Granted it’s not sweeping the nation, but I could only shake my head when a chef at a cooking demonstration at the Chicago Botanic Garden a few years ago made some kind of fish and vegetable dish. He made a great show of using some kind of Hawaiian volcanic salt in his dish, and went on and on about how using different kinds of exotic salts made all the difference in his culinary offerings.
There’s websites too where you can buy different salts from Peru or Alaska or wherever, smoked, flaked, roasted, and for all I know massaged by Tibetan monks three times a day to “stimulate your Chi”. Okay, I made up the part about the monks, but one site has a salt that’s roasted in bamboo cylinders for thirty dollars a box that’s supposed to, quote, “stimulate your Chi.” I guess for thirty bucks, it better do something more than flavor my macaroni. :dubious:
Anyway, salt is salt. I even raise an eyebrow when Alton Brown goes on about his kosher salt. (If he’s still doing that. I haven’t been watching lately.) But kosher is about as fancy as salt can get without getting ridiculous.
So, other eye rolling developments from the realm of foodies?
I keep hearing recently about the benefits of Himalayan Salt (Mostly from people trying to sell it, but also from some doctors). It makes sense that unrefined salt may be better for us than highly refined NaCl. I’d like to see a real study on it. Keeping my eyes out for some science.
I agree 100% on the salt. The color may look nice in the shaker/grinder (which is a second silly trend – pepper needs to be ground to release essential oils; salt has none), but there is no flavor difference.
Alton Brown used kosher salt because its large grains made it easy to pinch a bit and put it into the soup (i.e,. it looked cool doing it). It made no difference in flavor (though something like pickling salt can make a difference, since its find grains means there more of it in a measure).
Also, all salt is sea salt. It just depends on how recently it came from the sea.
Refined salt is pure NaCl (plus iodine or whatever else we deliberately add to them). Unrefined salt is NaCl plus dirt. Explain to me how unrefined salt is better for us?
It isn’t, and I’ve never heard about health benefits of specific culinary salts, prior to this thread.
Kosher and sea salts are primarily valued for their shape. A lot of people will tell you the various minerals make for a different flavor profile, but I don’t really buy it.
