In Brief:

Question: Would Healthy Holly buy sea salt?

Answer: Healthy Holly would _ but here’s how to avoid the marketing B.S. of “real” salt and keep from getting ripped off:

1) Sodium chloride is sodium chloride is sodium chloride.  But sea salts tend to lack some of the additives we see in table salts.  (Click “more” below for more info & background.)  There are lots of expensive salts out there on the market — $10 for 16 oz! — claiming that their trace minerals will make you healthier.  They do slenderize — but only your wallet.  Skip them.

If you like to use measuring spoons when cooking, or if you just want to buy one box of salt for both cooking and baking, use the inexpensive unrefined sea salt.

2) I use inexpensive unrefined sea salt (fine grain) for baking.  (It dissolves better than Kosher Salt because of the smaller grains.)

3) If I have any “fancy” salts with large crystals, like a $40 tin of fleur de sel someone gave me as a gift, I’ll never cook with it but rather just sprinkle that on sliced tomatoes or on a roast as a finishing touch at the table.

Background:

Dear Healthy Holly,

I was at a fancy grocery store today and came across a “salt bar.”  They had dozens of kinds of salts _ rock salts, sea salts, Himalayan pink salts, flaked salts, fleur de sel, kosher salts…And the prices? You don’t want to know.

It was a bit overwhelming.  The only salt they didn’t seem to carry was super-cheap table salt.  I guess that’s passe.

My question: what the heck type of salt should I buy?  Are these new salts just trendy, or are they really healthier?

Thanks!

J in Miami

Hi, J!

I think I’ve seen that salt bar of which you speak.  Yes, it can be overwhelming to navigate.

Let’s get back to the basics:

1)  Salt comes from the sea, and it also comes from mines.  (That’s where we get the phrase, “Back to the salt mines.”)

2) All salt — at least the kind you’d want to eat — is largely made up of one chemical compound: sodium chloride. And when I say largely, I mean between 97 and 99 percent.  So, from a purely chemical perspective, sodium chloride is sodium chloride is sodium chloride: there’s no big difference between sea salt and “earth” salt and Zoroastrian Swoombadabada Ich Floozie salt.

3) HOWEVER, there is a difference between cheap “regular” table salt and other salts — additives. The granulated table salts (like the cheap one you referred to and likely grew up with) are only about 98% sodium chloride: they usually need anti-caking agents and other humectants added.  And, since the 1920s here in the U.S., “iodized salt” has contained an extra additive — potassium iodine — to help prevent what food/science writer Harold McGee calls a “devastating” deficiency.  (Iodine is essential to our thyroids; too little can lead to goiter — an enlarged thyroid — and can impair fetal brain development.)

4) Professional chefs often claim that these additives contribute to an off-taste, especially when combined with most tap water.  I’ve tested this myself and haven’t really seen a difference.  From a health perspective, remember that when we say “additives,” we’re talking about tiny amounts here.  Miniscule.  And that these additives have been used for decades without, so far as I can tell, any studies proving long-term ill effects.

Still, some people just don’t want to ingest the anti-caking agents Yellow Prussiate of Soda or Prussian Blue, despite approval from the FDA and despite ministrations from the Salt Institute that such agents are non-toxic.  I tend to use other salts, but if I’m traveling, I have no problem using regular ‘ol granulated, iodized table salt.

5) Enter the fancy salt industry.

6) Remember that there is no major chemical difference between sea salt and mined salts.  (And even some sea salts contain additives — check the label.)  The differences in the salts you see at upscale grocery stores have to do with texture – the size of the crystals.  And that’s just a matter of personal preference.

Some manufacturers claim their sea salts have a more refined or better flavor than others, but that’s B.S., because by the time you cook with those salts, any alleged delicate preciousness has been muted and overtaken.

7)  So — what to buy?

If you’d like to avoid the additives and buy something other than “regular” granulated salt, here’s a quick run-down of the general differences:

• KOSHER SALT, which is manufactured under rabbinical supervision, is a favorite among cooks because it’s free of additives and because you can pick it up with your fingers easily.  (The grains are large because of the way the salt has been dried.)  One caveat: if you do use kosher salt in cooking, know that because the grains are so big, you can’t really pack them well into a measuring spoon.  It takes about twice as much kosher salt (in measuring) as regular salt to get the same flavor.  The prudent thing to do:  start small and add in increments until you’ve got a handle on it.  Remember that you can always add more salt, but that it’s not easy to take it away.
• UNREFINED SEA SALT is my choice for cooking and baking because I can buy a big generic bottle and be done with it.  Even though it comes from sea water, it’s best to think of this as an agricultural product: it’s tilled in large beds over a number of years, the sea water concentrating the flavor.  It’s called “unrefined” because it hasn’t been washed of its trace minerals.  I can’t claim to taste those trace minerals, but I do find unrefined sea salt to be cheaper than refined sea salt.  I tend to buy the “fine” kind rather than the sea salt sold in large grains, as it’s more like the table salt I grew up with.
• FLEUR DE SEL is sea salt from the beds of southwest France.   It usually takes the shape of delicate flakes, making it a great choice to sprinkle onto hot focaccia bread or tomatoes or a gorgeous roast.  (The larger surface area packs more of a taste “punch,” whereas fine-grained salts tend to taste “harsh” when sprinkled onto baked goods because it’s hard to spread them evenly.)  I can get a similar, if not as stellar, effect with sprinkling kosher salt on finished goods, so to me, it’s not worth the money to buy fleur de sel or any of the other highly expensive salts.  But if you do find yourself in possession of a tin, never use that salt in cooking.  It is a finishing agent.  Period.

Hope this helps!  Leave your questions below, or send an email to healthyholly at the name of this site dot com.

~ Holly

Further Reading:

http://www.saltinstitute.org/Issues-in-focus/Food-salt-health/Iodized-salt-other-additives/Additives-use-in-salt

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee

Tagged as: healthy holly, salt