 INGREDIENTS

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A Guide to Salt, the World’s Most

Popular Food
Everything you need to know about the vast and varied world of
edible salt, including the differences between all the types of
salt you'll see on the market.

BY
CAITLIN PENZEYMOOG

CAITLIN PENZEYMOOG

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Caitlin PenzeyMoog grew up in a spice shop and wrote On

Spice: Advice, Wisdom, and History with a Grain of
Saltiness (2019). She was the managing editor at the A.V.
Club for five years.
Learn about Serious Eats' Editorial Process
Updated June 26, 2023
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Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

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IN THIS ARTICLE
 How Salt Is Processed
 Sea Salt
 Hawaiian Salt
 Table Salt
 Kosher Salt
 Himalayan Pink Salt
 Flake Salt
 Slab Salt
 Rock Salt
 Pickling Salt
 Kala Namak
 Infused and Seasoned Salts
 How to Use Different Salts
Almost 2,000 years ago, the Roman naturalist and
philosopher Pliny the Elder said, “Heaven knows, a civilized
life is impossible without salt,” and it’s safe to say nothing
has changed. Across the world, salt is prized for the way it
makes food of any kind taste better, no matter if it’s simple
buttered noodles, a slab of watermelon, or expensive beef
tartare.

Salt is a flavor “potentiator;” it doesn’t add flavor of its own

so much as bring out the desirable flavors in other foods. It
makes rich foods taste richer and meaty foods meatier, and
it also has the ability to ameliorate bitter flavors.

Of course, humans crave salt in part because we need an

element contained within it to survive. Salt is, chemically
speaking, an ionic compound made up of sodium and
chlorine. Our bodies need sodium in order to regulate and
balance fluid levels in our blood and around our cells, and it
plays a key role in nerve and muscle functions.

How Salt Is Processed

Salt is everywhere, and is one of the world’s oldest
commodities. It can come from seashores, where ocean
water is harvested and allowed to evaporate, leaving salt
behind. But it can also come from inland saltwater springs;
from ancient caves that were once part of or connected to
the ocean; and, in even rarer instances, from the shores of
landlocked lakes that are all that remains of ancient oceans
that once covered the land around them.

Today, much of the world’s salt comes from salt mines,

which use the same “room and pillar” technique traditionally
employed in coal mines. Drills bore holes into the earth, and
explosives are placed in the holes and detonated, creating
new rooms to excavate. When the mines are dug out, sturdy
pillars are left in place to hold up the ceiling. This means not
all of the salt is harvested, as some has to stay behind to
ensure the mines don’t collapse.
The most famous salt mine is the Khewra Salt Mine in
Pakistan, where all Himalayan pink salt is produced. The
huge mine doubles as a tourist attraction; parts of the mine
are so spacious that they resemble cathedrals, and it is
large enough to hold a food court and a mosque—all,
appropriately, made out of salt. Much of the work done by
machinery in other salt mines is done by hand in the Khewra
mine, with hand-cranked drills and men manually laboring to
excavate the caves. The pink-salt cave runs for miles
underground in the roots of the Himalayas.

Varieties of Salt
 Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

While there are many categories of salt, it’s important to

remember that all edible salt, no matter the color, moisture
content, or crystal size, is sodium chloride, and all salt
originates from the oceans and seas, even if it isn't
harvested directly from the water. The differences in types
of salt come from variation in production methods and trace
amounts of minerals, sulfates, soil sediments, algae, and
bacteria. Sometimes dyes and flavors are added after
harvesting to produce a colored or flavored salt—really, a
seasoning, passed off as a salt.

Salt can’t be "organic," as food and spices can, because it’s

a mineral and therefore isn’t organic material. (It may
sometimes be labeled “organic” to indicate that it doesn’t
contain anti-caking agents, but the term in its true meaning
doesn’t apply.) In a similar, often misleading vein, a lot of
marketing copy attempts to heighten the allure of small-
batch, rare, expensive salts, but what you’re getting is still
sodium chloride, despite any additions or exciting ads.

There are very subtle flavor differences between, say,

French gray sea salt and Himalayan pink salt, and they stem
from the very small percentage of salt's makeup (roughly
5%, generally speaking) that is not sodium chloride. While
some people claim they can taste the differences between
salts, most people can’t. (Max Falkowitz disputes this idea
somewhat in a 2011 article written for this site on
tasting specialty sea salts.)

