Hi everybody, I've heard some concerns, so let me make something really clear: Rendering meat kosher is a complicated process of which this salting procedure I demonstrate in the video is simply one phase. As I mentioned in the vid, there's the butchering process to consider, and more. This video is not about how to make meat compliant with Jewish dietary law - it only engages with that topic in as much as it is relevant to the historical origins of "Kosher salt" as a marketing term for coarse salts, which is what the video is about. If you really want to learn how to make food suitable for a religion, I am not your man! Here's one thing I think I got wrong: OU regards Morton table salt as "not Kosher for Passover," which is a much more specific and narrow designation than "not Kosher." And certainly iodine is not the only factor they consider there, which is why I said the salt is not Kosher "for a few reasons." Writing these videos is always a balancing act between giving enough context to maintain accuracy, and cutting out details that would make the video last forever. I often have to use phrases like "one of the reasons" or "among other things" to communicate that what I'm mentioning is part of a much bigger thing, but it's not the particular thing we're talking about today. Regardless, "not Kosher for passover" is a much more specific thing than "not Kosher" - that much I definitely got wrong. And certainly, don't come to me looking for authentic Hebrew pronunciations! As always, I generally try to use the most proximate anglicization for non-English words. Whether I got to the closest proximate anglicization on Chabad, I'm not sure! I'm hearing no? [UPDATE] The consensus below seems to be that "h" is a better anglicization than my "sh" for the throaty Hebrew "ch." If anybody has more concerns along these lines, I'll try to update this pin accordingly. [UPDATE] People seem to think my video gave the impression that Jews frequently kasher meat themselves. That was not my intention, and it isn't the case. Kashering is generally part of the kosherbutchering process, and is done by pros before consumers buy the meat. (At least, that is the case in highly developed economies - I imagine it might be different in a traditional agrarian context.) When I mentioned in the video that public health authorities frown on washing meat at home, some people took that as an implication that kashering is commonly done in the home. I understand how I might have unintentionally given that impression. FWIW, my intent was only to explain why I, in demonstrating kashering in my own kitchen, was violating the very public health advice that I was promulgating in this recent video I did on meat washing: ua-cam.com/video/90Nd_vh3yk8/v-deo.html
Don’t give in to the kind of bullies who want you to be constantly apologising and explaining yourself. The topic of the video is obvious and anyone acting like you were claiming expertise on a topic you clearly weren’t is just a mean person on a power trip.
Just for future references a lot of Hebrew words transliterated into English use c h to represent a guttural "H"ish sound, kind of like the surprised sound "ach!" Think of it as somewhere between an H sound and a hard k sound.
THANK YOU! I'm Australian and this whole kosher salt had me thinking Americans baptised their salt into different religions, and wondering why the heck that would be a thing.
As an American Orthodox Jew who keeps kosher, it has also confused me to no end why and how Kosher Salt became the chef’s salt of choice. 😂 We grew up using table salt for everything and now use Himalayan Pink salt for everything. Lol
Same here. I’m non American and had been curious for ages what the kosher meant in salt as i keep seeing it in lots of recipes saying to use it butI don’t see it stocked in the uk. I thought it must just be a general name for non iodine salt flakes.
@@catsandrubber I think you were right on the money with that guess, the video mostly just goes into the history of _why_ it's a generic name for flaky non-iodized salt.
Important correction: *all* salt is Kosher, by definition; the iodized version isn't kosher *for Passover* which is very different from not being kosher. Passover has its own set of dietary laws, and a lot of things that are kosher year round aren't kosher for Passover, e.g. leavened bread :)
@@doesnotexist6524 we are all asked to guard the commands. Not just Jewish peoples. the only true holidays are the "Jewish" feast days. Everything else is pagan sun worship.
As a European, I really like about your video that you go the lenght and explain the differences between the US and European customs and naming. I miss that from other videos. You do really cater to a public on both sides of the Atlantic. (Edit: a letter, as suggested)
@@mortenbund1219 Usually the ingredients are in the standard packaging order, but really the US should just convert to the hybrid method of the UK, Australia, and Canada.
I really appreciate american youtubers who mention how much everything is in grams and kilos so so much. It really makes it easier to understand things or recreate recipes.
@@feena9241 as an American me too. Just inserting a bit of metric into people's day can get them more used to it. Since we just refuse to go head first into metrification at least hopefully we can ease into it. Bah
As a european, who loves to cook and has read a lot of American recipes, that was the single greatest piece of cooking-knowledge I’ve ever seen! I have always wondered what kosher salt was and couldn’t by the love of it, find anything online that would explain it. Until now! So thank you!
It is simply a coarse salt. You can get it anywhere around in Europe. You can even choose how coarse suits you the best. And wow, yes it is easier to operate. This is just one of the episodes when I think (and laugh) about Americans trying to pretend to have something extra, while they actually miss quite a lot. Like with different flour coarseness. Anyway calling it Kosher is just a fancy (and rather inappropriate) thing as proven in this otherwise great video.
Thank you. I’m from England and I’d never heard of kosher salt until I came to the US and I’ve been very curious about what it was and you’ve helped me tremendously. By reading through your own comments, it seems that many people have been very critical and I feel sad about that. You were trying to be helpful and you were. Thank you!
I'm a european chef and I've always used flaky salt for salt curing for the reasons stated but I was always so confused as why some salt was jewish and some wasn't. thanks
I’m also European and in high school we once went on an excursion to a synagogue while learning about different religions. We met with a rabbi and at the time I was very invested in American cooking channels who all talked about “kosher” salt. Soo I raised my hand and asked her why some salt is kosher. She was incredibly confused “what?? No, salt isn’t kosher i don’t know what are you talking about” and I was really embarrassed about having asked a seemingly dumb question that I still didn’t have an answer to.
@@SuvuIC Aw, that seems unfair! As an american, I just always thought kosher salt was just the term for big flaky salt. I guess it was a needed distinction in search of a name! And this one name stuck here.
