Cooking

I've noticed this! It's been impossible to find in most stores. I got lucky at Smart and Final.

We heard that a few months ago too, but we just restocked two weeks ago I think at the local Megalomart. Eat so much popcorn it's hard to keep enough on hand.

They don't taste different but they have different levels of saltyness for the same weight/volume because the crystals are shaped different. The shape also affects how they dissolve and spread out over your food.

Table salt is tiny crystals that dissolve quickly for mixing in to sauces or soups.

Sea salt is wide thin flakes, it's good for when you want to coat the top of something evenly like a sea salt caramel.

Kosher salt is large crystals that dissolve slower, it's good for drawing moisture out of meat or veggies via osmosis (the original purpose of kosher salt is to remove blood from meat to make it kosher).

I can taste a huge difference between iodized salt and kosher salt. The former has a strong metallic taste that makes the salt flavor overwhelming. It's easy to use too much. It's easier to control the taste with kosher salt.

I've only really noticed a difference when the salt isn't fully mixed in. Like sea salt on a cookie (yum) vs table salt (yuck)

Another important factor is how you add salt to food. I, and many other people, salt my food exclusively by picking up a pinch of salt from a bowl and putting it on/in whatever I'm making. Iodized table salt doesn't work for that cause you can't really get a good pinch. Different brands with their different sizes of crystal are also going to get pinched different. Typically, I use mortons kosher salt, but I've also used diamond kosher as well. When I used the diamond, I undersalted everything cause it's fluffier than the mortons. I think a given volume of diamond kosher contains half the mass of iodized table salt.

They're all salt. They just behave differently due to crystal size. Kosher salt forms a better crust than table salt, because it doesn't just absorb into the meat.

The difference was pretty pronounced in buttered popcorn. But the ingredients were popcorn, butter, salt. The only thing I noticed really was a difference in grain size (which basically affected his salty it was), not grain flavor (except for iodized, that is distinct. Never again, not even in an emergency. Not ruining my popcorn again).

It’s like 14$ on Amazon but that’s like a 300% markup, it’s ridiculous

Like any kosher salt? How do you cook things?