If your tongue senses a difference between salts, it’s likely

picking up on attributes other than flavor—texture, surface
area, crystal structure—all of which are directly related to
the way a given salt is produced, not its origin.

Because salt crystals can take on any number of shapes, the

density of different salts can vary wildly. A tablespoon of
table salt is more dense than a tablespoon of kosher salt.
Crystals of table salt, small and uniform, will stack together
in a tight formation, with very little air in between. The
shape of kosher salt, on the other hand, makes the crystals
stack more like packing peanuts: The salt crystals don’t rest
side by side, and there are larger gaps between them, which
means the same mass of salt will occupy a greater volume.

The names we give to salt don’t usually adhere to a set of

standards, but instead reflect how we use them. Table salts
vary by brand, as do kosher salts—some have iodine, some
have anti-caking agents, some have neither. “Rock salt” can
be the salt that you put into salt grinders, or the stuff poured
on icy roads in the winter. "Sea salt," especially, is a name
that refers to the harvesting method and nothing else—in
fact, the culinary cachet attached to “sea salt” has led to
instances of mined salt carrying the label, as the term is not
regulated. (And, of course, it’s technically true.)

Sea Salt
 Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Using satellite view on Google Maps, you can see the salt
flats operating in Guérande, France, much as they have for
hundreds of years. Streams of water from the ocean are
channeled into rectangular pools, and a sluice system
moves the salty water from one pool to the next; the water
is allowed to evaporate, and the saline level increases.

The traditional French method for drying salt produces two

kinds of salt: sel gris, or gray sea salt, and fleur de sel. Gray
sea salt is raked up from the depths of ponds known as
oeillets, and it takes on its characteristic hue via contact
with the gray clay that lines the bottom of the ponds.

Unlike other sea-salt producers elsewhere, the French

choose not to dry their salt completely; as a result,
according to Mark Bitterman’s book Salted: A Manifesto on
the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes, French
gray sea salt has a moisture content of about 13%, giving it
an almost soft consistency. Gray sea salt clusters in chunks,
making it a finishing salt that’s both attractive and practical,
as its relatively wide crystals spread easily over surfaces.

Fleur de sel (literally "flower of salt") is produced using the

same French-seaside sluicing system, but instead of being
raked up from the bottom of the oeillets, it is harvested from
the water’s surface. At a certain point during the
evaporation process, the salt becomes so concentrated that
it forms fluffy crystals that float on top of the water. After
those crystals are harvested and dried, the salt is gray and
moist, just like sel gris, but the larger crystals have a
pronounced crunch.

Hawaiian Salt
 Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Hawaiian salt is like any other sea salt, harvested from the
ocean, but the last rounds of drying are completed in beds
dug into lava. The lava can be brick-red to black in color, so
you’ll see both “red Hawaiian salt” and “black Hawaiian salt”
on the market. These can also be called “volcanic” or “clay”
salt.

Adding charcoal can turn salt black in a way that's

reminiscent of salt dried in black lava beds, so a lot of
cheaper “black salt” is regular old sea salt with added
activated charcoal. Sometimes “black salt” looks dark
brown and black because other spices have been added or
cooked with the salt to turn it a darker shade.

Unlike French sea salts, Hawaiian salt is not moist but

totally dried. There’s no real regulation of these salts, so use
your judgment and discretion when buying colored salts.
Don’t assume that a salt billing itself as "Hawaiian" has
been dried using the traditional lava-bed methods.

Table Salt
There's no regulation of the term "table salt" either, but
table salt is what most people think of when they hear the
word "salt": the small, cubic, uniform crystals found in
saltshakers. Because of its grain size, table salt doesn’t do
as good a job of covering the surface area of foods as other,
crunchier salts, but the small shape of the crystals helps the
salt flow easily.

Some table salt comes from salt works on ocean shores,

where the brine is brought indoors and evaporated in large
metal pans. Some table salt is mined and added to water to
create a solution, which is then evaporated to form the
characteristic crystals of table salt. Still other producers
use a sifting method, simply breaking down large pieces of
salt and using a series of mesh screens of different sizes to
separate out the table-salt size we’re familiar with.