First off, very impressive summary of Kashrut for someone who didn't grow up with it. The only thing that you got (a bit) wrong is the part where you talked about how the requirement to rinse the meat is contrary to food-safety guidelines. That is certainly true, but it's not actually relevant to the typical kosher kitchen. The reason is that this entire process is not done in the home, but rather at the butcher and/or slaughterhouse. As you are now aware, Kashrut is so complex that the process is monitored from farm all the way to the grocery store. By the time you buy it, it's already totally kashered and can simply be prepared and eaten just like a non-kosher piece of meat. Not additional salting or rinsing is necessary.
Yep, I'm aware that people generally don't kasher at home anymore. It's simply the case that I was doing it in my home at that particular moment, and given that I had recently made a video about why washing meat at home is bad, I felt I should acknowledge the apparent contradiction!
Those different kinds of salt - or evenmore than those two - have been around in Eruopean cuisine forever, but nobody calls it "kosher" and that is atually correct, as it has nothing to do with that at all. It's just an American neologism.
Thank you so much for taking the time and trouble to explain kosher salt. I had no idea why all American recipes asked for it as in the UK and Europe we’ve never heard of it! Here in France “sel de guerande” is the go to choice for home cooks and chefs. For final seasoning we use “fleur de sel” and it really does taste of the sea.
I hear this word non-stop from Binging with Babish and have actually unironically literally never heard of it in my entire life outside of that context of his youtube channel.
Im from London and the question of 'what is kosher salt?' Has plagued me for at least 3 years. I love to cook and use UA-cam a lot for recipes. Iv tried using Google but there has never been a clear answer. Thank you so much for a clear and simple answer. You have put my mind and ease!
@@lookoutforchris there's a bunch of people in the comments claiming "I searched the internet and couldn't find it!!!" It's called "bulls**t" and "a*s-kissing" xD A simple Google search or q00videos on UA-cam will answer the question. Why? Idk man. The internet is a bizarre place full of people doing s**t for no reason xD
In France, we have what we call fine salt (Sel fin) and "Big" salt (Gros sel), which, as the name implies, is just bigger salt crystals. Apparently, our "Gros sel" seems to be kind of the equivalent of Kosher salt, but it's very common in households here. We use it all the time on meat for example. Fine salt is mostly used at the table, or when you just need a pinch of salt in a recipe like cake or salad dressing (vinaigrette).
America has dozens of available salt for people. An average store has at least 5 available at any one time. In the US, "Himalayan Salt" (which is from Pakistan) or pink salt is quite popular as well. Some salt is quite expensive, and I've only had it at expensive restaurants.
Something to add here: Kosher salt has no Idodine (as the video mentions). Iodine kills bacteria and stops fermentation. That's why you want to use kosher (or iodine free) salt for fermentation. Learned that the hard way (RIP my miso from 2019)
There might be another reason your miso didn't work. Iodine seems to have a small effect at most, probably even no effect on fermentation: "The use of iodized salt did not statistically significantly influence microbial populations in the fermentation. Thus, there is no basis for the popular held belief that the use of iodized salt inhibits the growth of the bacteria important for the sauerkraut fermentation. A statistically near significant effect (p = 0.06), however, was noted for the effect of iodine on yeasts and mould populations in the fermentations performed without starter cultures." Another study concludes: "Stable fermentations with pH-values below pH 4 were achieved, using both iodized and non-iodized salt. No effects on the counts of total aerobic bacteria, LAB, enterobacteria and yeasts and moulds were determined using iodized salt compared to fermentations conducted with non-iodized salt. The iodine content in the gherkins depended on the iodine concentration in the brine and remained unaffected by fermentation and pasteurization." So it should be safe to use for fermentation and at most might potentially affect the shelf life of your product.
@@KiinaSu Thanks for your input! You are completely right in that I don't know exactly what killed my Miso. Can you link sources for your quotes, that would be super helpful in trying to pin this down. As far as I know, Miso is one of the more delicate fermentations, as you start it with a very specific fungus, which might be more susceptible to Iodine than the microbiotic helpers in Sauerkraut. But I also don't know that for sure, which is why I'd like to check the sources of your quotes, maybe they go into depths about this as well :)
Thank you. I've had people tell me everything from Kosher salt being deemed Kosher by Jewish authorities on the matter to "all salt is salt." SO: It's KosherING salt, and it's coarse for some very good reasons. Why was this so hard to explain for so many people. I've been using Kosher salt as I've been learning to cook and I see Bobby Flay do it. My mother was a baker so I understand why regular table salt is used their. Such a great video.
I assumed kosher salt was called "kosher" because it wasn't iodized. I never knew it was coarse due to the reasons you explained. As a professional cook, I always understood that we used coarse salt (kosher or sea salt) was because it was easier for us to control the amounts we use when salting food with our hands. Iodized salt has smaller grains so it's really much harder to control and eyeball the actual amount of sodium we're using in our dishes.
It wasn't until approximately the 20th C that iodinazation was even known to be a possible thing. How did it ever become non-kosher? White granular sugar wasn't a thing until the new world was discovered. How did it not become subject to a kosher determination?
@@mrcryptozoic817 iodized salt is kosher it just can’t automatically be deemed kosher for Passover without a certification because the process of making iodized salt can use corn products which are not kosher for Passover.
I'm in Europe, but I love watching Food Wishes videos and I've been wondering about Chef John's persistent use of kosher salt for ages. So thanks for explaining it so clearly (and interestingly).
I'm in Australia and watch Chef John all the time and was annoyed about the constant use of 'kosher salt'.Easy fixed,like everything nowadays i googled it and the explanation was about the size of the salt grains and they said that US chefs use the bigger grain salt for better control of the amount used(you get much more in a pinch of kosher salt was the final determination) Cheers Mate.
Chef John actually has a video about differences in salt. Not specifically about kosher salt but more in the sense of why salt in recipes need to be adjusted depending on which one you have. It's a very old video so might be hard to find. Edit: link to Chef John's video: ua-cam.com/video/XGCY9Cpia_A/v-deo.html
In Chile and Argentina they call it "sal parrillera" which literally translates as "grill salt". Both countries have a long tradition of outdoors cooking and it's particularly focused on meats.
