Why Season with Kosher Salt?
By Linda Carucci, Julia Child Director of Culinary Programs
Until I started teaching cooking, I never really thought about the simple expression, “season to taste.” In cooking school, it’s drummed into you that salt brings out flavor. Now, when I teach seasoning to taste, I start by conducting a salt tasting in class. To keep it simple, we taste three salts that are widely available in Northern California, where I most often teach: Diamond Crystal kosher salt, table salt, and a finely ground sea salt. Why a specific brand of kosher salt? As explained in great detail in her excellent book CookWise, food scientist Shirley Corriher tells us that Diamond Crystal salt crystals are actually pyramids-as opposed to grains-which are much more likely to adhere to food. In fact, these hollow pyramids, or crystals, also dissolve twice as fast as granular salts, including Morton kosher salt.
Fine cooks often cite another reason for preferring Diamond Crystal kosher salt: measure for measure, because the “grains” are bigger, thereby taking up more room in the measuring spoon, Diamond Crystal kosher salt has about half the sodium of table salt or fine sea salt. As the accompanying chart illustrates, it takes 2 teaspoons of Diamond Crystal kosher salt to contribute the amount of sodium found in 1 teaspoon of common table salt. When you’re seasoning to taste, you have more play with the kosher salt than table salt because the grains are bigger. It’s harder to overseason with salt that tastes half as salty, measure for measure. Another reason fine cooks eschew table salt is that it’s treated with calcium silicate to make it flow freely. To many, including me, this gives salt a metallic aftertaste.
SODIUM CONTENT OF COMMONLY USED SALTS
| | Brand | Teaspoon Measurement | Weight Measurement | Milligrams of Sodium | Ingredients |
Kosher Salts | Diamond Crystal | ¼ teaspoon | .7 grams | 280 mg | Salt |
| | Morton | ¼ teaspoon | 1.2 grams | 480 mg | Salt, yellow prussiate of soda (a water-soluble, anti-caking agent) |
| | North American Salt Company | ¼ teaspoon | 1.2 grams | 480 mg | Salt |
Sea Salts | Lima French Atlantic | ¼ teaspoon | 1 gram | 330 mg | Salt |
| | La Baleine (fine crystals) | ¼ teaspoon | 1.5 grams | 580 mg | Sea salt, magnesium oxide (an anti-caking agent) |
Table Salt | Morton table salt | ¼ teaspoon | 1.5 grams | 590 mg | Salt, calcium silicate (dextrose and potassium iodide are also added to Morton iodized salt) |
Article reprinted from from Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks (Chronicle Books, 2005). Copyright Linda Carucci. Permission granted to COPIA for use on www.copia.org. All other rights reserved.
