Salt: The Most Important Ingredient in Your Kitchen

Salt is arguably the world’s most important chemical compound.  It has led to the rise and fall of civilizations, wars, and revolutions.  The ability to produce, trade, and transport salt enabled humans to settle anywhere on the planet and preserve food through long winters or hot summers with no refrigeration.  Biologically, salt is necessary for the proper functioning of nerves and muscles and regulates fluids across cell barriers.  Salt is a source of chloride, an important electrolyte.  Salt is the most important ingredient in your kitchen.  It amplifies and distributes flavors and has several important and unusual properties affecting your cooking.

Salt is soluble in water.

This means that you can dissolve salt in water.  This is important for making a brine, and stocks.  Note: Sugar works this way as well.

Saltwater is heavier than fresh water which means if you combine a heavily salted solution and try to dilute it with fresh water but don’t stir well, you may end up with a layer of saltwater sitting at the bottom of the container with fresher water on top.

If you boil saltwater or a seasoned stock, water will evaporate and your stock will get saltier and saltier as it boils away.  This is why I recommend using low-sodium or unsalted homemade stock or broth for sauces and reductions that you can season toward the end of the process.  Otherwise, it may end up too salty.

Salt seeks equilibrium through a process called osmosis.

Does that sound technical and complicated?  It’s not really.  Here is a practical way to think about it:  If you sprinkle salt all over a large roast and let it hang out like that for a while, at some point that salt will work its way to the cells in the middle of the roast until the entire thing is equally salty all over.  The point in time that this happens depends on the size of the object being salt.  The bigger and denser it is, the longer it takes.  If you add other seasonings with the salt like garlic and herbs, the salt will carry those flavors with it as it travels on its course from highly salty areas to less salty areas.  It’s pretty awesome that way.

Here’s another example of salt doing the osmosis thing: You make a big batch of soup with big chunks of potatoes and carrots and other stuff and your broth is perfectly seasoned.  The next day you have some leftovers for lunch and find that it now tastes under-seasoned.  That’s because the salt in the broth has worked itself into the potatoes and carrots and all the other ingredients you have in it and left the broth less salty.  No big deal, just add some more salt to your liking.

Salt lowers freezing points.

If you pull ice out of a 10 F freezer and sprinkle salt on it, it will turn to liquid but still be around 10 F.  This is why we use rock salt when we make ice cream in an old fashion churn ice cream maker.  Water conducts heat (or in this case cold) much faster than air, so it is advantageous to have water that is below freezing if you want to freeze something quickly.

If you put something very salty in your freezers like bouillon paste or demi-glaze, it may not freeze solid.  It doesn’t mean there is something wrong with your freezer.  

Salt prevents the growth of harmful bacteria and encourages the growth of salt-tolerant bacteria that we like to eat.

Of all the amazing things that salt does in our kitchens, this one may be my favorite because it makes cured meats, cheese, and pickles possible and what would life be like without those things?  Salt allows us to store food outside of refrigeration while keeping it safe to eat.  It also encourages the growth of lactobacillus, the bacteria responsible for fermented pickled foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, fish sauce, old-fashion pickles, and so on.  Lactobacillus is also one of the primary bacteria found in yogurt and some cheeses.  Its also present in some cured meats, sourdough starters, and many other things.

There are several types of salt that I rely on in the kitchen.

All-purpose salt: for curing, pickling, and general seasoning.

If you plan on pickling, canning, and curing, this salt should have no other ingredients like iodine or anti-caking agents.  If you don’t plan on doing any of those kitchen activities than that is a personal preference.  I do not prefer the taste of iodine or anti-caking agents.  At the restaurant I use Giusto’s Vita Grain Fine Sea Salt because of its purity, it’s availability from my vendors and the price is great for the quality.  At home, I use Diamond Crystal Salt which is widely available at most grocery stores or online.  It’s a much coarser salt.

