Just caught a bit of a cooking show on TV, and I heard the line

"We'll just add some good quality salt" - and she then added what looked like rock salt.   

Now if I cooked the same dish with ordinary cooking salt and one exactly the same but with rock salt, there is no way known she would know the difference.

Why are people so pretentious about ingredients so basic.

I buy supermarket brand cooking salt.

It's just sodium chloride with a few impurities from the evaporation process, and sometimes some added iodide.  Rock salt is coarser, but when it dissolves in the food, the crystal size is irrelevant anyway.

In terms of taste, it's like any other salt. 

http://www.theecologist.org/green_green_living/health_and_beauty/270993/what_typ...


As with everything you put in your body, it is worth being both inquisitive and demanding when it comes to salt choices.

Better choices include mined or rock salt and sea salt – as long as they are unrefined. The labels on salt packaging aren’t always clear in this regard. If you look at the ingredients and the only thing on it is sodium chloride, however, then you know that your so-called ‘healthy’ natural salt is just as refined as regular salt.

Unrefined salt is generally not the pure white colour that most of us are used to; it tends to be off-white, or pink – like the rose-coloured crystals of Himalayan rock salt, for instance – or grey as in Atlantic or Celtic salt (some sea salts also take on unique tints from the clay pans in which they crystallise). The colours hint at the minerals within. In fact, genuinely unrefined rock salt can contain more than 90 different trace elements.

Black Orchid wrote on Jan 26^th, 2016 at 5:02pm:


Mostly I agree, unless you are adding it on top (rock is much better than table in my opinion) or if you are using an ingredient I use rarely, black salt (or Himalayan salt).  It's pink by the way, no idea why it's called black.  It's full of sulphides, so it has a really distinctive egg flavour, and is used mostly in subcontinental cooking, India and Bangladesh and the like.

edit:  You typed your response during mine  sorry.

Yadda wrote on Jan 26^th, 2016 at 5:19pm:


Sea salt it is. Virtually all supermarket salt is produced by evaporation from the sea. The manufacturers have very stringent quality standards.

http://blog.fooducate.com/2011/08/12/sea-salt-vs-table-salt-the-truth/

Oh yes, and gourmet salts often have high levels of heavy metals.

Now almost certainly you could tell the difference between Himalayan salt and table salt, but there is no way you would be able to tell between table salt, cooking salt, rock salt or sea salt by taste, once it has been added to a dish as an ingredient.

I stand by my initial statement that it makes no difference to the taste of the food, and that even a professional taster would be unable to tell the difference.

If you buy a salt that's more expensive (to use as a food ingredient), you are wasting your money.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/nov/17/gourmet-salt-health-celebrity-che...

By the way,

"Harmful chemicals" and "natural minerals"  can be identical in composition.

I laughed when I saw that my son was using a water filter to remove harmful chemicals. He was conned like most consumers.

I took a look at his water filter (the type you put in your fridge. It had greasy looking stuff on the top of it. What's that? I asked him. 

-Oh it doesn't matter because it goes through the filter anyway.   

- so let me get this straight - This particulate filter will remove the harmful pathogens that are multiplying in that grease?

Uh-uh. You need ultrafiltration to remove pathogens. I know that is not ultrafiltration because you need to force the water through an ultrafiltration system.

So throw away your gourmet salts and your water filters, because they are probably making you ill.

Oh but they filter out harmful chemicals. (Now that is impossible with a particulate filter.)

If you have a charcoal filter, that's worse. How often do you change it? How do you test the water quality? How do you know when it has reached its capacity if you don't test it?

Supermarket salt IS sea salt.

Yadda - Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?

Yadda - see if you can find table salt or cooking salt in Australia that is not produced from the evaporation of sea water or salt lakes.

I challenge you. Google will help you.

I purposely avoid buying 'processed' salt, which is usually labeled as 'Table Salt'.      [the salt which has had a 'flow agent' added.]

As i said, you can make your own choice.

If you think that adding a chemical 'flow agent' to salt is inconsequential to your health then, buy it.

John_Taverner wrote on Jan 26^th, 2016 at 6:49pm:



Not to mention Uranium.

You have a good point.

I don't use salt.

Sprintcyclist wrote on Jan 26^th, 2016 at 7:29pm:



You should use [sea] salt in your food.

Everyone should use a moderate amount of [sea] salt in their food.

Having sufficient salt in your body, is essential to maintaining your good health.

Salt isn't as 'bad' as many 'health experts' today, make out [imo].



You have a wonderful resource in the WWW, at your fingertips!

Do some research.

Drink plenty of water.

Yadda wrote on Jan 26^th, 2016 at 7:40pm:


It's highly unlikely anyone eating regularly, as in not malnourished won't suffer from this unless they have other underlying health issues.  You don't need to add salt for health  (taste though, go for it )

Wolseley wrote on Jan 26^th, 2016 at 7:50pm:


Good point. You'll probably get enough trace elements from your drinking water and food. Iodine is an exception to that.
Iodised salt can be beneficial if you don't get enough iodine in your diet.

I found this partial list of impurities in Himalayan pink salt:

Fluoride ~ 100ppm
Aluminum ~ 0.661ppm
Nickel ~ 0.13ppm
Arsenic ~ 0.01ppm
Bromine ~ 2.1ppm
Antimony ~ 0.01ppm
Cadmium ~ 0.01ppm
Tellurium ~ 0.001ppm
Barium ~ 1.96ppm

Some of these bioaccumulate, but as you say, you'd have to eat tonnes of the stuff to have much effect - either positive or negative.  The pink coloration is due to a clay material called marl. Marl is mostly sodium aluminosilicate, and its pure form is commonly used as an anticaking agent in Australia.