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Comment by petecox | Hacker News Reader

'Salt' is just salt, right?

I could never taste a tangible difference with those premium products marketed as "Sea Salt" flavoured.

Where I live, "regular" salt contains iodine for health reasons. Wikipedia says:

> Iodised salt (also spelled iodized salt) is table salt mixed with a minute amount of various salts of the element iodine. The ingestion of iodine prevents iodine deficiency. Worldwide, iodine deficiency affects about two billion people and is the leading preventable cause of intellectual and developmental disabilities. Deficiency also causes thyroid gland problems, including "endemic goitre." In many countries, iodine deficiency is a major public health problem that can be cheaply addressed by purposely adding small amounts of iodine to the sodium chloride salt.

So I specifically don't want "sea salt". I'd rather not have such lovely, "natural" conditions as goiters.

Sea salt does contain some natural iodine as well as other minerals. Seafood is also rich in iodine. Iodine deficiency is rife in areas of the world with no access to seafood (or sea salt). Sea salt is better than mined salt, so adding iodine to mined salt is necessary.

Incidentally Morton sells iodized sea salt; it comes in the same cannisters as the rest and looks like regular salt but with the chunkier grain size, if you want to feel fancy but stay goitre-free.

It's better to use non-iodized salt when baking bread, since iodine is said to inhibit yeast growth.

You can get iodine from sources other than iodised salt. Vitamin D is often combined with iodine in supplements, for example.

Some salt has tiny amounts of other minerals in it, but any variation in flavor is more likely to be due to grain size/structure. Many salt products also have an anti-caking agent such as silica added, which some "natural" types are accordingly worried about.

>Many salt products also have an anti-caking agent such as silica added, which some "natural" types are accordingly worried about.

Fun fact: this is why you'll see rice in some salt shakers at diners and restaurants—it keeps the salt from caking. Though it's possible that it doesn't happen much anymore with whatever some producers might be adding to maintain the same effect.

This used to be standard; everyone I knew put rice in their salt shakers. It was essential during the more humid months.

Possibly the only good reason to use "sea salt" is that the crystals are bigger and less prone to caking.

Not silica, but sodium aluminosilicate[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_aluminosilicate

Only real difference is grain size changing how intense salt flavor is when eaten in undissolved form.

Table salt has extremely salty flavor as tiny crystals dissolve instantly.

Sea Salts dissolve slower. Also flakiness makes it easier to control when salting things by hand.

Color of salt is meaningless.

> Color of salt is meaningless.

Unless you are talking about salts with sulphur in them. Those really do taste different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kala_namak

Tastes like old eggs, mostly. Can't stand kala namak.

CostCo sells a "pink Himalayan salt". The label touts that it is known as the "purest salt in the world" and is known for it's rich mineral content (aka impurities) that give it its distinctive color. I enjoy seeing who brings this up when I have guests: it's always the engineers.

I'm not sure what significance engineers have here (who cares what an engineer things about salt?), but even given the hyperbole of marketing which is nothing new (again, surprised this is such a big deal when almost everything is marketed using insinuations, including Morton's), perhaps a reasonable interpretation of "pure" is "devoid of pollutants" (and "salt" understood in culinary terms, not as chemically pure NaCl, but as the naturally-occurring rock salt, with all of the mineral content). Whether the marketing jiggery pokery is true or not, it's a fallacy to attack the salt because of the label.

The significance of the engineers is they seem to be the group that reliably and exclusively notices. I'm not attacking the salt, I keep buying it. Not a big deal - it's a funny anecdote that apparently deeply bothers some people.

Himalayan salts are high in bromine and probably shouldn't be eaten.

Is it surprising that people with scientific education tend to notice scientific errors?

Some of these colored salts contain heavy metals

https://www.spexcertiprep.com/knowledge-base/files/AppNote_G...

There is a huge difference to me in taste between the iron oxide salts, the "lava" (charcoal) salts and regular sea salt. I've always had a really sensitive pallet though. However, to my understanding, you wouldn't add these salts to change the flavor of food in which you add salt as an ingredient. Instead you sprinkle the crystals over meat, desserts, and other small portioned foods to get the color and a specific flavor on surface bites.