@@khhnator we don't really have kosher salt here (Brazil), they can only be found in very specific ultra orthodox kosher grocery stores, or super expensive import stores.
@@juliabogajo wrong, kosher salt is just sal grosso. O nosso sal grosso é um pouco maior, mas você pode achar facilmente sal de parrilha ou simplesmente moer o sal grosso.
This might sound weird but can you do a video of how to properly/scientifically clean after cooking/eating? How to wash dishes, basically. Should you soak? should you rinse/drain your sponge with cold water? When should you use an iron sponge? Do you have to use soap if there's only cookie crumbs on the plate? Etc.
I mean soaking can only be bad if what you're cleaning can rust. At minimum it loosens up the caked on stuff. And obviously you have to scrub with soap and water regardless of whether you soak or not
I've been waiting for this video for three monts. I follow a lot of american recipes 'cause I love american food, and when someone was saying "kosher salt" I didn't know wtf that was. Thank you man, Love from Catania, Sicily
The concept of an Italian looking to America for recipies is crazy to me. What do you classify as "American" food? I've had people from other countries ask me before about what american dishes they should try and I never know what to say. All my favorite foods are american takes on another cultures food. Like new york style pizza, american italian, or tex-mex. But to me it feels silly to suggest someone try our pizza when theyre asking for "american food"
@@GucciCaligula The US has an incredible output of technical recipes and translation of international recipes into a standardised language and often with obscure ingredients substituted to those more easily found internationally.
Morton is the flacked salt that restaurants use all day to cook n season!! The expensive Sea n Pink salts etc are finishing seasoning at the table!! Its kinda fun to have both salt n pepper grinders at the table with the nice stuff!!
I needed this video so much. Me: "I can't find Korsher salt anywhere!" Adam: "It's only called Kosher salt in the US. It's coarse flaky salt". Me: "Ohh... I already have that stuff in my home. Thanks!"
Same! All this time I've been thinking «man, _everybody's_ talking about Kosher salt and using it in all their recipies, I really gotta try to find some to see if it's really that much better than regular salt» when I've been using Kosher salt all along.
Yup for last few years since watching American cooking TV shows and UA-cam cooking channels I've been confused about Kosher salt. Now I'm like finally someone explains and I know I have that in my store cupboard. Now I can get simply back to cooking.
Since I switched to Kosher salt in the kitchen, I don't use table salt except in recipes measured by volume. I recently ran out of my go to brand, so I used some pickling salt. Not the same thing at all. Kosher salt is coarse, but coarse salt (aka pickling salt) isn't the same thing. So, if you can't find "Kosher", be sure you find something that is flaky. Otherwise things will come out twice as salty as you expect if you are used to Kosher salt.
@@JayAbel coarse salt and picking salt are different: pickling salt is finer than table salt. At least in México you can get a variety of salts without the stupid "kosher" name attached to them, in the package you can see if it is mineral or sea salt, if it has iodine, if it says refined then it has anticaking, it can be fine, coarse, coarser, rock salt and in flakes.
@@juanrivera4440 I wasn't correcting your spelling. Those were air quotes. Let's just say most of the people buying those scales aren't jewelers or food youtubers. ;)
I wish we'd just keep the "kosher" out of it and call it what it is: coarse salt. This would really emphasize what the value proposition is, and might even help dispel some popular-but-incorrect beliefs about healthiness.
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Same same same Also I hate the fact that it's linked to a religion
At the end of the day, salt is salt. Having such a variety and brainwashing people into believing there is a difference, well, it's good for business. Yeah Capitalism.
Oisin O’Sullivan: When I was a kid my step-mother let me choose the middle name for my newborn half-brother, it is one I have never seen or heard until just now….Oisin!!
Yeah when I watched a youtube video for cooking they almost always use kosher salt and I just gave up because there's no way to find it in my country because judaism isn't that big here. So they just left me confused.
I think these advantages of kosher salt are mostly from the fact that you are handling the salts in a way more optimal for kosher salt - pinching them, and this most likely comes from habit of using kosher salt. As someone using exclusively table salt, I never pinch salts. If I use shaker on the table side, I have pretty good feeling of how much salt comes out each shake. For cooking, I have little container of salt with little spoon, so consistent measurement and application is never a problem.
The cheapest and most commonly sold quantity of table salt at a chain grocery store here in San Diego is $.79 for a 16 ounce cylindrical cardboard carton, with or without added iodine. Kosher salts average about 50-70% as salty as standard table salt, and are certainly well over twice as expensive (relative to the cheapest table salt) by weight. Thus, it costs >double the price and need to use more to indeed effect an equal degree of sodium chloride content in the food. On the other hand, plain table salt just doesn't fit the bill like Kosher salt will on the rim of margarita cocktails!
I adopted my grandfather's habit of using a salt shaker to shake into my palm and using that to gauge how much salt I'm going to put on my food. Then I just brush it off my hand onto the food.
Absolutely, I also find it weird that he mentioned that the salt container can get dirty in the context of touching it around raw meats and then presented sticking your fingers into an open container of kosher salt as somehow cleaner...
I'm using my shaker for nearly 15 years now. Never had issues with cleanliness with it. Requires the same amount of cleaning as a knife or a cutting board.
@@iunnyrhalldorsdottir8248he is right, though its not because anyone touches the lid with dirty hands. My salt shakers usually clog up because the salt gets clumpy at the holes everytime I use it to salt actively steaming foods, like pasta water, simmering sauces etc.
I've always wondered about what all of the yt chefs talk about when they refer to kosher salt, but never have I dared to ask or google this. So thank you for enlightening me.
Same here! I’m not American and for YEARS I wondered what kosher salt was! I even asked a couple of jewish friends (not American either) and they had no idea!
Specifically the brand that most recipes are referring to is Diamond Crystal, it's the one most often used in restaurants here. That's the one with the smaller flakes that are lighter and airier.
My late Jewish mother was a superb cook. She never in her life used measuring devices if any sort. She eyeballed any ingredient needed, and always got it right. By the way , kosher meat is better than its un kosher variant, and many of the best chefs know this.
