I know this may seem like a silly question. In short, the type of salt you use can actually make or break a dish – click here to skip to the conclusions!
A bit of chemistry
You can skip ahead a little if your chemistry textbook put you to sleep. I’ll get over it, I promise. 🙂
The core of table salt as we know it is a compound called sodium chloride (Abbreviated NaCl). It’s made from two elements that, in their pure and unadulterated forms, would be incredibly dangerous to handle. However, they become one superstar for our taste buds when they get together.
Erwin Schrödinger’s model is widely accepted nowadays, but it’s hard to draw effectively. 🙂
Sodium has one electron in its valence (outermost) orbital. It forms an ionic bond with chlorine by giving up that valence electron to chlorine, which is always short one valence electron to begin with (7 out of 8 possible). Thus, they both get to complete their outermost orbitals, and everyone goes home happy!
If you’d actually like to read more about the chemistry, which I’d always recommend, Kahn Academy does a great job explaining the concept of orbitals, valence electrons and ionic compounds.
/End unnecessary, unhelpful, and random chemist nerd-fest
Salt 101
The chemistry aside, humans have been using sodium chloride in our food for a VERY long time. Salt suppresses bitter flavors and enhances both sweetness and umami.
As long as you don’t need to avoid salt due to a health condition like high blood pressure or kidney disease, you should think more about where and what type of salt you’re using, too!
Different types of salt: Composition, crystal shape, and texture
I’m only going to mention three types of salt today: table salt, kosher salt, and sea salt. There are many other forms of salt that you can toy with in your kitchen, so feel free to experiment!
The differences really come down to the source, size of the crystals and the types of additives in the salt.
Table salt
The type of salt you are most familiar with is likely table salt. Standard table salt is mined and highly processed to remove other minerals. It has very small, uniform crystals. You can find it plain or “iodized”, where the necessary element iodine has been added as a supplement. To sum up a lot of literature, iodine is required for producing thyroid hormones, and is critical for a well-functioning body. Believe it or not, iodine deficiency has been problematic for humanity since antiquity, even when people didn’t know exactly what iodine was. In the US specifically, many parts of the country have very little iodine in the food produced locally. The addition of iodine to table salt was a major public health victory in the 1920’s that decreased the incidence of goiter dramatically. Feel like more historical and modern context? See the reference section.
Kosher Salt
Kosher salt differs from table salt in its composition and texture. There is generally no iodine supplementation in kosher salt. It also tends to have larger crystals that can add crunch to a dish. It has been traditionally used to cure meats during the koshering process, but it’s found widespread use in home kitchens.
Sea Salt
Sodium chloride is sodium chloride. But unlike kosher salt and table salt, sea salt has a little something extra. By evaporating seawater, trace minerals are leftover in the salt crystals you sprinkle on your food. This alters the flavor profile depending on the source of your sea salt, but hasn’t really been shown to have health benefits. Just like table and kosher salt, you need to consume sea salt in moderation. If you want something different, sea salt is fun, but if you’re going for consistency, your best bet is sticking with table or kosher salt.
Using a different brand of salt can make a big difference
Unfortunately, things get a bit weird when you compare different types of salt. The crystal size differs significantly even between kosher salt brands!
Since these salt brands have different crystal sizes, and thus surface area, the same mass of salt is not necessarily going to fit into the same space equally. Think about how many small ice cubes you can fit in a glass versus how many of those spherical ice cubes people use with whiskey would fit in the same space. It’s a similar concept here, but on a much smaller scale.
The scientist in me really likes using data to approach a problem. Here, I wanted a quantitative way to explain how the qualitative difference in crystal size would impact a dish. To do this, I ran a little experiment using my kitchen scale.
Kitchen “Science”!
First, I had to come to the realization that I had three different types of salt in my kitchen: Morton iodized, Morton kosher, and Diamond crystal kosher (Shown in the above image). Oops. It’s okay though, we can call that a win for kitchen “science”! Next, I measured out 1 leveled teaspoon of each salt and then weighed it. To clarify, I didn’t pack the salt in the measuring spoon – I just scooped it up and took off the excess using the flat side of a knife.
Now, I admit that this is not what I’d call an ideal experiment. My kitchen scale works better for larger amounts of stuff, but I really didn’t want to measure out a quarter cup of salt. If I were actually in the lab and trying to publish this for peer review (HAHA), then I would need to repeat this experiment a bunch of times and present average values with statistical testing. I hope you’ll forgive me for not doing so here. Nonetheless, the results surprised me!
table salt versus brand-matched kosher salt
Morton table salt weighed 7 grams and the brand-matched kosher salt weighed 6 grams. That’s a drop of about 14%. When you’re adding equivalent amounts of these two, you probably won’t notice a really big change in taste, but the texture could be different. As you might be able to see in the image below, the kosher salt has significantly larger crystals compared to the table salt.
Different Brands of Kosher Salt can vary quite a bit!
Now, where it gets really crazy is the difference between two brands of kosher salt: Diamond Crystal and Morton. I used the same approach as before – compare 1 level teaspoon of each.
There was twice as much Morton kosher salt in a teaspoon compared to Diamond Crystal! In other words, depending on which brand you use, you’re either getting 100% more or 50% less salt. Definitely not ideal! Not to mention that texture-wise, Morton kosher salt is “crunchier” and less “flaky”, which could change your dish’s texture if added fresh at the end of cooking.
Kosher Salt
Similarly, if we loop this back to table salt, the disparity increases even more. Swapping a recipe from table salt to Diamond Crystal kosher salt would actually give you even less than 50% of the salt you had originally used.
The Bottom line
The type of salt you use can make a big difference based on the few comparisons made here! Here’s the results of this non-ideal kitchen “science” experiment:
| Type of Salt | Grams in 1 level tsp |
|---|---|
| Table | 6 |
| Morton kosher | 7 |
| Diamond Crystal kosher | 3 |
In short, one teaspoon is not necessarily equivalent if you’re using a different type of salt than what the recipe was tested with. Whether on My Gluten Free PhD, or on another blog, it’s worth noting if the author indicates the type of salt they used!
| Table salt is what you have | Morton kosher salt is what you have | Diamond Crystal kosher salt is what you have | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recipe calls for 1 tsp table salt | 1 tsp | 1 tsp* | 2 tsp |
| Recipe calls for 1 tsp Morton kosher salt | 1 tsp* | 1 tsp* | 2 tsp |
| Recipe calls for 1 tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt | ½ tsp | ½ tsp | 1 tsp |
In conclusion, please remember that personal tastes differ! If you’re sensitive to salt, start with less and add more if needed. I always recommend erring on the side of caution. An over-salted dish is hard to salvage!
References
- Peer-reviewed articles that I found interesting on table salt:
- Breslin, P.A.S.; Beauchamp, G.K. Salt enhances flavour by suppressing bitterness. Nature 1997, 387, 563; https://doi.org/10.1038/42388
- Leung, A.M.; Braverman, L.E.; and Pearce, E.N. History of U.S. Iodine Fortification and Supplementation. Nutrients 2012, 4(11), 1740-1746; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu4111740
- Bouga, M.; Lean, M. E. J.; and Combet, E. Contemporary challenges to iodine status and nutrition: the role of foods, dietary recommendations, fortification and supplementation. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society (2018), 77, 302–313. doi:10.1017/S0029665118000137 (Outside link)