Table salt vs kosher salt

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My wife prefers table salt but I like kosher salt. We actually have two shakers, one for each.

From what I have read it sounds like it's better to cook with kosher and use table salt after food is cooked but I really don't like table salt, it just tastes odd to me after using kosher for so long.

What is your preference and why?
One is fortified with iodine, one is not, and blessed.

If your looking for something more healthy, try this stuff.

https://www.costco.com/kirkland-sig...der-with-refill,-26-oz.product.100461015.html
 
Salt (NaCl) is a waste product from Potash mining in Saskatchewan. There are large salt tailings piles at each of the mines.

If you'd like a few tens or hundreds of thousands of tons of (impure) salt, I'm sure they'd be delighted to have you haul it away. The salt is contaminated with a trace of dirt, a small amount of KCl, and apparently iron. It has a nice pink colour.
 
One is fortified with iodine, one is not, and blessed.

If your looking for something more healthy, try this stuff.

https://www.costco.com/kirkland-signature-himalayan-pink-salt,-grinder-with-refill,-26-oz.product.100461015.html

There's nothing particularly healthy about one type of salt over another. Certainly a preference based on taste is one thing, but there are a ton of dubious claims out there about the trace minerals in different types of table salt being somehow "healthier".
 
Sea salt is typically as fine as table salt.

Depends. It can be processed just like common table salt or it can be processed where it's made into flakes or coarse crystals.

I had some Mediterranean sea salt from Trapani, Sicily. It was really sticky. It had a flavor that was definitely more than just salt, but I had to shake the container often to get it to flow properly. I went to a restaurant that used a similar style of sea salt, and they put toothpicks and rice in the salt shaker to keep it from clumping.
 
Lovely, sea salt from the Med, the filthiest sea with the most microplastic anywhere. Go swimming at the Riviera and you may need tar remover to clean yourself when you come out of the water. And don't open your mouth while swimming. Most commercial table salt contains about 5% silicon oxide, basically sand, added as an anticaking agent. Iodized salt contains usually dextrose because it helps stabilize the iodine. You can find a list of the brands the least contaminated with microplastic, heavy metals, etc, online. Redmond is alright.
 
Lovely, sea salt from the Med, the filthiest sea with the most microplastic anywhere. Go swimming at the Riviera and you may need tar remover to clean yourself when you come out of the water. And don't open your mouth while swimming. Most commercial table salt contains about 5% silicon oxide, basically sand, added as an anticaking agent. Iodized salt contains usually dextrose because it helps stabilize the iodine. You can find a list of the brands the least contaminated with microplastic, heavy metals, etc, online. Redmond is alright.

It's all pretty nasty stuff if have too think too hard about where it came from. I mean - how clean can sea salt be when it's dried out in ponds like this? I've gone by these ponds before and there's all sorts of birds dumping their own wastes into these ponds. And of course all the various sea creatures that lived in the waters of San Francisco Bay.

This looks like Cargill's salt ponds on the Fremont side. I think that's Mission Peak in the background.

sea-salt-ponds.jpg
 
Umm, don't all sorts of birds dump their own wastes on every farmers field in the country such that every vegetable you buy at a store has that too?

Well yeah. Human beings have so many hangups about food thinking that this or that is somehow unclean. Granted I've seen some foreign business guests look at me like I was insane when I ate sushi, poke, raw oysters, and even medium-rare steaks. They were from a country where they basically overcooked and boiled everything.

But in the end when it comes to all sorts of things with raw produce, I guess that's why it's usually washed.
 
Umm, don't all sorts of birds dump their own wastes on every farmers field in the country such that every vegetable you buy at a store has that too?
I wash my vegetables. Can't recall the last time I washed my salt. I'm sure there are regulations, chemicals/etc they have to test for, and some ppm limit, and then there are things they don't have to test for, or their limits are higher than a sane person wants... reminds me of OSHA limits on CO... your employer can expose you to 50ppm every day, but do you want to accept that when there's studies that show long term, less than half that causes symptoms?

Meh, food preferences are very subjective. I buy the cheapest iodized salt I can find for everyday use, and cheapest non-iodized for pickling things I grow in my garden. I use the minimum amount of salt needed to make food palatable and often, add none because it's already there in saline injected chicken, salted canned vegetables, cheese, sauces whatever... you can only DIY make so much from scratch w/o added sodium before it becomes a burden. I try to substitute other spices any time I can.
 
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Wasn't the idea to overload the thyroid with iodine such that it won't absorb much of what may be radioactive iodine?
The goal is to block the thyroid by saturating it with potassium iodide to the point it can't absorb any iodine 131. That works in the short run and is the lesser of two evils when it comes to radiation but does not come without potentially serious side effects. Of course, you'd still absorb other isotypes from fallout. Iodide tablets may make sense or they may not, depending on the situation. It's company policy to have us carry KI tablets in our kit at all times. A one-time dosage of 130mg , one pill, is recommended and blocks an adult's thyroid for 24 hours.

 
Most commercial table salt contains about 5% silicon oxide, basically sand, added as an anticaking agent.

This is not consistent with my lifetime of observations. For various reasons from pickling to sore throats, I've found myself making a saline solution from table salt and there is no sand undissolved at the bottom of the container. If I saw something at the bottom, and I always look, I'd think it was undissolved salt and agitate it till there was nothing, and then there is always nothing left, all dissolved salt.

The goal of iodine in mass consumer salt is a nutritional source of it, has nothing to do with radiation preparedness. Iodine rich foods tend to cost more than what the worker bees eat on a regular basis. I've possibly stated the obvious... kinda like why we have vitamins added to refined white flour, white rice, cereal, etc. The worker bees need carbs to do the labor and sweat doing it, so salt!
 
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This is not consistent with my lifetime of observations. For various reasons from pickling to sore throats, I've found myself making a saline solution from table salt and there is no sand undissolved at the bottom of the container. If I saw something at the bottom, and I always look, I'd think it was undissolved salt and agitate it till there was nothing, and then there is always nothing left, all dissolved salt.
Calcium silicate is soluble. It may be more prevalent than silicon oxide as an anticaking agent. I have seen silicoaluminate on salt labels. That does not dissolve but is so fine you won't see it. It must say on the container what's in it.
The goal of iodine in mass consumer salt is a nutritional source of it, has nothing to do with radiation preparedness. Iodine rich foods tend to cost more than what the worker bees eat on a regular basis. I've possibly stated the obvious... kinda like why we have vitamins added to refined white flour, white rice, cereal, etc.
Yup, lack of iodine was the major source of cretinism stemming from hypothyroidism and the main cause of goiters. There are better sources of iodine than salt. Interestingly enough, the salt added to processed foods is usually not iodized. Most people consume way too much salt.
 
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