Kosher salt

Based on Wikipedia: Kosher salt

The Salt That Changed American Cooking

Every professional kitchen in America has a container of it within arm's reach. Home cooks who consider themselves serious about food won't use anything else. It's become so ubiquitous in recipes that using regular table salt almost feels like a faux pas.

We're talking about kosher salt—though the name is a bit misleading.

This coarse, flaky salt didn't earn its name because it's certified kosher (though some brands are). The name comes from its traditional use in the Jewish practice of kashering meat—drawing blood out of freshly slaughtered animals through a process called dry brining. The salt for kashering became, simply, kashering salt, which eventually shortened to kosher salt.

How Kosher Salt Conquered American Kitchens

The rise of kosher salt is a fascinating story of how professional habits become home cooking norms—and how television shapes what we consider proper technique.

In the 1980s, restaurant chefs started gravitating toward kosher salt for a simple, practical reason: you can pick it up with your fingers. The coarse grains are easy to grab from a salt cellar and distribute evenly across food. Try doing that with fine table salt and you'll end up with clumps in some spots and bare patches in others.

Then came the Food Network in the 1990s.

Suddenly, cooking was entertainment. And kosher salt looked better on camera. Those large crystals catching the light as they fall from a chef's fingers onto a beautiful piece of salmon—that's television magic. Table salt, by comparison, is essentially invisible.

But the real tipping point came with influential cookbooks. J. Kenji López-Alt's The Food Lab and Samin Nosrat's Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat didn't just mention kosher salt in passing. They devoted entire paragraphs to explaining why it was superior to table salt. For home cooks eager to cook like professionals, switching to kosher salt became a marker of seriousness—what linguists might call a "shibboleth," a practice that signals membership in a particular group.

The Internet Recipe Revolution

There's another factor that pushed kosher salt into American kitchens: food blogs.

Before the internet, recipes could get away with vague instructions like "salt to taste." But online readers are demanding. They leave comments. They ask questions. "How much salt exactly? What kind of salt?"

Recipe writers responded by specifying measurements—"one teaspoon of kosher salt"—and the salt they specified was usually kosher salt because that's what they used themselves. This created a feedback loop: more recipes called for kosher salt, more home cooks bought it, and more recipe writers assumed their readers had it.

Since around 2010, American recipes have largely standardized on kosher salt as the default.

Why Kosher Salt Tastes Different

Here's something that might surprise you: kosher salt is chemically identical to table salt. Both are sodium chloride, the same compound your body needs for nerve function and fluid balance.

So why do many cooks insist it tastes better?

The answer lies in what's not in kosher salt. Table salt in the United States typically contains added iodine (a nutritional supplement to prevent thyroid problems), along with anti-caking agents and sometimes dextrose, a form of sugar. Some people find these additives give table salt a slightly metallic or off taste.

Kosher salt is usually just sodium chloride with perhaps a small amount of anti-caking agent. Nothing more. This purity appeals to cooks who want to taste their ingredients, not their salt.

The Hidden Danger of the Kosher Salt Revolution

But there's a public health concern lurking in America's kosher salt obsession.

Iodine deficiency is a serious medical problem. Without enough iodine, your thyroid gland can't produce the hormones that regulate your metabolism. In pregnant women, iodine deficiency can cause developmental problems in babies. Severe deficiency leads to goiter—a visible swelling of the thyroid gland in the neck.

In the early twentieth century, iodine deficiency was common in parts of the United States, particularly the Midwest and Great Lakes region where the soil contained little iodine. The solution was elegant: add iodine to table salt. Since everyone eats salt, everyone would get enough iodine.

It worked. Goiter rates plummeted.

But if home cooks switch entirely to kosher salt—which contains no iodine—they might not get enough of this essential nutrient. Public health experts worry that the kosher salt trend could reverse decades of progress in eliminating iodine deficiency.

The Measurement Problem

Here's where kosher salt gets tricky: not all kosher salt is created equal.

When you measure kosher salt by volume—say, a teaspoon—you're measuring how much space the salt takes up, not how much salt you're actually adding. And different brands of kosher salt have dramatically different densities.

The two major American brands illustrate this perfectly. Diamond Crystal kosher salt has hollow, pyramidal crystals that are relatively light and airy. Morton kosher salt has flat, plate-like crystals that pack together more densely. The result? A teaspoon of Morton kosher salt contains roughly twice as much sodium as a teaspoon of Diamond Crystal.

Twice as much.

This means that if a recipe was developed using Diamond Crystal (as many professional kitchen recipes are) and you substitute Morton, you'll oversalt your food dramatically. The reverse leaves food bland.

Professional bakers and meticulous cooks solve this problem by measuring salt by weight rather than volume. A gram of salt is a gram of salt, regardless of the crystal shape. But most home cooks don't own kitchen scales, so they're at the mercy of which brand the recipe developer happened to use.

