Cooking With Sea Salt: Where It Beats Table Salt and Where It Doesn’t

Paying extra for sea salt to dissolve into your pasta water? Save your money for the flakes. Sea salt is just what’s left when seawater evaporates, and once it’s mixed into food, America’s Test Kitchen found it tastes no different from table salt.¹ Where it shines is on top: big crystals scattered over a finished dish stay crunchy and visible. So cooking with sea salt mostly comes down to crystal size, which also changes how much salt lands in your teaspoon.

Quick guide

Sea salt is still salt

Most sea salts are about 40% sodium, same as table salt.⁴ A Swiss government survey measured seven sea salts at 38.9 to 40.7% sodium by weight, and concluded that specialty salts “do not possess any advantages over standard salts.”⁵ ATK’s tasting agrees: sea salt flakes varied in color but only slightly in flavor.¹

That undercuts some popular advice. You’ll often hear that chefs prefer sea salt for delicate foods, pasta water or a good steak because it tastes “cleaner.” Once it’s dissolved, ATK found no difference, so sea salt in pasta water or a marinade is interchangeable with any other salt.¹

Finishing: where sea salt earns its price

Big flakes or crystals scattered over food at the end stay crunchy and catch the eye, and that’s why ATK recommends sea salt mainly as a finishing salt. Try it on sliced steak, roasted or steamed vegetables, tomatoes, eggs, avocado toast, buttered bread, caramel, chocolate and fresh fruit like watermelon. Add the flakes at the last moment so they stay crisp on a moist surface.

Measuring sea salt

Sea salts run from fine grains to big flakes, and a spoonful of each holds a different amount of salt.

Morton’s chart treats a teaspoon of its fine or coarse sea salt as equal to a teaspoon of its table salt, with small additions at larger volumes (1 cup of table salt equals 1 cup plus 1 teaspoon of its fine sea salt), and says the chart only works between Morton products.⁷ Flaky salts vary from brand to brand, so there’s no reliable volume swap for them. If a recipe just says “sea salt,” start with less, or weigh it.

Baking with sea salt

Salt matters in bread, but the kind of salt doesn’t. King Arthur Baking explains that salt tightens and strengthens gluten strands, slows yeast, and adds flavor, and that bakers use it at about 1.8 to 2% of the flour’s weight. Some credit sea salt specifically with better gluten development. The effect King Arthur describes belongs to salt in general, and we found no source that singles out sea salt. Since the guideline is by weight, weighing your salt erases any difference between fine and coarse crystals. King Arthur advises against leaving salt out of bread entirely, though it says you can usually halve it without very noticeable changes to texture and browning.²

Flaky sea salt on top of a loaf, focaccia or cookies before baking adds crunch and visible salt.

In sweets

Cooks put a pinch of salt in caramel, chocolate desserts and fruit all the time, and flaky sea salt is the usual finishing pick because it shows. One reason you’ll hear for choosing sea salt in sweets is that iodized table salt tastes bitter. ATK’s tasters couldn’t taste a difference between iodized and noniodized salt, so the case for sea salt in desserts is texture, not chemistry.¹

Sea salt and umami

Some say briny sea salts boost umami the way MSG does. We found no source for that. Umami comes from glutamate, guanylate and inosinate, and salt supplies none of them. For umami, see monosodium glutamate.

Storage

We found no shelf-life figure for sea salt from a regulator or standards body. Moist, unwashed sea salts can clump, so keep the container closed and dry.

Sodium and iodine

Sea salt isn’t a low-sodium salt. A teaspoon of coarse sea salt can hold less sodium than a teaspoon of table salt, but only because fewer big crystals fit in the spoon. For heart health, total sodium intake is what matters most.⁴ The FDA’s Daily Value for sodium is less than 2,300 mg a day,⁸ and the WHO recommends adults stay under 2,000 mg, naming raised blood pressure as the main health effect of eating too much.⁹ Noniodized sea salt provides virtually no iodine, according to the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements.³ See sea salt vs. iodized salt.

What isn’t known

• Grams per teaspoon for coarse and flaky sea salts.
• Any taste test showing sea salt suits mild foods better than other salts once dissolved.
• Any source linking sea salt to umami.

Related

• Sea salt, the full profile, and sea salt substitutes
• Table salt vs. sea salt, kosher salt vs. sea salt, Himalayan salt vs. sea salt and rock salt vs. sea salt
• Maldon sea salt, Celtic sea salt, fleur de sel vs. sea salt and smoked sea salt
• Too much sea salt? How to fix the dish