As a Brit, when I went to NYC I remember kosher salt was one of the first things I looked for in the store just so I could try it. I was always so confused at every recipe calling for it so this video was perfect!
hey Adam! I'm Jewish and wanted to say that you did an amazing job of portraying that side of things, thank you so much for always doing your research and due diligence
Great video!!! One thing I might add, from a “Kashrus”perspective, when you salt the meat you must hang it or put it on a grate because like you said, it will sit in it’s own juice.
Great explanation. Was always curious about this. Morton Course Kosher salt is also best used to scrub out and clean cast iron cookware, without removing the seasoning (by using detergents).
Hey Adam, I think it would be very interesting to see an episode on nutritional yeast! Most people who go vegan say they really love it and that it was a great discovery, but not many seem to know wtf it even is haha
I'd actually enjoy a "vegan meat replacements from the viewpoint of someone who eats meat" kind of video from him. It'd be interesting to learn more about the options out there that isn't just the Impossible branded meat patties.
@@kyleuhlig1529 This is a great idea, I've been veggie for years and I still have to stop and think for a sec to remember the difference between seitan and tempeh
Hi Adam, I'm a rabbi and I need to clarify what you saw at 1:54: salt with iodine IS kosher but just not kosher for Passover without special Passover certification as it may come from a grain starch that would be problematic on Passover itself.
People who consume iodine reasonable amounts are healthier regardless of what some may claim Same with Rice grains wheat barley oats and meals corn etc
For your info, as a native Hebrew Speaker I've googled this issue in an Israeli supermaket Website out of curiousity and have ealsily found an Iodine Salt product , Melach Haaretz מלח הארץ, with a Kosher for Passover seal from BADATZ. As a Rabbi you would most likely know this means most Rabbininte Supervisions could tehcnically approve this type of salt as KOSHER at all times under Jewish Law.
@@israteeg752 He didn't say that salt with iodine isn't kosher for Passover. He just said that it isn't kosher for Passover without additional clarification. Basically, that it's a harder certification to get than just "kosher". Melah ha'aretz existing doesn't prove him wrong.
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but, 'kosher' salt , at least to my knowledge, means also that the production process has been blessed at a minimum of every 5 years. ie; salt sources are blessed before processing. I may be wrong, but I have been witness to this kinda thing.
As an Israeli, I was very confused when I came across American cooking videos on UA-cam and they mentioned kosher salt. I would have to go out of my way to get salt that isn't kosher, and the kosher ones come in all imaginable varieties, so I really had no idea what they were talking about. Thanks for the video
For me each type of salt has a different flavor and texture Table Salt has a biting taste Kosher Salt has a sweet taste Himalayan Salt has a buttery taste Sea Salt has a océany taste. So for me as American, it’s about getting a different flavor profile based on what I’m cooking.
@@moniquewrites9046 they have no sweetening compounds nor oils/fats in them, so your "buttery" and "sweet" tastes are just you being weird. You can actually look up the general chemical compounds for each and prove it to yourself if you'd like, all that differs is the purity of the NaCl and mineral additives. But hey, if you want to believe salt with no oil or fat in it somehow tastes buttery then whatever man, hurrdurr purple tastes like amethyst to me amirite.
@@xelgodis80085 it 100% doesn't matter if it's in or not if that's what he gets from it and he def knows there isn't any rl butter or shit inside bruh who tf would think that but u are rly being a toxic kid here lol
@@xelgodis80085 and idk whats "weird" bout saying u can taste ocean in sea salt, that's a a fact lol if u think something can't give u a taste or feeling like it tastes like something different u are the one beein weird... Imagine everything on the world tasting same for everyone wtf would be shit AF
@Sascha Berger maybe reread what I said. And yes, with very few outliers we all have the same neural responses and the same exact types of taste buds. That's exactly why restaurants are a thing, it's a reliably repeatable experience.
Hey Adam. I was drinking a diet soda today, and it brought up the question of artificial sweeteners: why do people think it is bad and why do others think it is not bad? I would love a definitive answer to this question that I have been wondering.
Important to this discussion is what type of sweetener we're talking about. Saccharine (Sweet n Low) has the most sugar-like flavor, and while it's not great for you, it's probably a lot less harmful than the empty calories it's replacing. Tab, often credited as the very first diet soda back in 1959, used Saccharine right up until it was discontinued last year. Aspartame lies on the opposite end of the spectrum. It has an awful metallic taste, it's alarmingly carcinogenic, and it's the sweetener that has been steadily replacing better tasting, less harmful options over the last couple decades, such that now everything from diet coke to fresca is sweetened with it. This is the specific artificial sweetener that people are frequently upset about when the topic of artificial sweeteners comes up. It's so ubiquitous in soda today that other sweeteners don't really make it into the discussion. I'd like to hear what Adam makes of all this though. His fine-tooth comb is second-to-none.
So this is just from my quick google research, so take it with a grain of salt, but supposedly the scientific consensus is that artificial sweeteners are not any more worse for you than most other types of sweeteners (aside from the lower calories), and the idea of them being bad for you is mostly an urban legend propagated by a discredited doctor trying to sell books (I don't remember his name off the top of my head, but he's not a nutritionist or related to food science and anyway, and I'm pretty sure he's the same guy who came up with the "masks cause CO2 build-up myth"). The reason why a lot of people stick to this myth is because: A. people generally don't care about the scientific consensus because most people are not that scientifically literate and B. People generally have reservations about anything considered "artificial ingredients" despite most of them being completely harmless or just the scientific name for something natural. I'm sure there probably are some genuine Health deficits regarding artificial sweeteners, there's basically nothing in existence that doesn't have some kind of drawback, but the idea that it is somehow inherently dangerous or "worse for you than sugar" is mostly fiction.
@@pennyforyourthots Two points: 1. "grain of salt": That's almost as good as when they say the movie title in a movie. 2. IMHO the more valid concern is how the Pancreas seems to respond the same to natural and artificial sweeteners, thus potentially explaining why sugar-free beverage substitution doesn't seem to affect Type II Diabetes rates in those who switch to them.
I love all of your answers. But I think I want adams research when he interviews a scientist. Not to say your opinion doesn’t matter. I just want adams answer.