Some, but not all, table-salt makers add an anti-caking agent

so the salt doesn’t clump. This additive is typically silicon
dioxide, also known as silica, a naturally occurring
compound that absorbs moisture to stop the salt crystals
from sticking together, keeping the salt itself dry and free-
flowing. Other anti-caking agents, like tricalcium phosphate
and dextrose, are similarly used in tiny amounts and are
safe to consume.

Regardless of the compound, anti-caking agents make up

2% or less of the material in salt, and will be listed among
the ingredients. If the only ingredient listed is salt, there are
no anti-caking agents present.

Likewise, some (but not all) table salts contain iodine, a

nutrient that naturally occurs in salt but is removed during
the cleaning and drying process. The elimination of iodine
can cause real problems, as iodine deficiency can lead to
thyroid dysfunction in adults and intellectual disabilities in infants
and children whose mothers were iodine-deficient during pregnancy .

Since the 1920s, the US has added iodine back to table salt.
Today, iodine deficiency is less of a problem than it was in
the past, but some still suffer from a lack of iodine in the
diet. If your table salt doesn’t contain iodine, the label
should read something like “This salt does not contain
iodine, a necessary nutrient.”

Kosher Salt
 Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Kosher salt, on the other hand, loses its iodine during the
drying process and does not have it added back. The other
main difference between table and kosher salt is the shape
and size of the crystals; table salt is like icy hail compared
with the larger, fluffier snowflakes of kosher salt.

While the smaller crystals of table salt tend to bounce off

foods and settle into cracks, kosher salt melts on contact
with many foods, causing the crystals to stick. This
consequently means it covers the surface of foods more
evenly. Professional cooks tend to prize kosher salt’s
thicker, coarser texture, which makes it easier to pinch and
sprinkle over food. It’s an excellent all-purpose salt.

"Kosher salt" is so named because it was traditionally used

by butchers to ritually cleanse meat and make it kosher, in
accordance with Jewish dietary laws. Koshering, or "kashering,"
in addition to rinsing and removing blood from meat,
includes a step in which the meat is covered with a fine
layer of salt. Because the larger crystals of salt more easily
covered the surface of the meat and absorbed more liquid,
salt with a larger grain size became known as "kosher salt."

There isn’t a single, standard practice for producing kosher

salt, which becomes evident when you closely compare
Morton kosher salt and Diamond Crystal kosher salt, since
they have different densities. This difference doesn’t matter
if you’re using kosher salt to sprinkle on top of food, but it
can come into play in baking (and other) recipes if you use
volume to measure out salt instead of mass.

Morton kosher salt also contains the anti-caking agent

yellow prussiate of soda, or sodium ferrocyanide, while
Diamond Crystal does not. For more on kosher salt (plus a
chart detailing the various densities of common salts), see
Kenji's 2013 article on why kosher salt is better in many
cooking applications.
Himalayan Pink Salt
 Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

All Himalayan pink salt, as mentioned earlier, is excavated

from a single mine in Pakistan. The color comes from trace
elements, some of which are more concentrated in certain
parts of the mine. These differences give the salt a range of
hues, from pale pink to a deeper, almost beet-pink color.

It is perhaps because of its origins that some Westerners,

quick to exotify Eastern places like Pakistan and eager for
untapped sources of health benefits, have assigned near-
mystical powers to Himalayan pink salt. From pink-salt
lamps to salt-infused spa rooms, there’s no salt so fetishized
for reasons beyond its use in food than the pink kind from
the Himalayan foothills. Apart from its aesthetic value, some
claim that Himalayan pink salt is healthier to consume. It’s
important to remember that there is no scientific research
to back up any of these health claims.

While it may not be a panacea, Himalayan pink salt is one of

the very few colored salts that gain their colors naturally,
and it’s beautiful—it practically glows.

Himalayan pink salt can be as fine as table salt, or it can

come in chunks big enough to put in a salt grinder. Or it can
be bigger still, in slabs as large as plates and an inch thick,
which can be used to cook on. The food may absorb a bit of
the salt that's on the surface of these slabs, but the practice
of using them to heat food is more to put on a show than to
affect the food itself.

