Everything You Wanted to Know About Salt but Were Too Afraid to Ask

Im not being hyperbolic when I say salt is the most important seasoning of all time.

So while the modern eater may be a little blase about salt, flavor is not trivial.

What is salt?

Lets start out simple.

What we refer to as salt is sodium chloride.

(Seasoning a pot of soup with pure sodium would be a disaster; itreacts violently with water.)

There are two places you’ve got the option to find salt: the ground and the ocean.

Sea salt is sodium chloride that comes from the ocean or other salty bodies of water.

There are two big brands of kosher saltMorton Kosher Salt and Diamond Kosher Salt, and they arenotinterchangeable.

You may think that flakes are flakes, but the shape of the flakes makes a huge difference.

The denser Morton crystals also take a little longer to dissolve.

(It is, however, pure sodium chloride, unlike Morton, which contains anti-caking agents.)

All that being said, using Morton salt will not ruin a meal.

Those are big differences.

Thats easy, because 10 is an easy number to work with.

Maldon salt, for instance, is a finishing salt, with huge, pyramid-shaped crystals.

Then there are the colorful salts, pink salt and sel gris being the most popular.

Pink Himalayan salt is mined from Khewra Salt Mine, near the Himalayas in Pakistan.

It is minimally processed and unrefined, and gets its pink color from naturally occurring minerals, particularly iron.

Sel gris is French for grey salt, because it is salt that is grey.

There are other colors of salt, including black and red, but I think you get the point.

Then you have pickling salt, a pure sodium chloride which is finer than even sea salt.

you could use any pure salt to pickle, though pickling salt dissolves like a dream.

Ice cream salt is not edible, and should not be put in or on ice cream.

Most kitchens do not need more than one or two types of salt.

Also, dont let the snobs tell you there is anything wrong with plain old table salt.

Its cheap, its salty, and using it ensures theres always plenty of iodine in your diet.