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Unrefined salts carry a miniscule amount of trace minerals from the source and this small amount of contamination is almost imperceptible. If you do not actual
by evgen 17y ago
Unrefined salts carry a miniscule amount of trace minerals from the source and this small amount of contamination is almost imperceptible. If you do not actually salt after cooking (and all of the salt is therefore dissolved into the food) then you are not tasting the so-called "flavor" of the salt, it is all in your head. A specialty salt can be mildly effective as a finishing agent but if you are adding it to the dish more than five minutes before it hits someone's mouth you are wasting your money.
In the case of the salt you mention this is just kosher salt with a particular bit of marketing spin on the package. What makes kosher salt the go-to choice for most chefs is the size of the crystal -- it is large enough that you can use a "pinch" in your fingers and get some control over distrbution and these large crystals also take a little while to completely dissolve so it is much better than standard table salt when you are doing something like salting a piece of meat prior to cooking. Another reason you may like it (given your stated aversion to salty flavors) is that because of the large crystal size a given volume of kosher salt has only half as much actual salt in it compared to table salt. If you have a recipe that calls for one teaspoon of salt and you use one teaspoon of kosher salt you are actually only putting in a half teaspoon of NaCl (the other half of the teaspoon is just air.) This is not bad for most cooking, but you should go out an get a bit of regular table salt if you do any baking at all, that is one area where cutting down on salt can ruin a recipe if you don't know what all of the other components in the recipe are doing and compensating appropriately.
- tptacek 17y agoA lot of people say they can detect an "off" flavor in table salt, maybe because of the anticaking agents, maybe because of the iodine. I wouldn't write off the difference between table salt and kosher salt, even if you're salting before you cook. Using expensive salt before/during cooking though sounds crazy to me.
- Groxx 17y agoTry some unrefined salts before claiming it's identical to table salt. In the stuff I have, there are clods of red & grey minerals. Sticking your finger in & tasting a bit, you can extremely easily taste a difference. Dissolving it in water, you can see the precipitates, and easily taste a difference. Double-blind in all cases, compared against two other kinds of "regular" salt. I'm careful with what I eat. It's even easily detectable in clear soups. It's the flavor. Really. There is a difference. There's a definite marketing spin to try to sell it, but that doesn't imply there's no difference.
- tptacek 17y agoMass-market sea salt and kosher salt are the same thing. Buy whichever is cheaper. You're right that it's better for cooking than table salt (except in baking, where you cannot use it). This is otherwise not worth arguing about.