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Here’s a challenge: Name a more versatile ingredient than salt, one you use more often than this ubiquitous balancer and enhancer of flavors. Chances are you can't.
We all have our go-to salt. Maybe you have more than one. But if you don't know the difference between them, if you instinctively reach for the same box at the grocery store because other salts—and there are many—look fancy or unfamiliar or unnecessary, it’s worth exploring alternatives. Knowing how various types of salt will perform in your kitchen (including changing textures, flavors, and levels of saltiness) can only improve your cooking, allowing you to choose the best salt for any situation.
Our guide: Mark Bitterman, author of the James Beard Award-winning Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes. The salt we rely on for day-to-day cooking just scratches the surface. You've heard of fleur de sel? His book details 14 types from Brittany in France, the Philippines, and beyond.
But back to our daily standard: In the Epicurious Test Kitchen, Diamond Crystal kosher salt reigns supreme. All of our original recipes are developed and tested using this kitchen MVP. (More on why we love it below.) But we also know that DC isn’t available everywhere, and that you may prefer a different brand—such as Morton’s kosher salt—or you may prefer sea salt instead of kosher salt. Below you’ll find a salt conversion chart displaying the differences in weights and measurements for many popular salt brands found at grocery stores in the US. But before we get into that, let’s learn a little more about the many varieties of salt available to you.
The main varieties of salt
There are two different kinds of salt, broadly speaking: sea or evaporative salt (which comes from saltwater) and rock salt (which comes from the land).
Most of the world’s rock salt never makes it into the kitchen; it’s for industrial use, such as salting icy roads. The kind for old-fashioned ice cream makers is so named by manufacturers because it's rocky, not necessarily because it’s rock salt, Bitterman told us. "It could be an evaporative salt. It could be anything," he said.
Sea salt is produced by evaporating seawater in open pans or by boiling. Sea salt includes the popular kosher salt and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, delicate fleur de sel. There are many nuances in between.
A closer look at cooking salt
You can think of cooking salt in terms of Big Salt and artisan salt.
Big Salt is the bulk of what's sold in supermarkets and what's often in our pantries at home. It is highly refined, removed of impurities, and is harvested by the ton with big machinery. And it's sold cheap.
Artisan salt is what you'll find in specialty markets and at well-stocked grocery stores. If it looks like it was made by hand, it probably was, Bitterman said. This includes salt that’s been smoked or blended with other ingredients for even more of a flavor punch. And yes, it can get pricey.
Put another way: Artisan salt is sea salt, but not all sea salt is artisan.
The different types of salt used in cooking
Here is a short list of salts, both refined and artisan, that you're most likely to come across when shopping in the US.
Kosher salt. Hands-down the all-purpose favorite of chefs and home cooks (and Epicurious editors!) for its coarse, uniform, easy-to-pinch granules. It's industrially produced by boiling off brine that’s pumped in and back out of a salt deposit. It is not kosher-certified; the name refers to how the salt crystals draw out moisture in the meat koshering process. Kosher salt is never iodized, but it may include anti-caking agents.
Table salt. Otherwise known as the stuff in salt shakers on tables across America. This industrially produced salt is refined to about 99 percent sodium chloride, and often contains trace amounts of calcium silicate (a mineral) and dextrose (a form of sugar) to prevent clumping. Iodine was added to salt in the 1920s to address iodine deficiency in the US, but Americans have long been iodine sufficient—not necessarily because of iodized salt. You can also get your fix by eating iodine-rich seafood, eggs, and other foods. Still, this nutritional supplement serves a need among some iodine-deficient populations. Because iodized salt can lend foods a metallic taste, we don’t recommend it for cooking.
Sea salt. Much of what's generically labeled "sea salt" is industrially processed from evaporated seawater. Harvesting is mechanized and removes most of the salt’s natural trace minerals. Commercial brands are inexpensive and often contain anti-caking agents, Bitterman said.
