• Columnists

Salt isn’t just salt

• Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
• July 30, 2021
• 669

I’ve spoken with you about salts in cooking before, and my own salt education continues to grow. One of the most important things to master if you want to be a really good cook is properly seasoning your food and the proper salt to use for each instance at hand.

No, salt isn’t just salt. We’re light years beyond the shakers of Morton Iodized on the table and sitting beside the stove covering all the bases.

Most cookbooks suggest the use of kosher salt in cooking and baking, and even here, it’s not all the same. Kosher salt gets its name from the practice of dry brining meats so they adhere to kosher practices. The salt itself is not kosher. Morton salt company, which has been around since 1848, supplies every kind of salt imaginable, and the people there must be gnashing their teeth a bit as the food industry has been smack talking them for a few years.

First, we are guided to use kosher salt and then are almost universally pointed to the brand Diamond Crystal. The latter is a bit less salty and more easily controlled. You may need to use a bit more of it than of Morton’s, but you’re less likely to over salt things if you can build flavor incrementally, as you should.

You want to salt your dishes all along the way as you cook. Salt the chicken breasts before you brown them, then salt the sauce you put them in and finally add a little at the end when plating, tasting at every step. If you just salt the whole business at the end, you get something with undissolved salt. A controlled amount of salt puts a lot of power in your hands in cooking.

Trust me, Diamond Crustal salt is very hard to find around here. You’ll have to buy it online.

By the way, which one of you is complaining about salt in restaurants? I’ve found many chefs are so afraid of complaints they don’t salt things at all, letting diners salt things to their liking. That’s not cooking, and you should let the pros prepare your food as it should be done. If it’s too salty for you, you might consider ordering something else next time. When a kitchen sends out french fries with no salt at all, they do so with no pleasure.

But what of that old, round box of table salt? That’s where it belongs, in a shaker at table, if you must. That stuff is quite salty and fine grained, so a little goes a long way. Companies began adding iodine to table salt decades ago to make sure people got enough in their diet. Lack of iodine in your diet can lead to a nasty condition called goiter, which can cause a quite large swelling and inflammation in the neck. If you’re eating fish and dairy, you should be fine and need not worry about using kosher and other salts without iodine, as most of the salts I’m describing are.

So kosher for cooking, table salt for the table. But there’s still more to know.

Pink Himalayan salt comes in big pieces and must be ground before use. It gets dubious credit for all sorts of health benefits, but in terms of cooking and serving, it is again a more controlled way to season your food. It is pink from other trace minerals and adds an interesting flavor of its own.

When you’re preparing a baked potato, you want to prick the things all over, oil and then salt them, and for this you might want to add some flaked salt. These are large flakes that adhere nicely to foods and add a visual appeal as well as seasoning. In our kitchen are Maldon sea salt flakes, and another, French flaked salt in a wonderfully pretentious package we use for salting just before serving something. The big, rich flakes add crunch and texture as well as flavor.

I’ve heard many chefs say the single most important way a home cook can improve the dishes they’re serving is to not be afraid of seasoning, meaning careful but unafraid use of salt and pepper from prep to table. Learn about the various kinds of salt available and their uses, and your cooking will quickly start to improve.