I have often seen chefs on TV saying that sea salt is ‘better’. Yesterday I saw a programme where they interviewed a guy who revived an ancient sea salt industry ans he and the interviewer took it as read that his product was superior to the ordinary stuff.
Does anyone have evidence that this is truly the case, or are we being conned?
Table salt’s relatively pure NaCl while sea salt can have other minerals that change its flavor slightly, but the big thing as I see it is that Mortons and other common salt brands are very fine grained and sea salt is big and chunky. A pretzel with table salt sprinkled on top and a pretzel with sea salt are going to be different because the crystals crunch differently which makes it a more novel and therefore good experience.
The salt part itself, of course, is identical (and pretty much all salt is “sea salt” in some sense – the mined stuff is just from older seas).
The colors of salt come from various impurities, and there are those who claim that these impurities will affect the taste. This claim doesn’t usually hold up under a double-blind test, but if people are willing to pay for it, why not? Of course, it’s not clear that salt from today’s sea will have noticeably different impurities from salt from a sea fifty million years ago.
What does make some difference is the texture/grain size/coarseness of the salt: it affects measurements, dissolvability, mouth feel, and other attributes that can result in detectable differences in the food. But again, this isn’t necessarily an attribute of it’s source.
“Salt” may contain various “salts” other than NaCl based on how it’s obtained or made, but for food salt these usually don’t amount to noticeable taste differences.
Of course, all these are taste-related. A salt may be better than another for non-taste reasons, like the pink or grey/black salt grains that are popular on white items these days. But that’s a matter of personal preference, I think.
All depends on how you define “better.” Because sea salt is processed less, some of the mineral content in the water remain and add a slightly (very slightly) different flavour than ‘pure’ salt. To me, in certain applications sea salt (a particular brand) adds the right touch to a dish.
(Note that ‘less processed’ and ‘pure’ are not meant to carry any judgement about ‘better’. There are lots of reasons to shun some processed foods, this isn’t my point here.)
If you are going to sprinkle “fleur de sel” on the top of a dish, it has a better appearance and different texture. Cooking with a teaspoon in the pot makes no difference. Fleur de sel is the flaky crystal on the top of the ponds of sea salt.
A similar thread on Himalayan and other gourmet salts prompted a response from someone I can’t remember who: Ordinary table salt is Sodium Chloride, a chemical compound. Gourmet salt is salt with dirt in it.
And, yeah, there are going to be performance differences within your dish due to the granularity & consistency of your salt, but mostly, it’s just salt.
Here is Mayo’s take on it.
Basically, as above, although table salt usually has additives to prevent clumping. Iodine added as well, which is good. I don’t know how much iodine is in sea salt, but I’m guessing not comparable.
I suppose we get enough salt in prepared foods to keep our midwestern iodine levels up??
Morton says no iodine in their sea salt.
http://www.mortonsalt.com/for-your-home/culinary-salts/food-salts/19/morton-all-purpose-sea-salt/
Do they say no iodine, or just don’t list any? I find it difficult to believe sea salt contains no iodine, although it would be a trace amount if none were added. You’ll find gold in sea salt too if you look hard enough.
They claim they haven’t iodized it, which is a bit different. There’s not enough natural iodine in sea salt to make any nutritional difference anyway.
ETA: and not enough natural iodine to trip the FDA food labeling standard.
So: Basically no difference chemically or nutritionally. The only difference that matters is the texture and in restaurants, ‘Sea Salt’ looks more upmarket than ‘salt’, just as all restaurant chickens are happy little souls that spent their short (six week) lives in a field pecking worms.
As it happens I grind sea salt over chicken to make the skin crisp, but this is because someone gave me a box of it about ten years ago. At least it doesn’t have a sell by date.
Sure it will. Today’s sea salt will have higher levels of mercury, polymers, petroleum distillates, etc.
Regular table salt is about 40% sodium and 60% chloride by mass.
Sea salt, depending on where you get it, can have sodium as low as 12% by weight. Replacing that sodium, you get cations like potassium, magnesium, and calcium, and the occasional sulfate anion replacing the chloride.
Potassium chloride, for example, has a slightly bitter taste. Sulfates tend to have distinctive eggy flavors.
I firmly believe a lot of “sea salt” sold in grocery stores is just standard NaCl with a coarser grind, and with perhaps some food coloring thrown in. But actual sea salt does taste subtly different.
If it had food coloring and it wasn’t listed in the ingredients that would get them in a lot of trouble with the FDA. As far as just being a coarser grind but still just coming from the same mines as table salt, I’m not sure, but I’d be willing to bet they’d be running askew of (truth in) labeling laws.
I’d guess the US has a similar law, but looking very quickly, Canada requires Sea Salt to come from the sea.
Kosher Salt on the other hand…
You forgot long-lived radionucleides 
I saw one company with a sea salt touted as one of the lowest sodium sea salts- 76%(!!). Since pure NaCl is only 39.3% sodium by weight, I had to ask the company why they added extra sodium. Turns out that they meant only 76% NaCl. Most of the remaining 24% was good old dihydrogen monoxide.
I still wonder- if the sea salt is harvested merely by evaporation of sea water, could non-volatile organic molecules (from algae, whale poo, oyster milt, etc.) cause a flavor difference compared to mined salt?
A few years ago, I was at a cooking demonstration wherein the demonstrator used what she (and the label) called “Himalayan Sea Salt”. During the question session, I asked about this, since the Himalayas are mountains, which (in elevation terms, at least) are the opposite of seas. The demonstrator didn’t know, and when I looked it up, I discovered that apparently, all of this salt comes from a single specific mine (in Pakistan), which is not only not in the sea, but is also more than a hundred miles from the Himalayas. It is, in fact, salt, however.
It’s the sort of thing that makes you want to head to New York, pick up a couple tons of week-old fish, and start exporting them to Pakistan as “Fresh Japanese Sushi”.
Sea Salt is identical to Table or mined salt. Both processed the same. Often same texture.
Unless it’s “Grey Salt” aka* Fleur de sel * aka " Sel Gris De Guérande ". Really expensive, not processed, just hand collected and dried.
Altho those are “Sea Salt” they are not ever labeled simply as “Sea Salt” and they cost at least $10 a smallish jar.
Anything sold or labeled simply as “Sea Salt” is just salt.
It should be known as Himalayan Salt or Himalayan Pink Salt. I don’t know when it started getting called Himalayan Sea Salt but I assume that has led to increased sales. I don’t know how the name originated, but it isn’t found only in the Himalayan region.
Sounds like they didn’t get all of the “sea” out of their “sea salt.”
My wife buys the Himalayan pink sea salt, and says it’s supposed to be healthier. Is it really? Sounds like it may have less sodium, which is probably a good thing, and has other minerals, which may be somewhat positive. However, if it has less sodium, does that mean that you have to use more of it, so you end up getting the same amount?