Salt

All the talk on this forum about salt recently has been wonderful, so I thought I'd try and move it to the Kitchen...

We usually keep four sorts of kitchen salts :

Maldon
Murray River pink salt - review here - which helps with Australia's inland salinity problems
Tidman's (which is now owned by Maldon, I think)
Saxa Iodised table salt

Why boring iodised table salt ? Because I watched an amazing doco a year ago about the problem with cretinism in Tibet, and how the tiniest bit of iodine in the diet helped prevent that. The documentary was called The Man Who Saved A Million Brains, and there is a transcript here . I don't like the taste of iodised salt, but we'll throw it into the pasta boiling water etc.

The Murray River pink salt is delicious, and is now our staple, even though it costs more than the Maldon. It reminds me of pink Indian salt, though I'm not sure how chemically similar they are.

The latest thing here has been Himalayan Rock Salt, which I'm yet to try. Might get some next time I'm at the retailer..

Celia

Baleine coarse sea salt. That pretty much serves me fine. Every once in a while I will get some Fleur de Sel or Black Salt but only for finishing purposes.

rwj

I use:

Sea salt

Margarita salt

Store bought, average, common, ordinary, everyday, garden variety, man of the street, plain old, basic salt.


What a low-life Philistine I am.

What a low-life Philistine I am.

(best school teacher voice) Timothy, if you're going to start that again, you have to do so in the Basement.

I use:

Sea salt

Margarita salt

Store bought, average, common, ordinary, everyday, garden variety, man of the street, plain old, basic salt.


What a low-life Philistine I am.

Oh, how can they live like that!

the only one i use is redmond real salt

Compared to The Other Stupid, my life is very simple. Malden, Morton's Iodized, and Penzey's gray sel de mer. TOS has black salt, red salt, pink salt, and if I look hard enough, probably some purple salt.

We use Maldon's, a big container of sea salt, and a couple of different fleur de sels that we've accumulated over the years. The sea salt is used for bulk stuff like pasta water and the fleurs get very little use in finishing things like caprese. The Maldon's is used for most of our cooking.

[Robin Garr]

All the talk on this forum about salt recently has been wonderful, so I thought I'd try and move it to the Kitchen...

Thanks, Celia! I'll copy in my responses from two posts in the "other" thread:

We have eight kinds of salt here, seven of them edible (the eighth is rock salt for throwing on the sidewalk when it's icy.

Morton's Iodized
Baleine coarse sea salt
Baleine fine sea salt (Baleine, I believe, is now owned by Morton)
Fleur de sel gris (France)
Murray River pink flake salt (Australia)
Hawaiian black lava salt (Hawaii)
Bourbon-smoked sea salt (Kentucky)

I can certainly tell the difference among these salts, and very consciously make distinctions among the last four, in particular, depending on the recipe and what I want to accomplish.

Frankly, while I wouldn't snob on anybody who can't tell the differences or doesn't think it's important, I can't say I agree with that analysis. I find the differences profound, and worth paying for.

(also ... )

At the Oakroom in Louisville, where molecular gastronomy is practiced with all due obeisance to Adrian Ferra, you can get a "salt tasting" of four salts with your meal, served in a box of four cunning little square cellars, for a mere $10 extra. And yes, I paid it, and liked the salts, and was glad I did it.

What a low-life Philistine I am.

(best school teacher voice) Timothy, if you're going to start that again, you have to do so in the Basement.

Now that's funny

I use:

Sea salt

Margarita salt

Store bought, average, common, ordinary, everyday, garden variety, man of the street, plain old, basic salt.


What a low-life Philistine I am.

Oh, how can they live like that!

Oh, the humanity.

Sorry, Guys/Gals...just messin' around.


I'll show myself out through the backdoor.




Pass the salt?

I now have a bag that is a mixture of pretzel salt and caraway seeds. This is what tops a Kummelweck roll, which are only available locally. I use this to top Kaiser rolls if I have to make Beef on 'Weck out of town. What is a Beef on 'Weck you ask?

Kummelweck (link)

Now I'm homesick, Howie!

Sorry, Guys/Gals...just messin' around.


I'll show myself out through the backdoor.




Pass the salt?

Nah, you coconut, stick around. And tell me what margarita salt is ? I've never heard of it ?

It's big and flaky and comes in a round plastic tub in which you twirl the rim of your margarita glass. It's actually quite nice.

Thanks Larry !

[Jenise]

For basic cooking, kosher salt (I prefer Diamond Crystal)

For finishing:
Maldon
Hawaiian black lava salt
Alder-smoked salish salt
Truffle salt
and a sagey herb-salt blend from Vignalta winery in Italy's Veneto

Boring and hum-drum, here.

Basic Morton table salt
Penzey's Kosher salt

Linda and others,

What exactly is kosher salt ? It's so often referred to in cookbooks from the US, but no-one here seems to know what it is. Even in the gourmet stores, they look at me oddly and tell me ALL salt is kosher. Can we use Maldon in place of kosher salt, or is it more like a rock salt ?

Thanks !

Another philistine here. We use homeopathic amounts in cooking and don't 'auto-condiment' food either. Our sea salt lasts so long I'm not sure what it was before it went in the salt-mill!

[Robin Garr]

What exactly is kosher salt ? It's so often referred to in cookbooks from the US, but no-one here seems to know what it is. Even in the gourmet stores, they look at me oddly and tell me ALL salt is kosher. Can we use Maldon in place of kosher salt, or is it more like a rock salt ?

It's more like flake salt, Celia, only with smaller crystals. The thing that makes it kosher, though, is the sharp edges that make it cling to meat. (Part of the "koshering" process involved drawing as much blood as possible out of the meat before serving, which hints that religious ritual and good eats are not always closely aligned.)

I don't have any kosher salt around, figuring that either cheap table salt or flake salt will cover it.

[Jenise]

Additional to what Robin said, Celia, kosher salt has two advantages over regular table salt that cooks like me like: 1) it's a large pebbly grain that doesn't get under your fingernails when you use your fingers to draw pinches of salt from a bowl, which is how I keep salt ready at the stove and my prep station vs pouring from the container, and 2) it has lower salinity on a volume basis (2 cups of the Diamond Crystal I like is as salty as just one cup of regular table salt) so the danger of over-salting is very, very low.

Robin, Jenise, thank you !