Table salt a la Morton's is unpalatable to me.

Oh, yeah, that stuff is abhorrent.

Good sea salts are not purified much so they are not 100% pure salt and contains other minerals which gives some nice flavours, that's why they are used a lot in cooking.

"Salt" without any other qualifiers refers to sodium chloride (NaCl), which in pure form is also the mineral halite.

Evaporite is the mineral produced by evaporation of seawater. It contains a large quantity of halite, but also has some other minerals in it, which vary according to the composition of the sea that evaporated. Generally, it adds calcium, potassium, and magnesium to the cations, and carbonate, sulfate, bromide, and fluoride to the anions. It is very likely to contain hydrates.

As far as I know, the marketing names and terms for salts are not controlled. Someone could come up with a process to color purified table salt pink and then sell it as Himalayan salt, without it ever going anywhere near Pakistan. Someone is probably already doing that. And actually, as some evaporite deposits are not safe for dietary consumption, it is likely that mines in India and Pakistan are purifying their salt, selling most of it as iodized table salt domestically, and then recoloring some of it for export as luxury product.

There are only two kinds of salt you need to worry about for cooking. "Salt", which has been purified and probably iodized, and "sea salt", which has only been processed for uniform particle sizes. You can also get pure potassium chloride (KCl) at most supermarkets, and it does taste noticeably different from pure NaCl. There is no need to buy a premium product, unless spending the extra money makes you feel good.

There's no real difference between 'fancy' salt and the cheap stuff - crystal size is the only factor that has much impact on the perception of saltiness[1], though that can be counter intuitive (kosher salt crystals are big and taste very salty on your tongue, but they don't pack down, so you tend to use less than the finer crystals of table salt). Not to mention that all sea salt now is full of microplastic particles...[2]

1: https://www.seriouseats.com/2013/03/ask-the-food-lab-do-i-ne...

2: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/08/sea-salt...

I normally swear by seriouseats but I call BS on this one.

While I can get behind some explanations for taste differences arising from "physical" reasons such as a larger salt grains offering different texture, which affects how it may mix with your food and air / dissolve on your tongue, I refuse to believe that the chemical differences are negligible.

Take water for instance, anyone with remotely sensitive palette can taste the difference in water. Whether it's straight tap water, filtered water or various brands of mineral water.

Considering the concentrations of minerals which govern the taste differences, I would be astounded to hear that trace minerals in salt don't affect its taste.

I mean, not only can I taste the difference with reverse osmosis water used for coffee, but if you look carefully at it, it tends to have a slightly different viscosity from regular water.

What a disappointingly unrigorous serious eats article.

Neither could I, but some are pretty pink! That's neat on a nicely set table. However, Trader Joes have some seriously flavoured and natural salts which are so "unpure" if you will, that they actually taste a little different.

But they do taste differently. I'm not a salt expert, so can't really speculate why, but what's sold as table salt -vs- sea salt -vs- pink here has a massive difference in taste if you use a lot of it. Probably won't tell any difference if you're just seasoning soup, but you would in kimchi.

(Sure it won't come from the pure salt itself. Just additives / impurities)

Depending where you live salt might be just salt, or it might be salt plus trace amounts of iodine plus an anti-caking agent plus sugar.

Pause this to see an ingredient list from a US brand of salt: https://youtu.be/iGsn4cOpBHY?t=48s

I'd be interested to know if anyone anywhere can taste different types of salt under double blind conditons.

I have found Himalayan pink salt to be milder (less salt) than sea salt. It makes a good table salt. Sea salt is good for brines, soups, and pasta. Kosher salt is flakier and goes well when preparing or cooking meats. Iodinized salt can add off flavors to what you are cooking and adversely affect brining and baking. It really all depends on application.

Salt isn't just salt. Mineral composition, for example, most certainly affects flavor. It doesn't take much either. Mineral waters also differ in flavor based on mineral and/or dissolved gases.

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