Alaea Salt Substitutes: What to Use for Seasoning, Color and Crunch

Alaea salt is Hawaiian sea salt mixed with ʻalaea, a red clay that gets its color from iron oxide.¹ It seasons kalua pig, and cooks also sprinkle its brick-red crystals on as a finishing salt. No other salt does both jobs. The best substitute depends on which one you need: for seasoning, almost any clean salt works once you adjust the amount, usually down. For color, nothing matches exactly, though coarse Himalayan pink salt comes near.

Quick answer

How the ratios on this page are labeled

Every ratio carries one of four labels.

• Computed: based on a measurable physical relationship.
• Attributed: a named source publishes this ratio. We quote it as theirs.
• Disputed: named sources give different answers to the same swap. You get each one, side by side.
• Method: our starting point, based on how the two compare. Taste and adjust.

If alaea salt is seasoning a dish

Once salt dissolves into a dish, its color and crystal shape stop mattering. America’s Test Kitchen found that sea salts vary in color but only slightly in flavor, and that sea salt tastes no different from table salt once it’s mixed into food.² Salt is sodium chloride wherever it comes from,² and table salt, kosher salt and most sea salts are all about 40 percent sodium.³ So for a dish like kalua pig, the question is how much ordinary salt to use, not which kind.

How much: the evidence

Two things point the same way.

• The clay. Commercial alaea salt is sea salt plus red clay; SaltWorks lists exactly those two ingredients.⁴ Any clay in the jar means alaea can’t be saltier than plain salt, gram for gram. None of the producers we found say how much clay they add.
• A cook’s advice. Food writer Sue Lau, who seasons her Hawaiian pulled pork with 2 tablespoons of coarse alaea salt, calls alaea “not quite as salty as other salt types” and says it “can’t be substituted for on an equal basis.” She tells cooks to cut back when using ordinary coarse salt instead.⁵ She doesn’t give a figure, and we found no taste test of alaea salt to check her against.

By weight (Computed, upper limit): The Codex standard for food-grade salt requires at least 97 percent sodium chloride on a dry basis,⁶ and alaea is salt cut with some clay.⁴ So the same weight of plain salt is the most you’d need. Start a little under that and taste.

Coarse sea salt or coarse kosher salt

Ratio (Method): Start with about three quarters of the alaea volume, following Lau’s advice to cut back,⁵ then taste and add more. Kosher salt brands vary a lot in how much a spoonful weighs: America’s Test Kitchen weighed a teaspoon of Morton kosher salt at 4.8 grams and Diamond Crystal at 2.8 grams.⁷ With a light, flaky kosher salt like Diamond Crystal, you may end up close to the full volume. Three quarters is our starting point, not a measured equivalent.

Fine table salt

Table salt packs more salt into a spoon than coarse crystals do. America’s Test Kitchen puts a teaspoon of table salt at about 6 grams whatever the brand,⁷ and bigger crystals carry less sodium per teaspoon simply because fewer of them fit.³

Ratio (Method): Start with about half the alaea volume and taste. Alaea salt varies in coarseness from product to product, so this is a cautious starting point.

Iodized table salt brings iodine that specialty sea salts usually don’t have,⁸ and America’s Test Kitchen tasters couldn’t tell iodized from non-iodized salt.²

Rock salt, if it is sold as food

The Codex standard for food-grade salt covers salt from the sea, from rock deposits and from brine.⁶ Food-grade coarse rock salt can season a dish just like coarse sea salt, so use the same three-quarters starting point. Watch out for the rock salt sold for ice cream makers, though: Morton says its ice cream salt isn’t meant to be eaten.⁹

If alaea salt is a finishing salt

Here the color and crunch are the whole point, and they don’t dissolve away.

1. Coarse Himalayan pink salt, for color

Both salts get their color from iron oxide: alaea from the iron oxide in its clay,¹ Himalayan pink salt from traces of iron oxide in the salt itself.¹⁰ The shade is different, pink instead of brick red, so think of it as a near miss.

Ratio (Method): Sprinkle to taste, as you would alaea. It comes down to look and crunch.

2. Maldon or another flaky sea salt, for crunch

Maldon’s flakes are thin pyramids. You get crunch on a finished plate, but no color.

Ratio (Method): Sprinkle to taste.

Other options

• Celtic sea salt is a moist gray salt; the brand says the natural brine stays in the salt.¹¹ It’s fine for seasoning, but its damp gray crystals won’t give you alaea’s look.
• Plain white sea salt. At Hanapēpē, alaea is made by mixing some of the white sea salt with clay.¹ A white sea salt handles the seasoning without the color.

What isn’t known

• No source publishes the weight of a teaspoon of alaea salt, its sodium content or how much of it is clay. The volume ratios here are starting points.
• Whether alaea tastes less salty than plain salt is one cook’s opinion. Sue Lau says it does;⁵ America’s Test Kitchen’s broader finding is that sea salts taste much alike once dissolved.² We found no test of alaea itself.
• You’ll see claims that most commercial alaea salt comes from particular countries, but we found no source that documents them. Check the label for where the salt and the clay come from.⁴

Related

• Alaea salt and alaea salt vs. Himalayan salt
• Hawaiian sea salt and Hawaiian sea salt substitutes
• Himalayan salt, rock salt, Maldon sea salt, Celtic sea salt
• Kosher salt, table salt, sea salt and kosher salt vs. sea salt
• Black lava salt and best salt for cooking