@@donsullivan1256 I'd like to see a deep dive with a scientist as well like with his MSG video or HFCS video that didn't really relay new facts, but just verified which ones were correct and which ones were outdated and then organized all the points into a consensus even if that consensus "maybe, kinda" like with HFCS.
I'm not sure about the claim. Different salts react differently in many dishes. Very few top chefs use that much salt really, salt is used to add nuances to cuisine. I've been Michilin recognized for my work in the past. However, myself and many top chef who I work with today prefer Malden sea salt flakes from the U.K. We usually avoid anything labeled as 'Kosher'. By the way, MSG has also been adopted into the list of 'Kosher' as well. Food for thought?
My family is not from the US so as you might expect, we use Morton Table Salt. The trick is that we don't pinch the salt in our fingers when adding to food. We always use something like a tablespoon to help with that, which we keep in the same jar as the salt :)
Thank you for clarifying this. I had heard of kosher meat and understood the concept of it, but didn’t understand the kosher salt. Not that it mattered much since I don’t eat meat, but I pondered.
I shop at SEAsian markets, and their equivalent of kosher salt is called "natural" or just sea salt, whereas typical table salt is specifically labelled "fine" salt. I like it because the Vietnamese sea salt I get isn't super purified, so it is less salty than most American sea salts so I feel safer just measuring by eye, and it has some interesting other flavours going on.
That's pretty much why I exclusively and only use pink himalayan salt and celtic sea salt. Tastes better to me and healthier than pure NaCl, for (at least by way of analogy) similar reasons to why complex carbs with fiber is healthier than simple carbs with no fiber.
I've been using Kosher salt to cook for about 15 years now, ever since Alton Brown recommended it on Good Eats. And he expressly said it was because it was easier to tell how much you're putting on because you can see the salt, unlike table salt.
so it's for people who don't concentrate on what they are adding to the dish.... like the people who are cooking and trying hard but still stuff it up.
At culinary school we only used Kosher salt. The Chef said the regular salt with the small grains made dishes taste more salty. I find he is right, I am not sure if it is harder to measure with the small crystals or something else.
cup for cup he is correct. Volumetric measurements are inaccurate when measuring solid ingredients, as the amount of air in the measure is different. So one will weigh more than the other. But if you weigh salt... large grains, or table salt..... weight for weight it has precisely the same amount of salt (NaCl) in it. Measuring weights (rather than volume) ensures accuracy and repeatability in any concoction, or recipe for cooking.
I've worked in restaurant where they also used kosher salt on the tile floors to prevent slips and falls. We would just shake boxes out onto the greasy floors and it worked great actually
10:00 In my experience with fine grained salt vs any type of coarse grain, in general the actual issue is that people sometimes underestimate the amount of salt when using regular salt because its small size makes it dissolve much faster when applied to meat that isn't 100% dry and people cannot see how much salt they have applied as easy. So people that aren't used to it on meat, salt the shit out of it when using that, which ironically seems to be the opposite of how the "Kosher" salt is claimed to work.
I've never had a problem appropriately salting food with a common table salt shaker. I just don't get it. I guess people are generally idiots that can't even figure out the most basic cooking tasks. Sad comment on the human race, really. The average shake of salt only dispenses a few hundred miligrams of sodium. You're have to go overboard with alot of shaking to oversalt food with a salt shaker. In addition, if the food is undersalted, people can easily add more salt to their own taste. Preference for salt is going to vary from person to person, as it should, as we don't all have the same sodium needs in our diets.
If using a recipe that calls for an amount of kosher salt by volume, a general guide if substituting table salt is to use half the quantity. This is, of coarse, only a guide for the reasons Adam highlighted, as different types of kosher salt are denser than others.
@Ian Rolfe When I switch out kosher salt for table salt in a recipe (or vice versa) I weigh the amount in the recipe and use the same weight of the other kind. That way I account for the different crystal sizes.
the amount of study and effort that this guy puts on his videos is amazing! what should just be a simple video, he then turns in into this fulfilled with knowledge content. Great work Adam!!
@@dancooper6002 Not sure if this is what you mean but here in Germany groceries are easily half the price as in the U.S., and fresh produce is usually higher quality too.
@@dancooper6002 I've lived in both countries as well, and I pay far less for groceries here than I ever did in the U.S. I'll ignore your condescending and emotionally-charged tangent.
As someone who has had to train countless new cooks, I can tell you it is more common to over-salt with regular table salt. When you're seasoning 6 to 12 pans at a time full of food on hot flaming burners for the entirety of a 3-hour service, you just need that extra accuracy.
if you are used to throwing in a teaspoon of lumpy salt, then obviously the same volume of table salt will be saltier. But some people WEIGH salt, and that is accurate for any salt, even if you have to mix different sizes. It is all NaCl..... salt. It is not rocket science. Measure by weight = accuracy and repeatability in cooking.
Kosher salt is a rabbit hole I fell down some years ago researching one day. I live in Michigan and learned that Diamond Crystal's alberger/kosher salt for the North American market is made in one of their facilities here! Alberger kosher salt supposedly is what they use at Mcdonalds on their fries bc it distributes and seasons evenly well.
after watching this episode, I've stumbled down the Ragusea rabbits hole.. i started here and have gone through at least a couple hours of content and decided the best way to say thanks is to come back to the beginning and show my gratitude.. thank you!
I’m also in the rabbit hole. It’s refreshing watching a video with no copy and paste intro and outros. It’s worth watching the sponsorship in the middle. Plus, he answers all the questions I’ve been asking with most of these videos
You're spot on with this. I've been hearing about Kosher salt since watching Rachael Ray 20 years ago. So many other US chefs always make a point of mentioning they are using Kosher salt. Never have I seen it in stores in my country though lol
@@lookoutforchris I have some salt that is called coarse salt, which is just kosher salt by it's description. Also, we don't feel sorry for ourselves because most people In Where I'm from (India)use table salt to make a huge variety of amazing dishes that don't use "Kosher Salt". although, we usually don't Kosher or dry brine our meat here, the salt is usually added after the meat has been put in the pot to boil\fry or just season it on a cutting board.
