Salt mills are stupid

[a la mode]

Is there a particular sea salt that is best for everyday cooking? I rarely add salt when cooking, so to be honest, I've never used sea salt.

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All salt is sea salt.

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I guess I meant rock salt. When you buy table salt I don't think it's labeled sea salt? Morton's is labeled iodized salt. But when you see various rock salts they are labeled sea salt.

[WHT]

All salt is sea salt.

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Seas that are realy old and no longer flow.

Edited March 1, 2007 by WHT (log)

[annecros]

Maybe the salt mills I've used haven't been the right ones, because I find that they never grind as fine as table salt, and I also find that the grind is generally uneven. So I can't imagine using one for sprinkling an even layer of fine salt. I use a shaker for those applications. Even sprinkling kosher salt from my fingers results in a more even layer of salt than the grinders I've used.

As for the clumping issue, even living in San Francisco, with its moist marine air, for 20 years, I never had any trouble with clumping (using, from time to time, Morton table salt, which has anti-clumping agents, but also Baleine'sfine salt, which doesn't).

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Sheesh, you must have a different sort of humidity than we do. Even the shakers in restaurants with the "Rains it Pours" stuff in it has about 20% rice. Otherwise you have muddy white goop in the salt shaker. Nasty.

I don't find it necessary to grind as fine as table salt, as long as I get a pretty even coverage. After all, it should dissolve on the surface. Even the surface of room temp unsalted butter on bread, or even the flesh of cucumber which is below ambient temp. It's that moisture thing.

As far as salt types are concerned, yes, trace minerals add both color and flavor to salt. Some is good, some others not so much.

[annecros]

Is there a particular sea salt that is best for everyday cooking? I rarely add salt when cooking, so to be honest, I've never used sea salt.

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All salt is sea salt.

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I guess I meant rock salt. When you buy table salt I don't think it's labeled sea salt? Morton's is labeled iodized salt. But when you see various rock salts they are labeled sea salt.

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Rock salt is dirty stuff meant for deicing the front steps or for the purpose of freezing cream on an incredibly hot summer day by applying to ice outside of a container of cream. It is mined out of the ground, dug up, unrefined. Table salt is usually the mined stuff, dissolved I think, then additives like iodine and anticaking agents are added.

Rock salt is just a very crude, unrefined, cheap salt. Not meant for the table. The Morton Salt people can give you an idea of the various grades and applications of commonly used salts:

http://www.mortonsalt.com/

They even give you an idea of what Kosher salt is.

Would you really use the same salt on your front steps on your vine ripened tomato?

Sea salt is generally obtained by evaporated, naturally or artificially, sea water. It is not mined. Therefore it has a different sort of texture, but is still coarse and chunky, but has this sort of nice flaky thing going that floats my boat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_salt

There are other salt heads around here who have much more knowledge than I do.

ETA: The application of rock salt to ice in a cooler of hot beer will cool the bottled beer down to cold refridgerator temp within 5 minutes. After about 20 minutes, you need to pop the lid on the cooler though, or your beer bottles will burst from freezing the beer inside the sealed bottle.

Better living through science!

Edited March 1, 2007 by annecros (log)

[budrichard]

ETA: The application of rock salt to ice in a cooler of hot beer will cool the bottled beer down to cold refridgerator temp within 5 minutes. After about 20 minutes, you need to pop the lid on the cooler though, or your beer bottles will burst from freezing the beer inside the sealed bottle.

As the salt dissolves in the melting ice, it actually lowers the freezing point of the salt/water mixture (Freezing Point Depression) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freezing-point_depression to below 32F, so your beer, if we assume freezes about 32F can actually freeze. Usually the technique is reserved for making ice cream without a mechanical freezer and melting snow/ice on roadways.-Dick

Edited March 1, 2007 by budrichard (log)

[MarketStEl]

All salt is sea salt.

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Seas that are realy old and no longer flow.

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So how many million years ago was there a sea where southern Kansas is now?

[maggiethecat]

Salt mills: Completely unnecessary, yes. Stupid: no.

I don't own one, won't buy one, but I'd be delighted if someone gave me one, just to hear the crunching noise. It would be fun. That makes it rise above stupid for me, owner of two of Nigella Dawson's beautiful salt eggs, Georgian sterling ruby glass lined salt cellars that could whup anyone's, and 1.99 for two Ikea salt shakers.

[andiesenji]

All salt is sea salt.

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Seas that are realy old and no longer flow.

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So how many million years ago was there a sea where southern Kansas is now?

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Sixty million years ago during the Paleocene Epoch a great inland sea occupied most of the Great Plains area from the Gulf of Mexico to North Dakota. There is a area near Bismark where the ancient shoreline can be determined by petrified wood from ancient trees that were innundated after they matured because there is evidence the trees were attacked by shipworms that lived in salty, not fresh water.

[Toliver]

All salt is sea salt.

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Seas that are realy old and no longer flow.

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So how many million years ago was there a sea where southern Kansas is now?

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As and ye shall receive:

Kansas Underwater

My mom had brothers that died in Kansas salt mines back in the 1930's. Until I heard that I didn't realize they were even salt mines in the state.

[andiesenji]

A more recent inland sea was in the Great Basin, (between the Rockies and the Sierras) which has been a salt sea off and on for millions of years but most recently during and after the last Great Ice Age, 40,000 years ago. During that period this sea extended all the way up to Wyoming but gradually subsided until it was Lake Bonneville of which The Great Salt Lake is just a fractional remainder. The salt mined in Utah has a lot of minerals in it and is sort of pinkish in color. I like it.

Did you know there were salt mines in southern Illinois?

Edited March 4, 2007 by andiesenji (log)

[Domestic Goddess]

I am really digging this thread - both for the opinions and the grains of history and trivia.

[highchef]

If it's clumping your worried about, do as we do in Louisiana..put a wee bit of rice in the shaker. It breaks the salt up when you 'shake' and absorbes moisture from the air...we're pretty humid around here too. Honestly, though, the only time I see this anymore is in the older resturants..mostly the mom and pop places. I don't do it, but my parents did. I think it's a holdover from pre-a/c days. I have lots of different salts now, and with a/c I've never had the clumping problem. I use coarse salt when cooking, but as noted above, it dissolves anyway. I use coarse salt because it's easy to handle, and throw into a hot pot.

but if it's humid, and you don't have the air on, the rice trick works.

[a la mode]

Interesting information.....

Everything you ever wanted to know about salt, but were afraid to ask!

Morton has a sea salt (coarse) from the Mediterranean Sea on Spain's Costa Blanca. It lists yellow prussiate of soda (anticaking agent) as an ingredient. Is this normal in most coarse sea salts?

[Blether]

Yeah, salt dissolves... but, on things like french fries ? It doesn't dissolve on mine, that's for sure.

(My own salt mill has to qualify as stupid for the rod shearing when I tried to unscrew the nut, the nut having seized up at some point after a dozen or so years' use).