<p>When I was traveling in Austria, they sell very expensive rock salts in specialty stores, they came in different colors and prices which I could not afford. We bought some Rock Salts in the flea market, even that it is 10x the cost of Sea Salt sold here, maybe 100x than the Morton salt I can buy in the regular supermarket.</p>
<p>What is the magical added value in terms of taste and quality in those expensive ones to those cheap ones? I think Sea Salt is expensive enough, but those Rock Salt?</p>
<p>I think it’s all NaCl. Reminds me of the added price, but not added value, of Sugar in the Raw.</p>
<p>I don’t think either your taste or your biochemistry will know the difference.</p>
<p>Hype is everywhere. But tastings comparing cheap vodka to the $100 bottles often favor the cheap vodka. And there was even a recent test where concert violinists preferred modern high quality instruments to Strads.</p>
<p>Can’t tell you about rock salt although I’m sure chemically speaking, it’s purer (with no adulterants etc) than sea salt.
Sea salts have different and distinct flavors depending on their origin. Different seas have different tastes. Some are much more highly desired than others.
I had the pleasure of taking a cooking class once that actually explored the taste of different salts and how it affected the taste of foods. Really quite amazing! As a result we now only use Kosher salt (hey, Publix has it!) on a regular basis because there are no additives. It becomes not only a taste difference but a texture difference as well. Iodine (although good for you and I don’t avoid it in any way) adds a bitter taste. It really depends on the use (fine french sauces or french fries.) There are even cooking equivalents between the amounts of salt used in a dish depending on what type of salt is used.</p>
<p>I got a bunch of salts for Christmas. My aged palate thought they all tasted… salty. That’s said, even I can tell that if you sprinkle the ones with big flakes vs the ones with little flakes on food the experience is different. Some are very pretty though.</p>
<p>I do think it’s probably worth making sure that you get some iodized salt somewhere in your diet. I mostly use kosher salt and probably don’t get enough.</p>
<p>After reading up on it, I use Himalayan Pink salts ordered from Amazon. Love the taste and don’t like refined white salt.
Also use it them my bath…heavenly. :)</p>
<p>Have never seen rock salt, but I use either sea salt or kosher salt in cooking generally. My addiction is something called “fleur de sel.” It’s a French sea salt that is harvested in late afternoon and is the first, lightest, purest salt that rises to the surface as the sea water evaporates. Purists say is should be harvested with a wooden scoop by women, but that’s another matter. It is so light and tastes wonderful. </p>
<p>I only use it to salt things that won’t be cooked/baked (meat before serving, vinaigrette, fries, etc.) It’s hard to find where we live, but when I come back from France, I usually have at least a pound in my luggage. I’ve gotten some looks, and even had to have it chemically tested (a story H loves to tell) by TSA, but they let it through.</p>
<p>We were at a hoity toity resataurant the other night where they served 2 salts in little dishes- a red large crystal salt from Hawaii and light white salt flakes from England. They had a slightly different taste due to the lava rock in Hawaii, and the larger crystal didn’t dissolve and gave a very different texture to the food. The best comparison I can think of would be like trying to use small salt on a pretzel instead of the big salt crystals.</p>
<p>(They also served goats milk butter in addition to cows milk buter. that was interesting)</p>
<p>zooser, my DH sprinkles salt onto his chips! I think he does that to spite me. </p>
<p>We own table salt, kosher salt, and rock salt and keep the kosher salt in our salt shaker. In terms of size: smallest is table, middle is kosher, and bulkiest is the rock salt. We rarely use rock salt, but sometimes I rub a roast chicken with rock before roasting and we use the table salt in baking when the recipe calls for 1 tsp. </p>
<p>According to my DH, why bother eating “saltless” potato chips or pretzels? It’s like eating sugarless cookies.</p>
<p>The main difference I can see is that regular table salt probably won’t have all the contaminants and pollutants that one encounters in sea water, but sea salt probably will. But hey, some people apparently prefer the extra “flavor” the sea water pollutants add to their dining experience.</p>