Fleur de sel. French for "flower of salt," this is the crème de la crème of sea salt, scraped by hand as it forms on the surface of a salt evaporation pond. It's been produced this way for centuries in France. Irregular, delicate crystals are moist and mineral-rich. It is ideal as a finishing salt.
Sel gris. "Grey salt" in French, sel gris sometimes goes by the name Celtic sea salt. It’s unrefined, raked from the bottom of a salt pond, and coarser than fleur de sel with a satisfying crunch. Bitterman recommends it as a superb all-around cooking salt.
Flake salt. Another chef favorite, flake salt is produced by simmering seawater or by solar evaporation. It forms in delicate flakes or pyramidal shapes that break into thin, irregular fragments. Maldon is a popular brand. Bitterman favors this as a punchier finishing salt than fleur de sel since the large flakes can provide substantial crunch and vibrant pops of saltiness.
Himalayan pink salt. This falls into that tiny percentage of rock salt that's actually used in cooking. Often used in block or slab form as a cooking surface, it can be processed into coarse or fine grains and used for seasoning or finishing. The color comes from traces of iron oxide, which gives pink salt a subtly sweet flavor. Don’t confuse this with pink curing salt, a preservative used in making charcuterie, which should not be used as a seasoning.
Black salt. There are three types of salt commonly called “black salt.” The first refers to a combination of sea salt and volcanic clay or activated charcoal, sometimes called Hawaiian or black lava salt. It has a smoky taste and is used primarily as a finishing salt. Black salt may also refer to kala namak or Himalayan black salt, which is actually a dark pink color. This is a rock salt found in parts of South Asia; it has a sulfurous aroma and savory taste, which some cooks use to add an eggy flavor to dishes. Both of these salts have a high mineral content, which contributes to their strong flavors. In Russia, black salt refers to a combination of sea salt and burned bread that’s ground and used as a finishing salt.
Pickling salt. More of a marketing term than anything else, pickling or canning salt is usually fine grained and free of anti-caking agents or other additives. Those additions found in some other types of salt, while safe for consumption, can cause brines to turn cloudy, and add bitterness to or discolor whatever you’re preserving. For what it’s worth, our favorite kosher salt, Diamond Crystal, is also free of additives.
How the salt you choose affects your cooking
Because they employ different methods of production, each salt brand produces crystals that are distinct in size and structure. (View them in all their microscopic glory here.) What that means is that 1 teaspoon of Diamond Crystal is not the same measurement as 1 teaspoon of Morton kosher. DC’s crystals are larger, so it takes fewer of them to fill measuring spoons; 1 teaspoon of Diamond Crystal kosher salt weighs 3 grams. A single teaspoon of Morton kosher, by contrast, weighs about 5 grams. One teaspoon of Morton table (iodized) salt weighs about 7 grams. And while 2 grams may not sound like much of a difference, it can be the equivalent of ½ teaspoon of salt. Depending on the recipe, that may be enough to make a dish go from bland in one direction to overly salted in the other.
A note on weights: 3 grams of coarse salt equals the same level of salinity as 3 grams of fine salt or 3 grams of flaky salt. So if a metric baking recipe calls for 3 grams of Diamond Crystal kosher salt, you can substitute with 3 grams of any salt you like. For a recipe that only lists volume measurements, you’ll have to do a little math if you want to substitute one brand of salt for another.
To make it easier, we’ve put together a salt conversion table outlining a few of the most common salt brands found in American grocery stores, including coarse sea salt, fine sea salt, and top kosher salt brands. Use it to decipher the correct amount of salt for any recipe whenever DC isn’t the brand you have on hand.
How long does salt last?
Salt never gets old. We're talking literally here. "I have Himalayan salt that's 600 million years old," Bitterman said.
He suggests storing delicate salts in an airtight container to block humidity, which can mess with salt's supple texture. Glass is better at this than plastic.
Refined salts such as kosher salt contain anti-caking agents, so there's no need to worry about storage and texture loss.
