Salt

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In old Japanese theaters, salt was sprinkled on to the stage before each performance to prevent evil spirits from casting a spell on the actors and ruining the play.

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Varieties
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.

Table Salt / Cooking Salt / Granular Salt
Table salt is what most of us know. It is mined and processed in form small, uniformly shaped cuves. Additives are added to prevent caking and some medical problems.Varieties include iodized salt, which contains the flavorless additive potassium iodide to prevent goiter (an enlargement of the thyroid gland), and non-iodized salt. Some recipes call for non-iodized salt, since iodine can impart a bitter taste and adversely react with certain foods. For example, iodine darkens pickles and inhibits the bacterial fermentation needed to make sauerkraut.

Kosher Salt
This salt was developed for the preparation of kosher meats, but many cooks prefer it over table salt. It has coarser grains, so it's easier to use if you, like professional chefs, toss salt into pots with your fingers, measuring by touch. Most kosher salt is also flaked, giving each grain a larger surface area. This helps the salt adhere better, so it's great for lining margarita glasses, and for making a salt crust on meats or fish. Kosher salt also is preferred over table salt for canning and pickling.

Sea Salt
While tossing a teaspoon of sea salt into a half gallon of marinara sauce isn't going to have an appreciable effect on its nutritional value, some gourmets say that they can taste the difference and that sea salt has a cleaner, saltier flavor compared to table salt. Don't use sea salt for canning or pickling--the trace minerals may discolor the food. It's also not the best choice for baking--the grains are too large.

Sel Gris "Gray Salt"
This expensive French salt comes from sea water that's pooled into basins and then evaporated. Unlike most American sea salts, it's unrefined, so it retains more of the minerals that naturally occur in seawater. These salts comes either coarsely or finely ground. Since salt is an inorganic mineral, there's no point in grinding large crystals with a salt mill so they'll be "fresh." Salt, unlike pepper and spices, never goes stale. It's best to use these salts after the food is cooked, or their subtleties will be lost.

Fleur de Sel
A finishing salt that is worth its high price tag. A by-product of Sel Gris, Fleur de 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, whit crystals. This it the "flower of salt" and is carefully skimmed from the surface. Use sparingly on foods just before serving.

Hawaiian Sea Salt
This unrefined sea salt gets its pinkish-brown color from Hawaiian clay, called 'alaea, which is rich in iron oxide. The clay also imparts a subtle flavor to the salt. The salt is expensive, and hard to find on the mainland.

How To
· Cooking Tips

History
Salt is an essential element in the diet of not only humans but of animals, and even of many plants. It is one of the most effective and most widely used of all food preservatives (and used to preserve Egyptian mummies as well). Pre-civilization "salt men" represent a significant contemporary archeological research source. And the oldest as well. Its industrial, medical and other uses are almost without number. In fact, salt has great current as well as historical interest, and is even the subject of humorous cartoons, music, "art" and poetry. Sometimes, however, we need to separate the salt to get the history.

Evidence shows salt was important as long ago as when mastadons roamed the earth. Salt was in general use long before history, as we know it, began to be recorded. Some 2,700 years B.C.-about 4,700 years ago-there was published in China the Peng-Tzao-Kan-Mu, probably the earliest known treatise on pharmacology. A major portion of this writing was devoted to a discussion of more than 40 kinds of salt, including descriptions of two methods of extracting salt and putting it in usable form that are amazingly similar to processes used today. Chinese folklore recounts the discovery of salt. Salt production has been important in China for two millennia or more. Nomads spreading westward were known to carry salt. Ancient saltmaking in Europe and North America is well-documented as well.

Main IndexIn old Japanese theaters, salt was sprinkled on to the stage before each performance to prevent evil spirits from casting a spell on the actors and ruining the play.

Main Index

In old Japanese theaters, salt was sprinkled on to the stage before each performance to prevent evil spirits from casting a spell on the actors and ruining the play.