You want to find a salt you like and stick with it so you can get the feel for it.  This means that your all-purpose salt should be readily available at your grocery store.  Or you should be loyal enough to your salt that you commit to ordering it online or going out of your way to resupply.  Keep this salt on your kitchen counter in a salt well big enough to take a 4 finger pinch out of (I use an 8 oz ramekin).  Salt shakers and grinders are fine on the table, but not in the kitchen.  Remember, this salt is your workhorse and should not cost more than $1-$2 per pound.  

One more thing.  Under-seasoning is probably the number 1 mistake home cooks make and though easier to fix than over seasoning it still results in an unimpressive end result.  A lot of people don’t realize the food is under-seasoned and fixable, they just think it is boring and bland and eat it as is.  Using a salt well will really improve the quality of your dish.  If it seems like your dish is missing something or just meh, it probably needs more salt.  Add a little bit, taste it, add a little bit more, taste it again, did it get better?

Finishing salt.

These salts are relatively expensive ($10 per pound or more), they are used at the end of preparation while plating and bring unusual textural qualities or mineral flavors.  I use Maldon Flake Sea Salt primarily because I love the big pyramid shaped flakes that melt on your tongue or crunch between your teeth and the taste is both light and intensely salty.  Sel Gris is a French sea salt with remnants of clay and other minerals that give it an unusual appearance and flavor.  It tends to be on the damp side which I find makes it a bit harder to use. Fluer De Sel is another fine French sea salt that is clean tasting and crunchy with some algal remnants.  Himalayan Pink Salt claims to contain over 80 trace minerals and iron.  There are many other great finishing salts out there so have fun and play around with them. 

If salt comes in a grinder, I would consider it a finishing salt, because grinders are useless for your general seasoning needs.  Beware though, in my opinion, the grinder package is often a marketing ploy to take run-of-the-mill all-purpose type salts and elevate them to the price range of finishing salt.  

Curing salt.

In the olden days, people used potash to cure meat as it is a natural source of sodium nitrate/nitrite.  This was a fairly imprecise method.  Today we use sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate to cure.  You buy these chemical compounds premixed to a very precise ratio with regular salt.  These salts are dyed pink so as not to be mistaken with regular salt.  This is important because accidentally consuming these in the wrong quantity could be fatal. I refer to these salts generally as pink curing salt 1 or 2 (not to be confused with Himalayan Pink Salt), but they are sold under different names like InstaCure 1 and InstaCure 2, DQ Curing Salt 1 and DQ Curing Salt 2, Prague Powder 1 and Prague Powder 2, etc.  NOTE: If you search for curing salt, Himalayan Pink Salt will come up because both tend to contain the keyphrase “pink salt”.  To be clear, the two are not the same and you cannot use Himalayan Pink Salt for Curing Salt!

Curing Salt 1: salt mixed with sodium nitrite (6.25%).

Pink Curing Salt #1 is for curing meat that gets cooked like bacon, hams, duck confit, etc.

Curing Salt No. 2: salt mixed with both sodium nitrite (6.25%) and sodium nitrate (1%).

Pink Curing Salt #2 is for curing meat that gets air-dried like salami, and coppa.  It’s not necessary for whole muscle air-dried cured meats like lomo or prosciutto but some people choose to use them for their effect on color and flavor.  Sodium nitrate is like a time-release version of sodium nitrite.  It converts to sodium nitrite over time giving you added protection against botulism and other nasties over a prolonged curing process. 

NOTE: There’s a lot of products out there that claim to have “No Nitrates Added”.  This is not really true.  These products contain things like celery extract which are a natural source of nitrates.  So just because there are commercial “Nitrate Free” products doesn’t mean you should try to omit nitrates in your home-made salami.

Not only do these salt compounds prevent botulism toxin from forming (which can kill you), they give cured meats the rosy hue that we associate with them and make them taste better by preventing oxidation. 

When we first started our gourmet meat business in 2010 there was a big scare about Nitrates and the no-nitrate trend was just picking up steam.  It was frustrating answering the same questions over and over again at Farmer’s Markets and sometimes being treated like we were trying to poison people for using an ingredient that improves safety (and flavor and color) and has been used for thousands of years in this traditional food craft.  A couple of years ago, the questions about nitrates dwindled and were replaced with questions about gluten… so it goes.