@@lookoutforchris most countries have a variety of different size salt crystals. BUt they are called salt, table, flaky, sea, without the Kosher being mentioned. Most of us from overseas had to feel guilty about being unkoshered... but we were, we just didn't know it. We have had to cook for 100's of years without Kosher being mentioned on the packets of salt.... we are deprived.
My husband worked in a large salt field area for 26 years. Sodium Chloride is salt as you said. Pink, white, blue or green, all the same basically. Interesting explanation, thanks!
Pakistani pink salt is potassium chloride, which can stop your heart or interact with anticoagulants. And rumoured to fund radical suicide bombers. I use sea salt, sodium chloride. 😊
As a professional cook I have used kosher salt for my entire career. The more you practice using exact amounts of salt the more precise you will be. Everyone’s pinch is different, but experienced cooks will have the same pinch every time.
As a novice (at best) chef, I really hate it when recipes/cookbooks use terms like a "pinch of salt" or "season to taste". Neither makes any real sense the first times you try cooking it . It's a bit like going back 600 years and get an order to make something that's 25*11 inches (based on the inch size they used, which differed from countries, villages, worksites, and people) and using your inch-measurements and then send it back to them to use on whatever they needed it for.
@@RannonSi if you ever see a pinch it is usually around 1/8th tsp or less. Either that or it is from a very old recipe where you weren’t supposed to understand it because it’s supposed to be a secret. If it ever says season to taste, it means do exactly that. Taste it, does it taste salty enough to you? If it is something that you can’t taste, i.e. raw meats, then season till it looks right. You’ve eaten seasoned meats before, about how much salt/pepper would you add till it tasted good for you. Usually this is in recipes that are liquid and you can just taste the change immediately, or where the flavor of the dish comes down a lot to preference in this one department.
I'm so glad I found this channel. It combines cooking with science and history while still being entertaining. I'm a decent cook, but, I'm learning so much.
Then again, European meat is a lot tastier, so salt isn't really necessary, even though salt is commonly used in Europe. In America meat quality is so terrible that salt is an absolute necessity. Even some of the higher graded meat in America barely passes as food for human consumption in Europe.
@@be2Gee I dont know what state you live in but I can easily get my hands on high quality meat from my local grocery stores in the midwest. Sounds like you live in a state that doesn't have much livestock.
if you dont want salt to "clump up" keep it in the fridge, keeps it dry. I place my sea salt in the fridge in a open container to dry, then use this in my grinder, I also keep the salt grinder in the fridge.
Oh, no! The salt grain size is to small for my self-induced comercialy fueled expectations! It is such a mess I've made just handling the salt instead of using a salt grinder, or even a simple biggwr holed shaker!
@@jackdaw7792 sarcasm. Salt is salt. Debating on kosher salt os plain stupid, as is Adam saying it is a complete mess after dropping some regular salt grains just because he forgot how to pinch.
@@GeorgeBuftea This isn't about debating salt, this is about the benefits of different salt grain shapes in professional cooking and why they're labelled like that in the United States. I don't get what the hell your problem is. It's salt. The shape of a small thing does have a major impact on how you use that thing. Live with it.
@@jackdaw7792 i have no problem, and I'm having a hard time understanding why you're getting so pumped up over my opinion. It's just salt, like you said, and I bet you the two guys commenting around that are professional cheffs it's neither me or you, to even make a point. So yeah, it's just salt, NaCl, in any grain size it might be.
Lots of people that haven’t worked in a kitchen making complex dishes as a line cook don’t seem to understand the superiority of using pinched salt vs salt shaker/grinder. You have so much more portion control when pinching salt. And yes they do get dirty and clog up where you would end up under salting a dish.
Talking about salt this video has been a massive help and so much information. I use Halen Mon (sea salt in Welsh) for my big flake salt. It's delicious and has very pretty flakes. I also did the tour and they take the sea water thru a tunnel, filter it then boil it to increase the sea level then use big flat trays to evaporate the water producing the salt flakes. I love how you used Waitrose over say Asda (Walmart). Waitrose is seen as a posh mainstream supermarket that a lot of people won't shop at as they see it as expensive when actually they price match with Tesco another popular supermarket. Waitrose is the place to got for unusual ingredients and has far more choice than other supermarkets near me.
Hello I use Morska Sol (sea salt in Bulgarian) when I do my Gotvene (cooking in Bulgarian) especially when preparing Meso (Meat in Bulgarian) for Salata (salad in Bulgarian) I use Obiknovena Sol (regular salt in Bulgarian) zashtoto (because in Bulgarian) e (is in Bulgarian) po-lesno (easier in Bulgarian) da (to in Bulgarian) q prusnesh (synonym for to spread in Bulgarian) po (on in Bulgarian) cqlata (the entire in Bulgarian) povurhnost (surface in Bulgarian) na salatata (the salad in Bulgarian) i (and in Bulgarian) da q razburkash (to stir it in Bulgarian)
Kosher salt is great for tenderizing steak. I let my steak warm to room temperature, and rub some kosher salt into the steak. This helps the meat relax, making it very tender. I’ve tried other salts, they don’t do as good as a job as kosher salt does. I also use kosher salt in a dry rub for my fall off the bone ribs
In France we have fleur de sel (salt blossom) which is a salt harvested in sea water ponds dried by the sun. The flakes are kinda the same but the price is crazy high so we only use it as a "finishing" salt , on a steak after it's cooked for example
in my country's language it roughly translate to 'rough salt'. so there is "fine salt" and "rough salt" and most times rough salt comes in massive chunks (3-4 times the size of regular rough salt) and in a container that grinds them into regular rough salt.
in Ro, we gave a type of rough salt "sare grunjoasă" that we use for pickles and meats but it's not flaky like what I see here called kosher. ours is bigger, like small cubes
As a former chef, I can say the reason why many chefs use kosher salt is that it's more controllable in that it's harder to mistakenly over salt. When you grab a large pinch of kosher, it's actually LESS salt than standard granular. It's a matter of grain size and density. A "pinch" of kosher will have less sodium than a pinch of table salt. The larger grains also have a better tactile feel to them which makes it easier to feel how much you're grabbing because you're usually not looking at the salt bin/cup/holder when you're cooking, and the larger size makes it easier to see as you're adding it to the dish. In a kitchen, you're using it to season dishes far more than dry brining or seasoning meat.
