Yes....Kosher salt is pure....and for certain things the larger crystals are more desireable.
Put a little plain cheap boxed salt in your hand and a little Koshers alt in the other hand...touch your tongue to it and see the differe4nce.
Linda C

My Morton's Kosher Salt isn't pure; the ingredients are salt, yellow prussiate of soda (anti-caking agent) but my canning salt has only salt as the ingredient.

I like it because I can use less Kosher salt, therefore lower sodium intake, and have better flavor.

I think it also has to do with the amount of salt you get. Because table salt is so much more finely ground, there's a lot more table salt in a teaspoon of salt than there is in a teaspoon of kosher salt, which is much coarser, so it doesn't fill in all the available space the way table salt does. What I mean is, there's more air in a teaspoon of kosher salt, so less actual salt. So something you make with equal amounts of table salt and kosher salt will be saltier with the table salt.

Do you think I can find ten more ways to say the same thing, or am I done now?

Will other brands of kosher salt also have an anti-caking agent? Or is Morton just trying to mainstream kosher salt and keep its regular customers who are used to their salt not caking? (Though to me if it has an anti-caking agent just like regular salt, and therefore I assume will taste like regular salt, why buy it?? ) I have never bought kosher salt, I guess I will have to break down and compare. I have a hard time believing it would make that much difference, but IÂm a born skeptic.

I see what you mean, Maureen, about the larger crystals: I got that right away! Clear for meÂ

Hmm....My Mortons is dumped into the salt jar and the box tossed...
But I have a grinder full of salt...(I'll bet it's traif!) that has nothing but salt....and a block of sea salt that is for sure not anticaking! LOL!
Oy....now I will have look for "kosher" kosher salt!!
Linda C

Yes, I've seen the anti-caking agent listed on the Morton's kosher salt box. I use Diamond Brand and it lists salt as the only ingredient.

I read somewhere that kosher salt dissolves easier than table salt.

I have never seen kosher salt here but I use the locally harvested sea salt which comes in fine or large crystals and is packed without additives, so I guess that's about as pure as we can get.

SharonCb

But what really is the diffference between say authentic Kosher salt and another brand of coarse salt other than the Kosher salt, processing, facility etc has been deemed kosher by a rabbi? They're both the same salt supposedly

As I understand it, Kosher salt is called that because it's used for koshering meat (drawing the blood out). The larger crystals can be brushed off; they don't dissolve on the surface of the meat as quickly.

Morton's Kosher salt is essentially their table salt but it's flaked through rollers. It weighs less per cup than table salt but more than Diamond Crystal (which, no surprise, has a crystalline structure).

So Morton's Kosher has the same free-flow agents as their table salt while Diamond Crystal, as has been mentioned, is a pure salt.

Carol

LOL Maureen!

My Kosher, Windsor bran, salt is pure salt. I like Kosher salt becasue I can actually "pinch" it with my fingers when adding to food that is cooking and I know exactly how much I am adding. It always annoyed me to shake salt into my palm so I could "eyeball" the amount before adding. Clearly I annoy easily!

Chase is right. The reason chefs prefer kosher salt is that it is shaped so that it doesn't roll off raw meat. This also means that fingers can control how much is added better than stuff that is shaped to flow easily through shaker holes.

Sodium-reducers using kosher or other coarse salt instead of table salt are just measuring out less salt -- you'd get the same effect by measuring out less table salt. Seems to me that using the finest grind possible would be the way to get the most flavor from the smallest weight.

Not to beat a sodium chloride molecule to death, but if you measure salt by volume, you have to account for the difference in crystal size.

A cup of ordinary table salt weighs about 10 ounces; a cup of Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt weighs half that, at about 5 ounces. Morton is in between at about 7.7 ounces per cup. So if you're making a brine that calls for 1 cup of table salt and you want to use Kosher salt instead, you'd need either 1 1/2 cups of Morton Kosher salt or 2 cups of Diamond Crystal salt.

I don't use much salt in cooking, but what I do is use Diamond Crystal Kosher salt; it's easier to see coming out of the shaker.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cook's Illustrated brining basics.

If you're using it to control parasites, you do want it without the anti-caking agents and kosher is much much cheaper than aquarium salt. Oops. Wrong forum. =)

I have wondered about the advantages of kosher vs. regular for a while, having watched a lot of cooking shows, but what sparked my post was seeing a box of the MortonÂs version in Walmart last week. Thinking, "Whoa! Kosher salt has now gone mainstream!" I decided I had to know what, if anything, I was missing.

I picked up a box of the Mortons Kosher version to look today; saw the yellow prussiate of soda listed as the anti-caking agent. I think I need to find out that that is before buying any of THAT brand. I guess that it is an ingredient that is approved by a rabbi? The name is kind of scary. I find myself visualizing World War I era Prussians wearing yellow uniforms. Whereas the anti-caking agent in regular salt must not be (must not be rabbi-approved, I donÂt mean not scary)?

ItÂs starting to look like the only reason to use kosher salt is to be able to pinch. (and of course all the TV chefs pinch, right? I never see them shaking their herbs or spices from a bottle either. ItÂs always a pinch from a cute little bowl.) Since IÂm comfortable with the shaker, and donÂt use much salt anyway, maybe IÂll stick with that.

Unless I decide to try out sea saltÂ.I think I can get that for a shaker.

I just bought a box of Diamond Crystal over the weekend at Penzey's. I had to laugh when the sales woman told me that she visited her daughter and she was using the same box to put on the ice on her driveway! LOL!