Salt: A Cheat Sheet

Starting a controversial dialogue about salt is more difficult that you’d think. You might discuss rising obesity, falling pork bellies futures, destructive wheat farming techniques and vegetarian myths, but get angry at someone because she used the wrong form of Sodium Chloride and all you get is a funny look and your popcorn taken away.

Here is a quick cheat sheet overview:

Morton’s Iodized Salt Everyone knows that these hard little cubes (When It Rains It Pours, apparently) can only be used for baking and chemical uses. Right?

Kosher salt An excellent cheap default, but using it doesn’t mean that you are free of all brackish responsibility. As table salt, everything still tastes better with…

Ordinary sea salt It might seem decent but in reality it’s been subjected to washing, forced drying, and possibly bleached- all of which kill the pretty (and delicious) crystal shape.

Fleur de Sel A much better bet, this well-known stuff is made in pans with sea water. It has the original magnesium and potassium you crave from your salt on cold winter nights.

“Hand Harvested” Sea Salt. The ultimate saline fix. This stuff has almost no pollutants and is collected with wooden tools to keep the crystal from breaking up. When you eat it- probably by the deliriously giddy spoonful when no one is looking- it should taste slightly damp.

Halite Is used to melt the snow and kill your garden. It is for the road, not your mouth. No topping your pretzels with Halite.

Oddly colored salts touted as “gourmet” All the color means is that they are not pure. Clay is pretty to look at but doesn’t really help the taste.

I highly recommend the aptly named book "Salt: A World History” by Mark Kurlansky if you wish to further feed your salt fettish. The man knows that of which he speaks.