A Quick Guide To Cooking With Salt

With all the conflicting information out there, you may be wondering “Should I even be cooking with salt?”

Please, for the love of delicious and balanced tasting food… don’t skip the salt.

Salt is not only essential for your body to function, but when used in cooking, it helps bring out the natural flavors in your food.

Why Do Some Recipes Yield Such Salty Results?

Have you ever followed a recipe exactly as written, tasted the dish, and nearly spit it out because it was so salty?

Was it a typo? Why could there possibly be that much salt in a recipe? Here's the deal... it probably wasn't a typo. The key thing to know is that salt varies... a lot.

How Cooking With Salt Varies

Some types of salt have a much saltier taste than others, while some are much milder (hence the larger quantity required).

So, what happened when you were following that recipe where the dish was way too salty?

You most likely used a different type of salt than the person who created the recipe. The salt aisle at the store can be a very overwhelming place - kosher salt, pink Himalayan salt, iodized salt, sea salt, table salt. Which one should you choose?

In this quick guide, I’m breaking down the different salt types, which are best at different times in the cooking process, and which type you can avoid cooking with altogether.

Different Types of Salt

Kosher Salt

Although kosher salt is commonly confused with table salt, it’s not the same thing. Kosher salt is pure salt with no additives. It has large crystals and a coarse texture.

Kosher salt characteristics:

• Its large crystals allow it to absorb (and draw out) more moisture than other salts
• Often used to cure and season meats as well as other animal proteins
• Emphasizes the natural flavors of food
• Not as easy to over-salt your food (since the crystals are larger than other salts)
• Provides a much more balanced flavor to your food

Not all brands are created equal though. Unfortunately, different brands yield different sizes of crystals and textures yielding a different level of saltiness even though they all say kosher salt.

Confusing, right?

There are two popular brands of kosher salt: Diamond Crystal and Morton. Morton has denser salt crystals making it nearly twice as salty as Diamond Crystal.

How to Have Success Cooking with Kosher Salt

If using Morton kosher salt in a recipe, make sure you cut the salt amount in half. What this looks like: if you're cooking without a recipe, if using Morton, use a smaller pinch than you would if using Diamond Crystal.

All the recipes on our site use Diamond Crystal kosher salt unless otherwise stated, so adjust accordingly if necessary.

Verdict: Use for seasoning meat, and any time during the cooking process. For avoiding overly-salted food, and having more control of the flavor in your cooking, use the Diamond Crystal brand.

Maldon Sea Salt

Maldon sea salt is a flaky salt with pyramid-shaped crystals. It has a very clean and fresh taste making it the perfect accompaniment to a finished dish.

Maldon sea salt is what’s called a finishing salt, so you want to use it at the end of a dish - once it’s cooked, sprinkle some on top of the dish right before serving. It's great for adding to desserts like my dairy-free salted caramel sauce or these 3 ingredient snickers candy bites to balance the sweetness. It’s also amazing on popcorn, and roasted butternut squash or Brussels sprouts.

Verdict: Use on all cooked food as a finishing touch. Just pinch some between your thumb and fingers, rubbing them together to crush the salt a bit while sprinkling over food.

Fleur De Sel

Fleur de sel is a delicate salt with a slightly briny flavor and is known as the caviar of salts. It has paper-thin crystals and is recommended as a finishing salt only.

Verdict: Use to top salads, cooked fish, fruit, cooked vegetables, or dessert.

Table Salt

Table salt (also just labeled salt) contains additives and has a small grain size.

While sodium is beneficial for our bodies, it's important that it comes from high-quality sources, and unfortunately table salt isn't one of them.

A few notes on table salt:

• Often contains anti-caking agents to make it last longer
• No health benefits
• Commonly found in packaged foods
• Nearly all table salt is iodized (because you can get iodine through whole food sources, it's unnecessary to get it from iodized table salt)

Verdict: The other salts in this guide are much better options.

Himalayan Pink Salt

Pink Himalayan salt is a type of sea salt that contains more than 80 health-supporting minerals such as calcium, potassium, and magnesium. Although pink Himalayan salt has many different names (pink salt, Himalayan crystal salt, rock salt), it's all the same thing.

Himalayan pink salt comes in different crystal sizes, so keep this in mind when cooking with it. The smaller crystals (or grains) are going to provide a saltier flavor than the larger/coarser crystals.

(Because of this salt's many benefits, it also doubles as a beauty ingredient, like in my popular 3 ingredient Himalayan salt scrub.)

Verdict: Use freely and reap its many health benefits, but remember that it falls on the saltier side.

Other Quality Salts

Salts such as Celtic sea salt (french grey salt), pure sea salt such as Redmond real salt, red or black Hawaiian salts, and smoked sea salts are also great cooking options.

When choosing a type of salt, just make sure there is one ingredient listed on the package.

Final Thoughts on Cooking With Salt

When adding a pinch of salt to your food

• If the crystals in your salt are smaller, it’s going to be easier to over-salt your food than if you’re pinching salt with larger crystals.
• The small crystals dissolve quickly making your food very salty.
• Always put salt in your hand first before directly in the dish so you know exactly how much you’re adding.

What you need to know about cooking with salt

• It’s easy to over-salt and quite difficult to recover a dish that is too salty.
• Know how salty the salt you have in your pantry is and add to a dish accordingly.

More Cooking Basics

• The 5 Basic Tastes of Cooking
• Food Processor vs Blender: What's The Difference
• How to Create A Capsule Pantry