he didn’t have kosher salt, so regular sea salt would have to do. (He then salted pieces of pork, so the apparent incongruity of wanting to use koser salt on pork made me take notice.)
I fancy myself as a decent cook, but I’ve never had occasion to insist on kosher salt, nor do I understand why I should. Is there a difference between kosher salt and your regular, run-of-the-mill salt? If so, in what uses would one be better than the other?
“Kosher salt” is a bit of a misnomer. A better term would be kashering salt.
Salt is kosher, period. Kosher salt is so called because it is used in the process of draining the blood from meat (part of the process that renders meat kosher). However, any form of NaCl is kosher, even if it’s not “kosher salt.”
Julia Child says that “salt is salt”. Use whatever salt you like, all salt is virtually the same chemically, therefore indistinguishable. You shouldn’t be able to taste the difference.
I say that’s bunk (now I call forth the wrath of Julia Child to destroy me and my family). Sea salt tastes different compared to table salt, which tastes different compared to kosher salt, which tastes different compared to etc etc.
Sure they have the salty salt taste in common, but there’s differences between them. In my first post (and I’d like to add here “woohoo! I got to answer a GQ post first!”), I mentioned that I can’t stand table salt anymore. It’s true, it tastes very metallic and gross, like I’m chewing on a mouthful of iron and whatnot. I compare that to the sea salt that our household usually uses, which is much lighter and has a crisper salty taste with no other icky flavours.
And yes, I live in a house that has about 5 different kinds of salt. I guess we’re just salt snobs here.
You’re deluded. Sea salt is no different from table salt.
Where do you think Morton’s gets its salt from? Salt mines. And what are salt mines? Sea salt. Sure, it’s old, but it’s almost pure sodium chloride, so there’s nothing to deteriorate. Salt is, essentially, rock. (For proof, consider this: Redmond Real Salt hypes its product as “sea salt mined in central Utah” – the same thing Morton has been selling for years at a tenth the cost).
BTW, anything labeled as salt must, by U.S. law, be the same chemical composition and the same percentage sodium chloride (I believe the percentage is close to, if not equal to, 99%). So the difference in chemical composition is negligible.
Sea salt is essentially a marketing ploy to trick those who know nothing about chemistry into paying $6.99 (plus buying one of those nifty mills*) for the same substance they can pick up for less than 50 cents.
Now, there are differences in granularity, but once the salt is dissoved (which is has to do in order to be tasted) sodium chloride is sodium chloride is sodium chloride. See Robert Wolke’s What Einstein Didn’t Know for a discussion of this issue.
Now the granularity of kosher salt does make it easier to sprinkle on food. But the taste difference can only be noticed by those refined people who don’t think the emperor is walking around naked.
*Talk about idiotic – the only difference between salt is the size of the grains, and, with a mill, you can make your salt the same size as table salt.:rolleyes:
That’s ironic. Ordinary table salt, even with the iodine and other additives, is very nearly pure sodium chloride, and I thing that the iodine is in the form of sodium iodide, so there aren’t any other metals present at all. Sea salt, on the other hand, is primarily NaCl, but can have pretty much any ions at all in it. At the minimum, I’d imagine that there’s sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, chlorine, fluorine, and iodine in measureable amounts.
I don’t salt food on my plate, the only time I use salt is in cooking or baking. So I doubt I’d be able to tell the difference between various types of salt. I don’t sprinkle salt by hand, that’s what my shaker is for :), so the granularity wouldn’t mean anything to me (well, maybe smaller granules would come out of the shaker a bit more easily).
And I’m inclined to agree with Reality Chuck: NaCl is NaCl, and any slight variations in trace ingredients won’t matter – especially when you consider just how small the amount of salt used is compared to the dish as a whole.
Zweisamkeit, I’ll send you a big kudo for being the first to answer. And it doesn’t matter to me that you’re a fan of Alton, I don’t care much one way or the other about him. (My personal favorite has always been James Beard, but he’s been dead for some 18 years now.)
Finally, Zev, thank you for the clarification. I had thought that any salt would be kosher, and was puzzled over the distinction.
The question’s answered…but we can argue over which is better in IMHO
Most chefs use kosher salt because it is easier to handle by hand. It allows a chef greater control than a table salt (not so easily handled, so you need a shaker) or sea salt (generally too big right out of the box).
Salts taste different because they have different trace elements. I believe sea salt is the closest to NaCl, if not pure and table salt the furthest (but still on the order of 98% plus NaCl). My book is three flights below and I’m lazy, so that’s the best I can give you.
