Sea Salt 101: Types, Uses and Flavour Differences

Almost all salt is sodium chloride and almost all of it tastes the same dissolved in water. What separates one salt from another is crystal shape, how fast it dissolves, and what is left in it besides sodium chloride. Those three things matter enormously on a snack and barely at all in a pot of pasta water.

The types, briefly

Table salt. Fine, dense, usually iodised, often with an anti-caking agent. Dissolves instantly. Cheap. Its problem on a snack is that it disappears into the surface and gives you a flat, uniform salinity with no moments.

Kosher salt. Coarser and flakier than table salt, no iodine. The crystals are irregular, which is why cooks like it: you can feel how much you have picked up. Diamond Crystal is markedly less salty by volume than Morton, so recipes that say "kosher salt" without a brand are guessing.

Flaky sea salt. Maldon and its equivalents. Pyramid-shaped hollow crystals that crush between your fingers and sit on the surface rather than dissolving into it. This is the finishing salt.

Fleur de sel. Skimmed off the surface of evaporation ponds. Slightly damp, slightly mineral, more expensive than it needs to be. Genuinely different from Maldon: less crunch, more of a mineral tail.

Rock salt. Mined rather than evaporated. Pink Himalayan is this. The colour is iron oxide and the mineral content is a rounding error on flavour, despite what the packaging suggests.

Why crystal shape is the whole story

Put fine salt on a crisp and every bite tastes the same. Put a flake on a crisp and you get bursts: a moment of intense salinity, then the potato, then another burst.

That variation is what makes something moreish. Uniform seasoning reads as "salty". Uneven seasoning reads as "delicious", which is why finishing salt exists at all.

Flakes also dissolve slower, so the salt lands on your tongue rather than in the food. You perceive more salinity from less salt.

Which to use when

Job	Salt
Seasoning during cooking	Kosher or fine sea salt
Finishing a roasted or fried snack	Flaky sea salt
Salting a hot chip out of the fryer	Fine salt, so it sticks to the oil
On a caramel or chocolate	Flaky, applied after it sets
Brining and curing	Whatever is cheapest, by weight

The one that surprises people is the fryer line. On something hot and oily, fine salt adheres and flakes slide off. Salt the chip fine, then add a flake or two once it has cooled a little.

Measure by weight, not by spoon

Salts differ in density by a factor of two. A teaspoon of table salt and a teaspoon of Maldon are not the same amount of salt, and the difference is enough to ruin something. If a recipe gives grams, use grams.

What is not worth paying for

Smoked salts, mostly. Very few are actually smoked rather than flavoured, and the ones that are lose their aroma within a couple of months of opening.

Coloured salts sold on mineral content. You would need to eat an unhealthy quantity of pink salt for the trace minerals to register nutritionally.

The one thing to change

If you buy one salt on the strength of this piece, buy a box of flaky sea salt and use it only at the end, on things that are already seasoned. It is the cheapest upgrade available to almost any snack you make.