Many recipes specifically call for sea salt. Ignoring any nutritional impact, is there any real difference to the flavor of the final food product using sea salt compared to run-of-mill, grocery store table salt?
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It’s usually a texture thing.
Fine salts can kind of dissolve in your food. You get some taste, but you hardly notice the salt specifically. They’re great for sauces and doughs, for example.
Sea salt is usually more coarse. If you sprinkle some over the (almost) finished dish, you get that slight texture change. Since it won’t dissolve in the dish, the salt flavour is also more noticeable.
No. The only difference is it’s typically finer so each teaspoon will contain more salt by weight. If you’re measuring your salt by volume, you will need less salt
Sea salt and table salt will leave the same taste on your tongue. The difference will be in the size of the grains. Table salt is extremely fine and dissolved into your food. Large grain sea salt will still have some of its mass when added at the later stages, giving you larger more intense salt tastes throughout your meal.
The difference between sea salt and regular table salt is usually the presence of iodine. Table salt has had iodine in it for many years as a dietary supplement to support good thyroid health.
Iodine has a metallic taste to it. Some people can pick up on that taste even in foods that have been seasoned with iodized salt.
Sea salt is considered a more pure product. It adds saltiness without unpleasant lingering flavors, but leaves you to source your iodine elsewhere.
Only at a very minor level, most people won’t taste any difference and most recepies would improve by reducing the salt content anyway.