How is sea salt any different from industrial salt? Isn’t it all the same compound? Why would it matter how fancy it is? Would it really taste they same?
In: Chemistry
For sea salt, first take a look of chemicals in sea water.
The main component is sodium chloride, the second is magnesium chloride. It is worth looking at the second component, because it affects the taste and the look of salt. Sodium chloride is the salt we eat, no need to mention. The magnesium chloride also looks like sodium chloride, when left along, it absorbed moisture from the air to form a solution and it has a bitter taste, so salt with magnesium is commonly considered as a low quality salt.
When I was young, senior family members will buy a large bag of wet sea salt which look slightly grey. It has grain size of 1 to 2 mm cubes of sodium chloride. The wetness should be the magnesium. The wet salt used mainly in adding taste to a big pot of soup. For obvious reason, it is not used in fried eggs.
The simplest way of making salt from sea water is to create a shallow field to trap sea water and allow the sun to evaporate the water. What remains is the salt with a bit of bitter magnesium chloride. What people do is to scoop up the salt in a cone shape, let it sit there for week or months. If there is rain water, the rain water will wash down the magnesium chloride to the bottom, since it is more soluble. The cheapest way to separate the two chlorides. The salt at the top of cone is closer in quality to the free running table salt as it has less wetting agent. The bottom of the cone is the grey wet sea salt.
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