What is the difference between cheap table salt and expensive salt?

You have plain old table salt and super-culinary Himalayan salt or Hawaiian black salt. What’s the difference? And is it worth paying about ten times as much to come across like a chef?

Salt is salt. Just NaCl, as you learned in chemistry class. You could even sprinkle road salt on an egg, because it’s all the same.

Small change for a kilo

Iodine is added to regular table salt. Really just a tiny amount, because ordinary food contains too little iodine, which poses a risk to public health. A pack of table salt costs just a few cents at the supermarket; for 45 cents, you can take a kilo home. So why is other salt so expensive? Himalayan salt works out at 4.95 per kilo, and the price can rise considerably if you buy the salt in a nice little jar or other attractive packaging.

Mud in your salt

Those special types of salt all contain a little something extra. That pink Himalayan salt, mined in Pakistan, contains iron oxide, which also gives it its color. Iron is very healthy, but there isn’t much of it in Himalayan salt. If you want to get your recommended daily amount of iron from it, you would have to put enormous quantities of salt on your food—and that isn’t healthy either, of course; 6 grams per day is the recommended daily maximum. That black salt? Hawaiian; it is said to taste a little smoky. It contains charcoal, which gives the salt its beautiful color. And Celtic sea salt gets its soft gray color from… mud. It’s all about what you’re willing to pay extra for, of course.

Crystals on your tongue

Why does sea salt nevertheless taste different from ordinary JOZO from a shaker? It’s because of the crystals, salt expert Theo Jurriens told nu.nl. ‘Flavor is formed on our tongue, which means that you taste a somewhat larger crystal for longer. Table salt has a very fine texture, and that may be one reason people prefer coarser salt.’

Read also:

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• New: sea salt from Zeeland
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