In This ArticleView AllIn This ArticleWhat Is Kosher Salt?How Kosher Salt Is Typically UsedDiamond Crystal vs. Morton Kosher SaltExpert Tips for Using Kosher Salt
In This ArticleView All
View All
In This Article
What Is Kosher Salt?
How Kosher Salt Is Typically Used
Diamond Crystal vs. Morton Kosher Salt
Expert Tips for Using Kosher Salt
Close
Photo:images courtesy brands, design: Eatingwell
images courtesy brands, design: Eatingwell
Before I knew a thing about food, I thought I knew everything there was to know about salt. It came in a little glass shaker in tiny granules and tasted slightly like metal. The purpose of salt was to make food taste salty. Beyond that, salt and all it stood for held little value to me. Why season food with salt when you could just as easily use hot sauce or soy sauce or a spice rub?
10 Delicious Salt-Free Seasoning Blends to Help You Cut Down on Sodium, According to a Food Writer
I was, perhaps, never more wrong about anything in my life, though I also used to despiseseltzer water, too.
What was I so wrong about? Multiple things, but the first being the presumption that all salt was the same—namely, iodized table salt. That’s the stuff you find in the shaker that tastes like metal (it’s the iodine, in case you were wondering). My second mistake was selling salt short—an easy thing to do when you know nothing about it or how it works.
Sea Salt vs. Table Salt: What’s the Difference?
It would be quite a few years until I was let loose into the heat of the kitchen and learned—rather quickly—that the purpose of salt is to enhance and bloom the natural flavors of food. I certainly never imagined I’d be so particular about salt that I’d be writing an article about its undoubtedly most versatile and most important form: kosher salt.
Kosher salt gets its name from its historical use in koshering meat—drawing out blood according to Jewish dietary laws. Unlike table salt, kosher salt is composed of larger, flat flakes that are easier to pick up and sprinkle. In a restaurant kitchen, you’ll never see salt poured from a box or bottle directly onto food. It’s poured into a vessel like a salt box or a plastic deli container first so that it can be plucked and sprinkled from the pinch of the fingers.
Kosher salt doesn’t contain iodine, like table salt does. It tastes clean and bright, and as Samin Nosrat, author ofSalt, Fat, Acid, Heat, says, “Hopefully like the summer sea.” This clean flavor makes kosher salt the only choice for most seasoning purposes for the pros.
What Is Kosher Salt and How Is It Different from Table Salt?
It dissolves much more quickly than dense table salt. The quicker your salt dissolves, the quicker you’ll know how seasoned your food is. With quickly dissolving salt, you run a much lower risk of overseasoning your food, because you know almost immediately how much salt is in your food.
7 Things That Can Happen to Your Body When You Eat Too Much Salt
Diamond Crystal vs. Morton: A Tale of Two Salts
When it comes to kosher salt, Diamond Crystal and Morton are the two dominant brands in the market, each with unique properties that affect their performance. Though both are kosher salts, they couldn’t have more different crystal shapes, textures, flavor intensities and salinities.
Shape and Texture
Diamond Crystal’s flakes are produced through a patented process called “rolling evaporation,” which creates large, irregular and hollow flakes. The flakes are light and airy, which makes it easy to grab a pinch and distribute evenly. The softer, more delicate texture of Diamond Crystal makes it ideal for seasoning food directly with your hands.
Flavor Profile and Salinity
Believe it or not, the crystal structure of your salt determines how salty your salt tastes. The structures of Diamond Crystal and Morton are night and day.
How to Use Each Brand
Given its light texture and less aggressive saltiness, Diamond Crystal is great for seasoning meat, finishing dishes and baking. It’s easy to control and extremely forgiving. I’ve added more Diamond Crystal than I should have on more than one occasion, and the final dish still came out just fine. If you prefer a salt that gives you a bit more leeway, Diamond Crystal is the horse to bet on.
Morton’s denser crystals are well-suited for situations where you need a more concentrated salt flavor in a smaller volume, like when you find yourself brining, curing or salting water for pasta. Measure Morton carefully and use it conservatively.
Substituting Diamond Crystal and Morton Kosher Salt
If a recipe specifies Diamond Crystal but you have only Morton on hand (or vice versa), you’ll need to adjust to avoid oversalting. Here’s a conversion rule I follow if I ever find myself in this situation:
When in doubt, err on the conservative side. You can always add more salt, but you can’t take out what you’ve already put in.
That said, Diamond Crystal is noticeably harder to find in grocery stores (I order mine online). That might make it less practical for you.
You’ll have a much easier time finding Morton, and it’s not a bad choice. Generally speaking, it can be a better choice than Diamond Crystal when you’re making something that requires aggressive salinity.
Chefs tend to have strong preferences for one over the other, and I’ve worked for those of both camps. You won’t find anything but Diamond Crystal in the dry pantry at the late and great James Kent’s Saga and Crown Shy in Lower Manhattan. On the other hand, we worked only with Morton when I was getting my chops on the line at Michael Gulotta’s Maypop in New Orleans.
Either way, as long as you’ve got either of these boxes in your pantry, you’re cooking with gas. But kosher salt is no different to any good tool: just make sure you know how to use it.
Was this page helpful?Thanks for your feedback!Tell us why!OtherSubmit
Was this page helpful?
Thanks for your feedback!
Tell us why!OtherSubmit
Tell us why!
