Cooking With Himalayan Salt: Finishing, Salt Blocks and What It Won’t Do

Himalayan salt won’t give you useful minerals or cut your sodium. What it will do is add color and crunch as a finishing salt, season like any other salt when it’s ground fine, and, as a heated block, sear scallops and thin slices of steak. It’s rock salt mined in Pakistan and tinted pink by traces of iron oxide. One more thing to know: it usually isn’t iodized.

Quick guide

What you’re cooking with

Pink salt is rock salt, mined instead of evaporated from seawater, and Pakistan produces it for commercial sale. The color comes from traces of iron oxide.

Chemically, it’s still salt. A Swiss government survey measured sodium in four Himalaya salts at 37.7 to 38.2% by weight, against 38.9 to 40.7% in seven sea salts, and concluded that specialty salts “do not possess any advantages over standard salts.”⁵ And not every salt sold as pink comes from Pakistan: in a 2020 study of 31 pink salts sold in Australia, one came from Peru.⁴

As a finishing salt

Scatter coarse pink crystals over food at the end and they stay crunchy and visible: on sliced steak, roasted vegetables, eggs, salads, or a chocolate dessert. Those are popular uses, not tested claims. You’ll often hear that pink salt tastes milder than table salt. We found no taste test of Himalayan salt itself. America’s Test Kitchen found that sea salt tastes no different from table salt once it’s mixed into food, and saves it for finishing.⁶ By weight, pink salt carries a little less sodium than white salts: 0.7 to 3 percentage points below the Swiss sea salts, and about 8% less than the one white salt in the Australian study.⁵⁴ We didn’t find anyone who’s shown that a gap that small tastes “milder.”

As an everyday salt

Ground fine, pink salt can replace table salt in cooking. Morton’s label for its coarse Himalayan salt lists 1.5 g per ¼ teaspoon, the same as its iodized table salt, and its conversion chart treats a teaspoon of either as equal, with a small adjustment at larger volumes (1 cup of table salt equals 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of coarse Himalayan).¹ Morton says the chart only works between its own products.² Other brands, and grinder salts especially, can pack differently, so weigh it for baking.

Cooking on a salt block

A salt block is a slab of Himalayan salt you can heat and use like a griddle, or chill and use as a serving plate. The best-documented instructions come from The Meadow, a salt shop that sells the blocks. What follows is its guidance for its own product, not an independent test.

Heating. The block has to be completely dry. The Meadow says a used block should rest at least 24 hours before you heat it again. On a gas burner, it says to start on low for at least 15 minutes, then raise the heat gradually: low-medium for 15 minutes, then medium-high for 15 minutes. On an electric range, it sets the block on a metal ring to leave an air gap above the element; on a charcoal grill, it puts the block on the side away from the coals. It doesn’t recommend heating a block in the oven. By its reckoning, the block is ready at 500°F or more, or when drops of water sizzle away instantly. The Meadow says its blocks are tested from 0°F up to 700°F, and that cracks and fissures in early use are normal.³

Holding heat. Salt is dense, and The Meadow says a block holds whatever temperature it reaches “for a good while.”³ You’ll read that salt blocks stay hot for hours; we found no measurement of that.

Saltiness. The Meadow says a block gives food “only a very moderate saltiness,” that wet foods pick up salt faster than fatty ones, and that a thin layer of oil on the block helps if food comes out too salty. It favors quick-cooking foods, and warns that a block that isn’t hot enough over-salts food.³ We found no published measurement of how much salt a block transfers.

What to cook. The Meadow suggests scallops and thinly sliced hanger steak. For steak it gives 1 to 2 minutes per side for thin slices and 4 to 5 minutes per side for thicker cuts like rib eye.³⁷ Go by a thermometer, not the clock. FoodSafety.gov gives 145°F with a 3-minute rest for beef steaks, and says to cook scallops until the flesh is pearly or white and opaque.⁸

Serving cold. The Meadow lists chilling among block uses and notes that moist foods like mozzarella and sliced apples pick up a delicate saltiness when served on one.³ It gives no chilling instructions.

Cleaning and storage. Let the block cool completely, wipe it with a damp sponge, scrub with a soft brush or scouring pad, and skip the soap, keeping water to a minimum. Then pat it dry and stand it on a rack. Store it somewhere with low humidity. The Meadow credits the block’s easy upkeep to the “powerful antimicrobial properties of the salt.” We found no independent test of that, so take it as the seller’s claim.³

What it won’t do

Supply minerals. Pink salt does carry more calcium, iron, magnesium and potassium than white salt. But in the 2020 study, a 5 g teaspoon made no clinically significant difference to nutrient intake. You’d need more than 30 g a day, about six teaspoons, before the minerals mattered, and by then the sodium would far outweigh them.⁴ Harriet Hall’s review collects and rejects the claims that it detoxifies the body or lowers blood pressure.⁹

Cut sodium. A teaspoon of coarse pink salt can hold less sodium than a teaspoon of table salt, but only because fewer big crystals fit in the spoon. The American Heart Association says total sodium intake is what matters for heart health.¹⁰ The FDA’s Daily Value for sodium is less than 2,300 mg a day.¹¹

Supply iodine. Himalayan salt usually isn’t iodized, and the Swiss survey measured iodine in its Himalaya samples at less than 20 µg per kilogram.¹²⁵ If you count on salt for iodine, keep iodized salt in the kitchen too. See iodized vs. non-iodized salt.

A note on contaminants. The Swiss survey found specialty salts generally carried more contaminants than standard salts, with the highest levels of some metals in Himalaya and two other specialty salts, which it judged likely to be natural. Most contaminants stayed below 1% of tolerable intake levels.⁵ In the Australian study, one pink salt, the sample from Peru, exceeded the lead limit the authors applied.⁴ Buying salt with a stated origin is a reasonable precaution; see Himalayan salt for more.

What isn’t known

• No sensory test of Himalayan salt against table or sea salt.
• No independent measurement of how much salt a block transfers to food, how long it stays hot, or whether it is self-cleaning.
• No independent grams-per-teaspoon figure for coarse or grinder pink salt; only Morton’s label.

Related

• Himalayan salt, the full profile, and rock salt
• Himalayan salt vs. table salt, Himalayan salt vs. sea salt and kosher salt vs. Himalayan salt
• Fleur de sel vs. Himalayan salt and Celtic salt vs. Himalayan salt
• The best salt for cooking and too much salt?