Sea salt contains a mixture of different stuff besides just NaCl, such as sulfates and magnesium, and this extra stuff helps it form into clumps instead of a pure white powder. These clumps are useful in certain seasoning techniques and behave quite differently from pure table salt. A salt mill may be needed to grind up chunks when seasoning with sea salt. (But is obviously unnecessary for regular salt.)
A disadvantage of sea salt is that it is not iodized.
I use my handy dandy super tool (flat bladed screwdriver) to pry off the plastic top and refill my disposable salt and pepper shakers, it’s not rocket surgery. The grinding mechanism is hard plastic, so it will get dull eventually, one refill is all I’ve bothered to do before getting a new one.
A pit thread involving salt grinders, looks like my bitch is a bit different than the OP
Oh well, I’ll take the opportunity to let everyone know how much I hate fucking salt grinders. These things piss me the fuck off and every restaurant seems to be going to them.
While it’s cute and all to have a matching companion to the pepper grinder. It’s a fucking waste. Salt doesn’t need to be ground at the table. That can be done long before it gets to the table. It’s not losing it’s freshness.
What kills me on the cheap ones is they just use the same plastic grinders that work OK for pepper. When you apply that same cheapness to grind salt it does so poorly with the added affect salt is harder then plastic so I get to enjoy fresh ground plastic! Fuck everything about those things.
And the hell with sea salt at the table anyway. I keep sea salt and us it in cooking and preparation but I really don’t think it’s that important at the table. Regular salt works just fine.
Dude, if disposable salt was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for you.
I would never get my salt from a grinder. Those bastards are completely untrustworthy. The greasy fuckers just hang out on the corner and play the same damn song over and over while they extort money from decent citizens. And don’t get me started on all the monkeys those assholes have enslaved.
Better to get salt from a a shaker. Sure, you have to listen to the whole “God has willed me to create high quality hand crafted furniture” spiel, but at least they have a work ethic.
You can’t do that - that’s assault!
Are you suggesting that you should have used saltier language?
Electric salt grinders for teh win!*
*A salt and battery not included.
I knew this thread would be peppered with salt puns. I am not disappointed.
So wait a minute, the OP is complaining because the salt he has transported 12,000 miles to his house is not packaged in a reusable container?
Isn’t that a lot like complaining that the lowland gorrilla burger comes on a styrofoam plate?
The cheap grinder is made out of plastic. It’s included in the price of the salt. After enough grinds the salt begins to win against the plastic and, along with some plastic shavings in your savory sea-salted recipes, you would wind up with a useless grinder anyway if you could keep refilling it.
They are disposable because they are cheap. I see another brand of sea salt with grinder included that says it is refillable ‘up to 5 times’, meaning their plastic grinder is a little better than the McCormick grinder, but they still recognize the fact that it is a limited-use item intended purely for convenience, not an heirloom quality kitchen utensil.
Yeah, if someone leaves me a McCormick salt grinder in their will, I’ll dig up their corpse and kick them right in the nuts.
I was going to jump in this pitting but my goiter is acting up and I lost my yellow umbrella. Fuck.
We have two Danish Rosenberg grinders that my awesome in-laws gave us. They are fantastic, and impervious to oxidation.
Sea salt is not good for cooking (pouring into a pot on the stove), for that I use regular iodized salt. But on the table sea salt (coming from my hometown, straight from the salt lakes and spiced with debris and possibly bugs) is the best.
ETA that battery grinders are the stupidest idea anyone came up with in a long while.
Man, when it rains it pours, huh?
We bought a pig years ago, but it just didn’t maintain its saltiness.
But, thanks to a suggestion (by Airman Doors, I think) in a Cafe Society thread, we got a treadmill for the kitchen. Half an hour on that thing, and our pig stays salty all day.
This is actually opposite thinking from most foodies (and amateur foodies like me). Table salt is useful for applications when you want it to dissolve quickly, like in pasta water. Kosher salt, with it’s larger crystals is good for seasoning items like meats because it dissolves a little more slowly. And as the OP said, the even larger crystals of sea salt are best on cooked food.
Most people (not all, just most, and IMNSHO about half of the people who say they notice) cannot distinguish the specific flavor of various sea salts. Maybe the super expensive stuff has enough of a flavor profile to be distinguishable, but I’m not about to pay to find out.
I’m going to piggyback off this and say I hate the offer of fresh-ground pepper on nearly everything at some restaurants. They usually offer it right as the food hits the table, so you don’t have the opportunity to taste it (wihout rushing) and figure out if it needs it or not, and I’m left wondering if the chef just sucks at seasoning food or if they’re just striving for an appearance of better food than what they have.
And on the note of piggybacking and to swing it back around to salt, I prefer flaked salt in a salt pig. 
You can get small ceramic ones for maybe $5.
I like a lot of pepper on most of my foods (I like spicy foods in general) and restaurants tend to cater to a more mellow palate. So bring on the freshly ground pepper, which is infinitely better than the dust in the table shakers. And grind that puppy until your arm hurts.
Would there be a market for bottles of salt water scooped fresh from the sea to be used in cooking or as a table condiment? I live close to the Gulf of Mexico and I’m looking for a good get-rich scheme.