SALT

(Article was taken from the Cuisine at Home cooking magazine.)

Salt to Taste

Don't think for a moment that salt is salt.  If you're into cooking, here's the information you need to know to make all your food taste even better!
Salt just might be one of the most important commodities in our world - thank goodness there is plenty of it.  I'm frequently asked why food in restaurants tastes so much better than food prepared at home.  The secret?  Besides years of training, chefs use plenty of butter and salt.  What's not to love?  Real butter makes everything better, but salt is a different story.  The proper amount of salt is even more important.  Top chefs know this and have been using specialty salts for years.
Salt has always played a role in society.  The ancient Greeks traded salt for slaves resulting in the phrase "not worth his salt."  Roman soldiers were partially paid in salt - the word "salt" comes from the Latin word salarium, meaning salary.  Today, salt has over 40,000 applications from manufacturing to medicine, but to most of us, its main function is in the kitchen.
Like so many things, salts have become trendy - red salt from Hawaii, Jurassic salt from Utah, and the multitude of sea salts from Europe.  Is the salt trend overrated, or are some of those Mediterranean sea salts really worth $30 a pound?  Well, maybe, but you need to know the basics before deciding.
Table salt (granular salt) is what most of us know.  It is mined and processed to form small, uniformly shaped cubes.  Additives are added to prevent caking and some medical problems.  Most table salt is mined like coal or extracted by forcing water down into subterranean salt deposits.  The resulting brine is pumped out and processed to form tiny, dense, cube shapes that don't dissolve very well.
Kosher salt is made by compacting granular salt between rollers which produces large irregular flakes.  This shape allows the salt to easily draw blood when applied to freshly butchered meat (part of the koshering process).  Unlike table salt, most kosher salts contain no additives.
Sea salt is created when ocean waters flood shallow beds along coastlines.  During the summer months, the water evaporates leaving large salt crystals.  The different waters and minerals from the surrounding land lend their flavors to these flaky salts.

WHAT TO USE:

TABLE SALT:
Except for baking, I haven't used table salt in years.  It always seems to taste really salty and harsh.  The reality is that it isn't any saltier than other salts, it's just that the crystals are small and don't dissolve well.  Because of this, the crystals tend to linger on the surface of the tongue.

KOSHER SALT:
Kosher is granular salt that is pressed together.  If you look at it microscopically, each grain resembles an ancient Egyptian pyramid - stacked cubes that have weathered.  Why am I telling you this?  It's the design that makes kosher salt so good.  This structure dissolves easily and imparts plenty of flavor (without over salting) because of its large surface area.  We use it in our test kitchen.

MALDON SEA SALT:
Besides fleur de sel, England's Maldon sea salt is worth $11 a pound price.  This is a good "finishing salt" that gets its delicate flavor from a tradition of boiling the sea water to form hollow, pyramid-shaped crystals.  You can actually crush the crystals between your fingers.  This makes for a light taste on your tongue.

SEL GRIS:
"Gray Salt" is harvested on France's Atlantic coast where shallow basins are flooded with ocean water.  Evaporation takes place between May and September when artisan harvesters rake the salt to the edge of each bed.  The salt picks up its gray color and distinct flavor from minerals in the bed's clay bottom.

FLEUR DE SEL:
A finishing salt that I think is worth its high price tag.  A by-product of sel gris, fleur del sel is created only when the winds are calm and the days are warm.  It is on these rare few days that the gray salt "blooms" lacy, white crystals.  This is the "flower of salt" and is carefully skimmed from the surface.  Use sparingly on foods just before serving.

RED ALAE HAWAIIAN SEA SALT:
Hawaiian red and black sea salts are specialty finishing salts.  While they look cool, their flavor is a bit strange.  Red salt has an iron taste from the soil that's used to add color, while the black salt tends to have a sulfuric aroma from added purified lava.