The Science of Crystal Shapes

How do those different crystal shapes form?

Morton's flat crystals are made by mechanical compression. Salt naturally forms cubic crystals—think of the squared-off grains you see in a salt shaker. Morton takes those cubes and runs them between rollers, crushing them into flat flakes. It's an aggressive, industrial process that produces a dense, uniform product.

Diamond Crystal takes a different approach, using something called the Alberger process. Instead of crushing, this method slowly evaporates brine in a way that encourages salt crystals to grow into hollow pyramids. The crystals are delicate, airy structures—more like tiny architectural sculptures than compressed cubes.

These manufacturing differences explain why the same volume of each brand contains such different amounts of actual salt. Diamond Crystal's hollow pyramids trap air. Morton's compressed flakes pack tightly together.

Beyond Seasoning: Other Uses for Coarse Salt

Kosher salt isn't just for sprinkling on food. Its large, abrasive crystals make it surprisingly useful for cleaning.

Cast iron devotees know this trick well. Cast iron cookware can't go in the dishwasher, and soap can strip the seasoning—that black, naturally non-stick coating built up over years of use. Instead, you pour coarse salt into the pan, add a little oil, and scrub with a paper towel or brush. The salt crystals scour away stuck-on food without damaging the seasoning.

Unlike pumice-based cleansers or calcium carbonate scrubs, salt dissolves completely in water. You don't have to worry about gritty residue contaminating your next meal. Rinse the pan, dry it thoroughly, and it's ready for the next use.

The Ancient Art of Dry Brining

Let's return to where kosher salt got its name: kashering meat.

The Jewish dietary laws known as kashrut prohibit consuming blood. After an animal is slaughtered according to religious law (a process called shechita), the meat must be treated to remove any remaining blood. One traditional method is dry brining with coarse salt.

Here's how it works. First, the meat is soaked in cool water to soften it slightly. Then it's drained and placed on a rack or angled board. The entire surface is covered with a thin layer of coarse salt and left to sit for an hour or more.

During this time, something remarkable happens. The salt draws moisture out of the meat through osmosis—water naturally moves from areas of low salt concentration to areas of high salt concentration. This liquid, along with any blood, is pulled to the surface.

But the process doesn't stop there. As the meat sits, it begins to reabsorb some of that salty liquid. The salt penetrates the muscle fibers, seasoning the meat deeply rather than just on the surface. When you rinse off the salt rub before cooking, the meat is essentially pre-seasoned from within.

Secular cooks have adopted this technique for purely culinary reasons. Dry brining a steak or chicken before cooking produces meat that's more flavorful and more succulent. The salt denatures proteins in a way that helps the meat retain moisture during cooking. It's science in service of deliciousness.

Some cooks add herbs, spices, or sugar to their dry brine, creating a custom flavor blend that infuses the meat as it rests. A turkey rubbed with salt, brown sugar, and fresh thyme a day before Thanksgiving will be more flavorful than one that's simply seasoned before roasting.

The Global Perspective

It's worth noting that "kosher salt" is a distinctly American term. In other countries, the same product might be called kitchen salt, cooking salt, or simply coarse salt. The name doesn't translate well because the kashering connection is specific to Jewish communities with particular traditions.

Other cultures have their own coarse salts for specific purposes. Korean cooking uses a particular coarse salt for making kimchi and other brined vegetables. This salt has its own characteristics suited to the fermentation process.

Pickling salt—fine-grained and free of additives that might cloud the brine—is the standard for making pickles, sauerkraut, and other preserved vegetables. It dissolves quickly, which is essential when you're making a brine.

Each type of salt has evolved for its particular purpose. Kosher salt's large crystals are perfect for gripping with fingers and drawing moisture from meat. Pickling salt's fine grains dissolve instantly in water. Table salt's small crystals flow freely from a shaker. Understanding these differences helps you choose the right tool for the job.

The Democratization of Kitchen Knowledge

The story of kosher salt is really a story about how cooking knowledge spreads in the modern age.

Techniques that were once the province of professional kitchens—pinch-salting from a salt cellar, dry brining, seasoning meat well in advance of cooking—have become accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The Food Network brought restaurant techniques into living rooms. Food blogs answered questions that cookbooks never anticipated. Influential writers evangelized for particular methods.

For better or worse, kosher salt became the symbol of taking cooking seriously. Whether this is rational or not is debatable. Table salt seasons food just as effectively—you just need to use less of it and develop a different feel for how much to add.

But cooking has never been purely rational. It's about tradition, culture, and identity. When you reach for that box of kosher salt, you're participating in a story that connects Jewish dietary law, American television, professional kitchens, and the democratization of culinary knowledge.

You're also probably making your food taste better. And isn't that the point?