@@styx85 Search "is Kosher salt saltier" or something similar - there's a lot of explanation out there, including why Morton's Kosher is "saltier" than Diamond Kosher, and why table salt is saltier still. Most chefs prefer Diamond over Morton's when salting during the cooking process.
@@wty1313 I think the tactile memory also has a lot to do with the brand of kosher salt used. They all feel different and most restaurants have been using diamond because honestly, it's cheaper from the supplier. If you have been working in kitchens from a young age, it becomes very familiar. I know using different brands just feels weird to me haha. The other advantage of kosher salt when used in cooking is the slower dissolve rate, making it easier to have even distribution of salt throughout whatever it is being used for, soups especially.
Your videos like this one are fascinating and genuinely brighten my day (and I _really_ needed that today), so thank you Adam. Also (and I swear this is true), I somehow screwed up typing “Adam” on my phone so badly that when I read it back it had changed it to “Batman,” which brightened my day even further.
In Germany, you can buy a salt called Saldoro Ursalz mittelgrob, which is a medium coarse stone salt. I've been using it for years with recipes that call for Kosher Salt and it totally works, the weight-to-volume ratio seems identical to Diamond Crystal
I actually made the switch from kosher salt to regular iodized salt in my cooking. Haven't noticed a difference but I'm glad to be getting the added iodine.
My haters throw rocks at me and IT hurts. I hope they don't throw The Rock at me because I like him as an actor. GAGAGAGAGA!!! I am funny!!! I am the funniest UA-camr EVAH! Please agree, dear dc
Thank you SO MUCH for this video. I watch a lot of cooking videos and I always wondered why some recipes and chefs would opt for kosher salt. I didn't understand the difference and even with watching other videos I felt they lacked the details for me to properly understand. This video broke it down perfectly! Thanks 😊
I'm not joking when I say Adam has taught me a lot more than the teachers have in my two years of high school. I'm going to culinary school in a few months and Adam's videos have taught me a lot, even if that wasn't his intention, about food, food science, and just general tips to use around the kitchen Thanks Adam :)
Thank you. I appreciate the factual information regarding kosher salt. I just got a box of Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt and my wife asked me what that means and why did I need it. I had to be honest, I had no idea...now I do. I'm glad that you continue to poke holes in darkness.
A few years ago, a cook posted a recipe that had drastically different results when using two different brands of kosher salt. Makes sense-the volume of NaCl would vary greatly, depending on the processing method. The recipe got edited and re-distributed, specifying a particular brand of kosher salt. I’m mystified, though, by the number of baking recipes that specify kosher salt added to batters, rather than as a finish.
If I get a kosher salt recipe I tend to do it by weight, as various salts with different grain sizes weigh different amounts by volume. If you do it by weight, then you have the right amount, no matter what the volume may be.
Im british and recently got into fermentation, Im here because a recipe called for Kosher salt and I have absolutely no idea what that is, or why it would need to be kosher in the first place.. here to learn!
Around 2005 , my Grandmother had a goiter removed from her chest. She had spent a couple of decades on a reduced salt diet. The goiter was 36+ pounds , the size of a medium pizza. After opening her up , the surgeon actually snapped a picture of it before removal. It looked just like a big ol' chicken liver. I would say that iodine is a necessary nutrient just like Morton states on the salt box. The picture was a big hit when passed around before thanksgiving dinner that year. LOL
We are also 6 neutrons 6protons 6 electrons. The electrons do not work if the right type of salt isn’t consumed. Table salt is useless for electrons, only natural salt makes them work correctly and we need more salt than the government recommends……funny that huh? It’s no accident that that rubbish ends up on our Table or the reduced requirement stated by gov “experts” They also told us not to soak veg as it looses nutrients however they don’t say it takes TWENTY MINUTES to soak off the pesticides They also told us not to wash chicken as it can splash bugs around the kitchen. but, if you wash it in water n lemon juice it takes out the ammonia from the (left in) kidneys!! Cholesterol is needed for health too! It’s all one big con and it feels like we’re being INTENTIONALLY harmed by the “government guidelines”
@@coolcat6103 In the US most of us eat way more salt than is necessary - my body tells me this when I get thirsty after eating too much of it. Among other electrolytes, sodium is indeed needed. The sodium chloride on our tables does indeed work, because if only natural salt worked, I'd be dead. And I guarantee if if you dissolve "natural salt" and table salt and recrystallize it yourself at home, you'll have an identical product other than the natural salt leaving behind a wee sprinkle of minerals and the table salt leaving behind a wee sprinkle of it's added source of iodine. I'd love the scientific sources for your information, by the way.
@@Just_Sara no I meant the table salt makes them work incorrectly, on 50%. Yes Americans eat too much table salt and that’s why everyone is so sick (amongst other things) the gov recommended dose is too low for the RIGHT type of salt. I can’t go into it here I can’t be bothered to type it all out nor the time It was just a general comment for further research If interested.
Hi everybody, I've heard some concerns, so let me make something really clear: Rendering meat kosher is a complicated process of which this salting procedure I demonstrate in the video is simply one phase. As I mentioned in the vid, there's the butchering process to consider, and more. This video is not about how to make meat compliant with Jewish dietary law - it only engages with that topic in as much as it is relevant to the historical origins of "Kosher salt" as a marketing term for coarse salts, which is what the video is about. If you really want to learn how to make food suitable for a religion, I am not your man!
Here's one thing I think I got wrong: OU regards Morton table salt as "not Kosher for Passover," which is a much more specific and narrow designation than "not Kosher." And certainly iodine is not the only factor they consider there, which is why I said the salt is not Kosher "for a few reasons." Writing these videos is always a balancing act between giving enough context to maintain accuracy, and cutting out details that would make the video last forever. I often have to use phrases like "one of the reasons" or "among other things" to communicate that what I'm mentioning is part of a much bigger thing, but it's not the particular thing we're talking about today. Regardless, "not Kosher for passover" is a much more specific thing than "not Kosher" - that much I definitely got wrong.