Flake Salt
 Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

"Flake salt" can mean a couple of different things, though, in

general, it refers to salt crystals with a large surface area.
Sometimes people refer to Morton kosher salt as flake salt
because of its flatness. The best-known "flake salt" is the
kind from Maldon in England, probably because the salt is
branded as “sea salt flakes.” But this distinct salt is not flat:
It has a pyramidal shape that’s brittle and crunchy, making it
an excellent finishing salt.

Slab Salt
"Slab salt" is the name given to those plate-like slabs of
Himalayan pink salt that food is cooked on; in some
restaurants, they're used to serve food. A slab of salt retains
heat well, so it can stay hot or cold for a long time. While the
term “slab salt” could be applied to any tray-like piece of
salt, it usually refers to mined slabs of Himalayan pink salt.

Rock Salt
 Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

The term “rock salt” simply refers to large chunks of salt,

and it can apply to large-sized salt produced for both
culinary and nonculinary uses. For example, it can be used
to display food, as with oysters Rockefeller; in ice-cream
making; and in baths. While rock salt made for nonculinary
uses may be safe to consume, it will not have gone through
the cleaning processes culinary salt undergoes, which get
rid of elements that may be unpleasantly bitter, like calcium.

This term also refers to the larger chunks of salt you

sometimes find in salt mills. Keep in mind that, unlike
pepper, which is ground to release its inner volatile oils and
flavor, all that happens to salt in a grinder is that the pieces
are made smaller.

“Rock salt” can also mean the salt used to melt ice on roads
—definitely not the kind you want mixing in your food.

Pickling Salt
Pickling salt, used in pickling and canning, is a very fine-
grained salt with no anti-caking agents or iodine, which will
make a brine cloudy. The small size of the grain allows
pickling salt to dissolve quickly into the brine.

Other salts can be substituted if they're likewise free of anti-

caking agents and iodine; Diamond Crystal kosher salt
makes a good pickling salt, while Morton kosher salt, as
already mentioned, contains an anti-caking agent and
therefore shouldn't be used in pickling. (And keep in mind
that salt sold as "pickling salt" will be much finer than
kosher salt, so you'll have to make up for the difference in
volume by adding more kosher salt than you would pickling
salt.)

Kala Namak
 Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Kala namak, also known as “Himalayan black salt,” has an

unmistakable and unique flavor. This mined salt from India is
cooked in a kiln, a process that changes the small amounts
of trace elements into more noticeable sulfurous
compounds, which makes the salt taste a little like
overcooked boiled eggs (some have described the flavor as
similar to rotten eggs). But the sulfurous flavor is muted
somewhat when used in dishes, and it appears frequently in
the many cuisines native to the Indian subcontinent, in spice
mixes like chaat masala and in condiments like raita.

Kala namak comes both in large chunks, which vary in color

from copper to deep caramel to black, and in ground form,
which varies in color from a lighter purple to a soft red.

Infused and Seasoned Salts

 Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Like kala namak, other salts are prepared or cooked to add

flavors. Smoked salts are like smoked meats: They absorb
the flavor of what they’re smoked with, just as a steak can
taste different when smoked over charcoal versus treated
wood. Often, smoked salts include other spices, and some
smoked salts are just salt coated in liquid smoke oil.

Seasoned salts (like the most famous seasoned salt of all,

Lawry’s) are spice mixes that contain added sugar and salt.

Many infused, flavored, and colored salts on the market are

the result of simply adding food dye or flavorings to the salt,
so a little skepticism on the part of the consumer is
necessary. Bacon-infused salt sounds good, but when would
you actually use it? Salts can be infused with aromatic
ingredients, like saffron, garlic, vanilla, and herbs; with
condiments, like sriracha; or even with truffles. Because salt
is a preservative, it’s easy to infuse flavors into salts—you
can even do it at home.

How to Use Different Salts

There are no rules for how to use salt. You may find you
enjoy a red Hawaiian salt on guacamole, but stick with a
large-flake salt on bread and butter. Personally, I use kosher
salt nine times out of 10, and save the colored, infused, and
large-flake salts to use as fun finishing salts at the table,
adding color and texture to the surface of foods. Play around
with different kinds of salts, and you’ll quickly discover
what's worth the expense and when a cheaper option is just
as good.

SEPTEMBER 2019

A previous version of this article contained the assertion

that charcoal and lava had similar chemical composition; we
regret the error.