I keep reading that natural sea salt is better for you than regular salt. Does anyone know how they affect the body differently or why you should use the sea salt. I have been staying on a relatively low sodium and more natural food "diet" so that's why I am curious if the sea salt is actually better for you or if its just hype.
Sea salt generally has a courser grain, so a tsp of sea salt has less salt (and therefore less sodium) in it than regular salt, which is refined into very small particles. Sea salt also tends to be stronger in flavor than regular salt, so you don't need to use as much of it.
For baking, it's best to use regular table salt. For one thing, sea salt is usually expensive and the extra flavor you get with it is lost when baked. It's a waste of expensive salt; save your sea salt for finishing, when you can really taste the difference between it and table salt. Also, sea salt can't be substituted on a 1 for 1 basis with table salt because of the courser grain, so you aren't getting as much salt. This means that your recipe will turn out bland because it doesn't have enough salt. Also, table salt performs better in baked goods than sea salt. Stick with table salt for baking.
In terms of cooking other things, I use either table salt or kosher salt. Kosher salt is supposed to blend better than table salt and it's also a courser grain than table salt, so again less sodium and more forgiving if you accidently put in too much. Especially when recipes call for "salt to taste," I find kosher salt to be a little easier to work with. But if the recipe calls for an exact amount of salt, unless the amount of salt called for seems excessive, I'll often use table salt because that's clearly the amount of salt needed and I'm not getting that amount of salt if I use kosher salt.
For finishing (i.e., sprinkling salt on cooked food) I always use sea salt. It has a much more interesting flavor than table salt so it adds depth to your foods and then there's the benefit of it having less sodium per volume.
I like sea salt or Kosher salt. Of the two, I'd say Kosher is nicer than either sea or table salt. It's great for cooking (you can pinch it and sprinkle) or for topping food--but it tends to have a stronger flavor (I think) than table salt. Table salt is also usually iodized (they add iodine to it), which was something that the government started doing I think almost a century ago to prevent goiter, which was a problem then. It isn't a problem now, so I skip the table salt and use Kosher or Sea instead--it's tastier.
Table salt is also usually iodized (they add iodine to it), which was something that the government started doing I think almost a century ago to prevent goiter, which was a problem then. It isn't a problem now
Precisely because table salt is iodized. See this Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitre
it says there some doctors worry that goiter may make a comeback as more recipes call for plain non-iodized salt.
I read somewhere that recipes now call for kosher salt because it doesn't have any additives, iodine or anti-clumping agents, it's just pure salt
I've been using Kosher salt for years. Sea salt is very hard and coarse and my salt grinder doesn't like it. Kosher grinds up really fine in my grinder so you don't get the grittiness that regular salt can get. Other than that, I really can't tell much difference in taste--but that may be because I don't use salt all that much!
For the most part, I don't think health is as much an issue as taste. Until recently, I only used two forms of salt - iodized table salt, and uniodized pickling salt. I had a lot left over from pickling, so I started using the pickling salt for table use. I thought it tasted better, but it clumped more easily.
Recently, I found some sea salt, and sea salt blends in a liquidator store that gets in a lot of gourmet shop stock. I love the stuff, but while I'll pay .69 for a small spice jar of the stuff, I wouldn't pay the $6 retail. Then again, I am not generally a salt fan, and have even had to be encouraged by my doctor to eat MORE salt, because my blood sodium levels are always on the low side (a combined result of not caring for salt and therefore eating a low sodium diet, and a blood pressure medication that is potassium reserving and thus sodium depleting).
I just love 3FC, and the interesting & *smart* people here!
What a great question and good info in the replies!
I use sea salt with a built in grinder, only because the chefs on TV Food Network use it. I rarely use it, as most foods are salty enough for me without adding more.
I never would have known that table salt is better for baking. Thanks!
Regular salt versus sea salt
