I am no gourmet chef by a long shot, but I am a fairly seasoned cook in the kitchen. Here lately I have seen a lot of recipes calling for “kosher” salt. I have always used just regular table salt, (you know in the blue container with the little girl and umbrella? “Morton’s”)
So I went to the grocery store and found fine grained sea salt, coarse grained sea salt, table salt regular, table salt w/iodine, rock salt…no label with “kosher”.
So I pose these questions to the teeming…
What makes kosher salt kosher? What is kosher salt? Can you substitute regular table salt for kosher salt at 1:1?
All salt is kosher; “Kosher salt” is salt used in the koshering process. You can usually find it with the recular salt. It generally has larger grains and can usually be substituted freely for table salt, since other than grain size it’s exactly the same thing (though the grain size can have an effect on the amount of salt)
Coupla weeks ago, FoodTV’s “Unwrapped” show had a segment on salt. They got the tour through the Morton plant. The salt is mixed into a thick slurry, then vacuum dried. A step or two later, it’s run through a series of sorting screens. The big flakes become Kosher salt, the middle size grains are table salt, and the really fine pieces are popcorn salt. Chemically, they’re all the same. The last time I paid attention, the Morton Kosher salt had a menorah on the container. I’m not Jewish, and I don’t know the rules for Kosher.
As for measuring, I’d guess there’s a bit less salt in a tablespoon of Kosher salt, because the flakes don’t fit as tightly together as table salt.
The iodine is added to salt in very small amounts to maintain the thyroid gland in folks who don’t eat much fish. IIRC
Dang I missed that one! Thanks for the answers. I did use regular salt as a substitute, but instead of using a full cup of kosher salt I use 3/4 cup. I wasn’t sure what the ratio was, and it’s far better to under salt than over!
In another thread on salt, I found a link to a Cooks Illustrated taste test of nine salts, ranging from 36 cents a pound to 36 dollars a pound. http://www.geocities.com/pcubed/salt.pdf
Paul - do they actually care about kosher products? If they saw you carrying in kosher salt, would they be upset enough not to let you explain that there’s nothing Jewish about it?
Wow . . . I guess I never thought of Saudi Arabia as quite THAT hardline.
I know that Saudi Arabia used to be bad about 10 years ago when my Dad was working placing ex-pats over there they had to remove labels from any Marks and Spensers’ clothing products that they took with them.
Marks and Spensers being a popular Jewish owned department store chain in the UK.
Strangely enough, Marks and Spensers on Oxford Street (next to Selfridges) was always full of lots of Arabic customers in full regalia. Odds on that most of them were from Saudi Arabia.
Not exactly. Kosher salt is not iodized and tastes completely different than regular table salt, as does sea salt. Iodine in salt is unnecessary for most people with balanced diets. Most canned foods and prepared foods are made with iodized salt and provide more than enough iodine for your diet.
To find your kosher salt, look for a big 3-pound square box, like this one. Don’t look among those cylindrical cardboard salt containers, they don’t sell it like that.
FWIW there are two well known brands of Kosher salt here in the US Mortons and Diamond Crystal. Due to a difference in the way they are flaked, the Mortons is denser or in other words there is more salt per unit volume.
The turkey brine recipe I used this year called for 1 cup of Mortons Kosher salt per gallon of water OR 2 cups of Diamond Crystal.
I also saw a note in Cooks about this a few months back.
The main thing about kosher salt (aside from not being iodized) is the size and shape of the crystals. Because the crystals are larger than those in table salt, it’s easier to just grab kosher salt in your fingers or pour it in your hand to measure it–if you tried doing this with table salt, you’d end up with salt crystals stuck all over your hands. Therefore, it’s easier and faster to work with kosher salt, which is important if you’re in a professional kitchen.
Sea salt works the same way, only more so. There’s no point in using sea salt in a dish where it’s just going to dissolve–but if you sprinkle it on top of a finished dish, it has a much better taste and texture than table salt. (Yes, it has a better taste–the shape of the crystals affects how you perceive the flavor.)
Depending on the source of your sea salt, there will also be different levels of minerals (hence the different colors of salts), but the main thing is the size and shape of the crystals.
