I'm Just Here for the Food_ Version 2.0 - Alton Brown [8]
CHEMICALLY SPEAKING: SALT
Any time you find an acid bound to an alkaline, you’ve found yourself a salt. Of course, in the kitchen we’re really only concerned with NaCl, the molecular marriage of chlorine (an acidic gas) and sodium (a base metal). If you’re into curing meats you might also be into sodium nitrite or perhaps even sodium nitrate. The two elements are united by an ionic bond, which means they’ve got one of those license plates that reads “2gether 4ever”—this is one of the strongest bonds around.
Different types of salt taste different not because of differences in the salt per se but because of the other stuff they’re mixed up with. Artisanal sea salt, for instance, raked right off the beach, contains traces of salts other than NaCl, not to mention a host of other minerals. Rock salt, mined from the ground, can contain anything from iron to cobalt (a good reason to restrict its use to endothermic reactions). Most of the salt sold in the United States is very nearly pure, because it’s harvested as a brine. Water is pumped into solid underground salt reserves, which then dissolve and are pumped back to the surface. The brine is stripped of other components (usually by physical rather than chemical means) and then concentrated by boiling. The brine is then cooled until tiny, perfect cubes of salt are forced out of the solution. Before these are marketed as table salt, they have a couple of things added to them: anticlumping agents and iodine (see Iodine and Salt).
If the brine is boiled and cooled in open pans, conglomerates of crystals grow downward from the surface like upside-down pyramids. These are separated out via centrifuge, then dried and sorted by size. The larger pieces (which may be rolled into flakes) are sold as coarse or kosher salt.
Kosher salt tastes better on food. The fact that kosher salt doesn’t contain any additives may be a factor, but I suspect it has more to do with timing. Because kosher salt flakes are irregularly shaped and have a very low surface-to-mass ratio, they dissolve slowly, releasing their flavor like a time-release medicine. The tiny cubes of table salt attack the tongue all at once. I can always tell when food has been sprinkled with table salt because salt is the first thing I taste. Kosher salt works more behind the scenes and is therefore (to my tongue at least) a more effective seasoning.
Even if flavor weren’t an issue, I’d still prefer kosher to table salt because it is controllable. Since it’s composed of irregularly shaped flakes, you can actually pinch kosher salt between your fingers and hold it there. Gently move your fingers back and forth and the flakes gently fall. Stop moving and the salt stops falling. Table-salt crystals are so small and so uniform they tend to act more like a fluid than a solid, so even if you manage to get hold of a few, you’re not going to get to decide where they go. Although kosher flakes are quite large, the crystals that make them up are actually very fine, so when a flake of kosher salt hits the moist surface of a food, it dissolves quickly and spreads out across a wider area.
The only other salt I keep around is Danish smoked salt, a finishing salt (as opposed to a cooking salt) that is made from sea water cooked down over alderwood fires. The crystals are as brown as Demerara sugar. Sprinkled on a steak . . .well, it’s good.
THE SPICE KING
Black pepper is the king of spices. Back in the Middle Ages, pepper was a currency: a family’s wealth was determined not by how much money they had in the bank but by how many peppercorns they had in their pantry. Black, white, and green peppercorns all come from a small berry that grows in clusters on a vine native to India. When these berries are picked young, dried, and fermented, they become black peppercorns, whose hot spice is tempered