Anonymous wrote:For cooking purposes (not baking) or seasoning food, does the type of salt matter? I’ve always just used cheap iodine salt in a shaker, but obviously there are all these fancier kinds. Do they taste different? Would I notice a better flavor using French salt on my eggs, for instance? Or is it all simply NaCl and the rest is just marketing?

For most people they won't notice the difference.

Iodized for regular cooking.
Sea Salt non-iodized crystals for specialty dishes, rimming a glass, grinders, etc.

I only own sea salt, and don't salt my pasta (I tried it, and tasted zero difference). That's been working for decades for me.

You may need to adjust the quantity of salt for table vs kosher salt. For example, even among kosher salts there’s a difference between brands. Morton’s is saltier than Diamond. When cooking, I generally follow the recipe suggestion. When not specified, I use table salt.

It depends on what you're doing. Any kind of finishing action or surface thing, the texture will matter. Something that's getting mixed, not as much. Unless the flavor is really delicate you're not terribly likely to pick up on flavor differences from various salts, though they do exist.

Anonymous wrote:NaCl=NaCl fools

Harsh. Not wrong, but harsh.

OP, if you're including it in a dish where it will be dissolved, an amount of fancy salt will taste the same as an equal weight of plain old salt from a cylinder.

If it's on top on a finished product, different shapes will hit your tongue differently, so then they'll taste different.

I tend to buy whatever flaked salt Costco is peddling, which was Maldon the last time.

PS That "salty as the sea" thing is a myth. People who say, "It's what I do and my pasta is delicious" may be great cooks, b they're not oceanographers

NaCl=NaCl fools

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are different. I only use the canister of Morton’s iodized salt for baking.

I use kosher salt for seasoning meat, and sea salt for seasoning other things, and Maldon salt for fancy finishing (only on things where it will not melt— you are paying for the texture with that).

I use it in water to boil pasta--quite a lot actually. Pasta water should be as salty as the ocean if you want your pasta to be tasty.

Same! Pasta water only. I’m too cheap to use my good Celtic sea salt for pasta water. But in everything else I use sea salt or pink Himalayan salt. They have natural minerals in them that are good for you. I find table salt has a metallic almost chemical taste to it