Are you aware that salt has more uses than being taken orally by as part of a diet? For example, if you are using it to change the melting point of water for ice cream making, or to make a saline solution to soak something in. Iodine is not needed for those purposes, as it is not being ingested orally.
To be fair, as this thread is about dietary salt, I read your comment the same way that beowolff did and was similarly confused.
Chef Michael Symon: “I use kosher salt for cooking, sea salt for finishing. Iodized salt I put on my driveway.”
Only in your mind, Sir. The OP is ambiguous. A chef would assume one thing, a chemist, another. Perhaps I lean more towards chemistry than foodery.
Given this thread is in Cafe Society, and the OP considers culinary applications (based on the salts in the OP’s examples), I don’t really think it’s that far a stretch, but I suppose I could see the ambiguity.
Why? Does his driveway have a goiter?
We call 'em “frost heaves” up north.
What terrific answers. Many thanks !!
Gawd I love this place.
Cartooniverse
There’s a company here that’s producing “low-salt salt.” This might seem like a contradiction, but from what I’ve heard and read about the product, they did some research and found that the shape of the salt crystals had a big influence on how we perceived the taste. Specifically, surface area was the important factor. The shape they ended up using resembles a hollowed-out pyramid, and they claim that it tastes twice as salty as regular salt. I haven’t tried it, so I can’t vouch for it.
However, in my experience, there’s definitely some truth to the observation that the shape of the crystal influences the taste. Fleur de sel, with its snowflake-like structure is definitely a different experience from some local varieties of sea salt, which are in fine powder form.
I’d like a true chemist to comment on that, but it sounds suspiciously like snake-oil pyramid worship to me. They make sodium chloride that doesn’t act like sodium chloride? What part of the atomic makeup of sodium or chloride have they been able to alter?
Thank yew. We’re just the salt of the earth.
Try this simple experiment. Get two saltine crackers. Eat one salt side down and one salt side up. One will seem saltier than the other, or at least they do to me.
It is well known that you can make soup that is too salty taste less salty by adding potatoes. The sodium is still in the pot, but it doesn’t interact with your taste buds the same way when it is buried in a potato as it does when it is just part of the broth.
Salt can also affect how other things taste. It cancels bitterness in many foods. Scientists don’t yet understand why, but they have documented the effect. Simple experiment to demonstrate it: Take a half dozen brussel sprouts. Cut an x deeply into the stem sides. Soak three in very salty cold water and three in unsalted cold water for a few hours. Drain both sets and boil both in separate pans in unsalted water. The ones soaked in salt water taste much less bitter than those just soaked in cold water.
Maybe so, but you’re not changing the chemical composition of NaCl, just the human perception of it due to biological receptors.
Well, “low-salt salt” does sound like possible snake oil. However, the explanation seems fairly reasonable. You get salt by heating brine. Depending on how long and at what temperature you do so, you obtain salt crystals of various shape. Some pictures here. For you to be able to taste the salt, it needs to dissolve in water. If you’ve sprinkled the salt on your food, this means that it needs to dissolve on the saliva that’s on your tongue. For the same mass, a crystal that has a bigger surface area will dissolve more quickly, hence, for the same quantity of salt you can find one type of crystal to have a stronger taste than another.
As it turns out, of the crystals that are easily manufactured, the “reverse pyramid” has the optimal surface area to mass ratio. In other words, it has the saltiest taste.
Anyway, that’s the explanation.
“Well known” in the sense of “much claimed and much repeated,” not “well known” in the sense of “actually true.” Because it’s not: it’s bullshit. To the extent that you’re adding volume to the soup, and thus reducing the proportional amount of salt in the overall quantity, yes, you can cut the saltiness, but there’s nothing special about potatoes that changes the nature or biochemical perception of the salt. For all the difference it makes, you could add a ton of turnips, or rhubarb, or chicken feet, or, hell, tennis balls. Basically, it’s a BS claim and it doesn’t belong on these boards.
I always understood it to be ‘add potatoes, cook them so that they absorb some of the liquid and some of the salt, remove the potatoes (and thus the salt they’ve absorbed), add more liquid, and presto, you have less salt’, but I think the common understanding has been bastardized to point that no one gets it anymore. If you leave the potatoes in, it’s not going to help much.
This was my understanding of the tip, as well. I’ve never actually employed it in practice, so I have no opinions on its efficacy.
Ok, let us start by talking about “pure salt” : Iodized, Table, Sea and Kosher. (“Grey Salt” has quite a bit of impurities and so does Bacon salt:D).
Iodized has a slightly different taste and some palates can spot it, depending on how much salt on what the other flavors are. Most table salt is iodized but you can buy it either way. Some sea salt is also iodized.
Once you take Iodized out, all other “pure” salts taste exactly the same. Kosher has a different mouth feel before it is dissolved, that’s all.
Once dissolved, one can not tell Kosher, Sea or Table (non-iodized) apart.
Sounds like NewAge woo to me. You mean dissolved salt crystals retain their shape after becoming part of a solution? Maybe water has memory, too, but I doubt it.
No, the broth in the soup is less salty tasting. It is not the total volume of soup, it is not like the potatoes are diluting the soup; they certainly don’t add water compared to their volume. I have tried this more than once. I have had soup go from inedibly satly to tasty. It may well work with turnips I have not tried it with turnips. The potatoes do not then taste over salted, so I don’t remove them, but they do taste saltier than if cooked in a low salt broth. I don’t know why the salt would go into the potatoes, but that is what seems to be happening.