This submit initially appeared within the October 15, 2023 version of Eater In the present day, which brings you the freshest information from the meals world daily. Subscribe now.
In keeping with a chart on Epicurious, a ½ teaspoon of Diamond Crystal kosher salt — a meals media favourite — is equal to the identical measurement of Morton desk salt or Baleine coarse salt. However let’s say you’re utilizing Morton coarse kosher salt or Baleine tremendous salt: It’ll be ⅜ teaspoon of that for each ½ teaspoon of Diamond Crystal. That is essential as a result of whereas not each recipe states it outright, many are written round Diamond Crystal measurements; it’s the go-to salt for recipe growth at Bon Appétit and a favourite at America’s Check Kitchen.
A brand new product introduces the necessity for extra math: This week, Diamond Crystal launched “Baking Salt,” a tremendous kosher salt that it claims “dissolves, mixes, and blends sooner and extra evenly into batters and doughs than conventional desk salt.” This salt comes with its personal conversion chart clarifying that ⅜ teaspoon of Baking Salt equals half a teaspoon of standard Diamond Crystal kosher, which it lists as equal to ¼ teaspoon of “competitor kosher salt.” And if that’s all a bit complicated, that’s as a result of it’s. When did salt, one thing so fundamental and important, develop into so difficult?
Certainly, someplace between meals media’s fixed fawning over Diamond Crystal and the launch of hyper-specific salt merchandise like Baking Salt or Jacobsen’s Disco Di Sale (10-gram discs of salt meant for “completely seasoned pasta”), the sense has arisen amongst some residence cooks that possibly that is all a bit too persnickety. Diamond Crystal kosher salt was the main ingredient in a buzzy latest Reddit submit that requested: “What fashionable cooking merchandise or methodology are you type of proof against?” In a post-influencer world, skeptics generally toss round suspicion of sponsorship, however I doubt it’s so nefarious; we, within the meals world, merely love to choose a meals and make it right into a character (contemplate the seafood garments, or the idea of the pasta lady).
Salt is salt is salt, however solely to an extent. How a lot Diamond Crystal you employ, versus how a lot Morton, truly issues. As Mari Uyehara wrote in Style in 2017, the belief that kosher salts have been 1:1 interchangeable led to reader dissatisfaction at Bon Appétit that prompted its kitchen to cross-test recipes utilizing each Diamond Crystal and Morton. The Washington Put up acknowledged the variations between salts in a 2021 announcement that it was shifting away from kosher salt and making tremendous sea salt — which it described as much less complicated than kosher salt and simpler to swap with desk salt — its recipe normal as an alternative.
This elevated fuss round salt appears a part of greater shifts within the meals world. For one factor, there’s the necessity for manufacturers to distinguish themselves in an more and more crowded market. In all, the launch of Baking Salt falls in step with the takeaways of a New York Occasions piece from August about Diamond Crystal’s latest revamp: The model is not involved with simply being fundamental, low-cost salt. In truth, because the Occasions reported, the model is particularly making an attempt to distinguish itself from Morton, which dominates kosher salt gross sales regardless of Diamond Crystal’s vocal supporters, by leaning into the “aspiring residence chef” demographic, with “traditionalists” a secondary precedence.
Meaning branding and pricing that de-emphasize the sense of Diamond Crystal as being thrifty and industrial, shifting it from a commodity salt to a premium salt, the Occasions describes. (After all, it stays industrial. Diamond Crystal is owned by the company Cargill, which is why some select to not use it.) As of this writing, a container of Baking Salt runs $0.82 per ounce in comparison with the $0.27 per ounce of an enormous field of the model’s common kosher salt. That’s an enormous worth soar, plus you’ve gotta do this additional math.
And it’s laborious to not see the influencerification of the meals world as a part of this elevated salt fuss too. Think about, for instance, the “millennial Martha Stewart” Molly Baz, who’s recognized for her vocal devotion to Diamond Crystal. Her attraction lies largely in teasing a “my life however higher” fantasy by means of meals. To return to Diamond Crystal’s use of the phrase “aspiring”: Definitely, the sense of cooking as an aspirational pursuit — and thus, of components, together with salt, as life-style signifiers — motivates a few of the hyper-specific salt cult. How and with what you salt can even signify being “within the know.” Diamond Crystal, the Occasions factors out, may be seen within the FX’s The Bear, which obtained non-service staff saying “heard” and sipping out of deli containers in an odd sense of kitchen cosplay.
On the finish of the day, what issues is that your meals is seasoned. Coarse, tremendous, kosher, baking — all of the phrases matter, however you would possibly wish to take all of them with a grain of salt.
