Is Sea Salt less salty?
Asked by
rooeytoo (
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March 22nd, 2012
It seems when I use “sea salt” from the grinder I use more of it than when I use plain old pre ground iodized salt from the shaker.
I wondered where ordinary salt comes from, if not from the sea and this says most table salt is mined. So Fluther friends, what is your experience in this very important culinary question???
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7 Answers
Most ordinary salt is mined from undergound deposits. A lot comes from upstate NY. Syracuse was known as the salt city and there’s another huge mine out by Ithaca. Sea salt is more subtle and has various levels of flavor, so it’s less intense than ordinary salt. That may be why you use more of it.
But answer this: If ancient seas left NaCl, why do modern seas have a different mix?
Even the fancy unrefined sea salts are within a few percentage points of being pure sodium chloride. The main factor in how salty we perceive them to be seems to be grain size. Most of the fancy salts are coarser grained, as is hand-milled salt. The coarse grains come off as less salty for a given amount, just as icing sugar tastes sweeter than caster sugar.
Do you mean the salt or do you mean the character by Redrusker? If the latter, he can be very salty, if you know what I mean.
“Saltiness is a taste produced primarily by the presence of sodium ions. Other ions of the alkali metals group also taste salty, but the further from sodium the less salty the sensation is. The size of lithium and potassium ions most closely resemble those of sodium and thus the saltiness is most similar. Potassium, as potassium chloride – KCl, is the principal ingredient in salt substitutes, and has a saltiness index of 0.6.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste#Saltiness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_water#Salinity
Kosher salt is supposed to have a softer taste than other salts because of the way the granules are shaped. I read that.
I think @thorninmud is on the right track. When I grind the sea salt onto my food, it comes out in bigger chunks so one bite of food is very salty and the next has no salt taste whatsoever. Whereas ordinary salt is all the same sized cubes so the distribution onto food from the shaker is more even. I think I will stick with freshly ground pepper but I am going back to plain old Morton (in Australia Saxa is the most common brand) and skip the fancy, more expensive sea salt.
Thank you all for your responses.
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