And certainly, don't come to me looking for authentic Hebrew pronunciations! As always, I generally try to use the most proximate anglicization for non-English words. Whether I got to the closest proximate anglicization on Chabad, I'm not sure! I'm hearing no? [UPDATE] The consensus below seems to be that "h" is a better anglicization than my "sh" for the throaty Hebrew "ch."
If anybody has more concerns along these lines, I'll try to update this pin accordingly.
[UPDATE] People seem to think my video gave the impression that Jews frequently kasher meat themselves. That was not my intention, and it isn't the case. Kashering is generally part of the kosherbutchering process, and is done by pros before consumers buy the meat. (At least, that is the case in highly developed economies - I imagine it might be different in a traditional agrarian context.) When I mentioned in the video that public health authorities frown on washing meat at home, some people took that as an implication that kashering is commonly done in the home. I understand how I might have unintentionally given that impression. FWIW, my intent was only to explain why I, in demonstrating kashering in my own kitchen, was violating the very public health advice that I was promulgating in this recent video I did on meat washing: ua-cam.com/video/90Nd_vh3yk8/v-deo.html
Wow first like
Hey Adam ! Just saying hi.
Great pinned comment - A++ Youtubing (sorry for the 4 part tweet trying to explain the whole deal with the salt)
Don’t give in to the kind of bullies who want you to be constantly apologising and explaining yourself. The topic of the video is obvious and anyone acting like you were claiming expertise on a topic you clearly weren’t is just a mean person on a power trip.
Just for future references a lot of Hebrew words transliterated into English use c h to represent a guttural "H"ish sound, kind of like the surprised sound "ach!" Think of it as somewhere between an H sound and a hard k sound.
THANK YOU! I'm Australian and this whole kosher salt had me thinking Americans baptised their salt into different religions, and wondering why the heck that would be a thing.
As an American Orthodox Jew who keeps kosher, it has also confused me to no end why and how Kosher Salt became the chef’s salt of choice. 😂 We grew up using table salt for everything and now use Himalayan Pink salt for everything. Lol
@@emilywforreal got that right baby I'm an American salt is salt to me
@@ebogar42 don’t you have some parties to ruin?
I'm Austrian, an important distinction. But your comment speaks from my heart.
@@ebogar42 Anti semitism smh
Adam has a preternatural knack for finding video topics that I didn't know I wanted to learn about until I read the title.
Same here. I’m non American and had been curious for ages what the kosher meant in salt as i keep seeing it in lots of recipes saying to use it butI don’t see it stocked in the uk. I thought it must just be a general name for non iodine salt flakes.
I know. Too bad there’s no cocktail parties since covid. I would have brought this up. Great conversation content! 😂
@@catsandrubber I think you were right on the money with that guess, the video mostly just goes into the history of _why_ it's a generic name for flaky non-iodized salt.
As a European, this kosher salt thing have been a great mystery for me.
Thank you very much for explaining!
How much countries do we get?
Germany 🙋🏼♂️
Funny, there were millions of Jews throughout Europe for a very long time...
@@babinator9 thanks to Germans, there are no more
@@HerrSMINI germany 2
france
Important correction: *all* salt is Kosher, by definition; the iodized version isn't kosher *for Passover* which is very different from not being kosher. Passover has its own set of dietary laws, and a lot of things that are kosher year round aren't kosher for Passover, e.g. leavened bread :)
Aye! Thank you
Too bad I'm not Jewish.
@@doesnotexist6524 we are all asked to guard the commands. Not just Jewish peoples.
the only true holidays are the "Jewish" feast days.
Everything else is pagan sun worship.
@@Highlander.7 lol
The time when you sell your sourdough starter to your neighbor and buy it back afterwards.
As a European, I really like about your video that you go the lenght and explain the differences between the US and European customs and naming. I miss that from other videos. You do really cater to a public on both sides of the Atlantic. (Edit: a letter, as suggested)
I tried to replicate his new York pizza recipe and converting the units was a pain, so it's great he now does so!
Atlantic*
@@mortenbund1219 Usually the ingredients are in the standard packaging order, but really the US should just convert to the hybrid method of the UK, Australia, and Canada.
I really appreciate american youtubers who mention how much everything is in grams and kilos so so much. It really makes it easier to understand things or recreate recipes.
@@feena9241 as an American me too. Just inserting a bit of metric into people's day can get them more used to it. Since we just refuse to go head first into metrification at least hopefully we can ease into it. Bah
As a european, who loves to cook and has read a lot of American recipes, that was the single greatest piece of cooking-knowledge I’ve ever seen! I have always wondered what kosher salt was and couldn’t by the love of it, find anything online that would explain it. Until now! So thank you!
I'm American and had no idea either.😉🙃
🇺🇸🇵🇷 I had no idea what it was but thanks to this video I am happy to understand why it is a great sallt!! 🤗
Yeah any recipe that says to use kosher salt, normal salt is fine
It is simply a coarse salt. You can get it anywhere around in Europe. You can even choose how coarse suits you the best. And wow, yes it is easier to operate. This is just one of the episodes when I think (and laugh) about Americans trying to pretend to have something extra, while they actually miss quite a lot. Like with different flour coarseness.
Anyway calling it Kosher is just a fancy (and rather inappropriate) thing as proven in this otherwise great video.
Thank you. I’m from England and I’d never heard of kosher salt until I came to the US and I’ve been very curious about what it was and you’ve helped me tremendously. By reading through your own comments, it seems that many people have been very critical and I feel sad about that. You were trying to be helpful and you were. Thank you!
yeah...h0l0caust is to jews what slavery is to black people: very bad thing to happen, but a lot of benefits as well
In Spain it's just called "sal fina" (fine/smooth/thin salt) and "sal Gorda" (fat/thick salt)
eghem....
Me Gorda.
Yeah, it makes sense Spain would have a different word from it than the jews.
Same in France (Sel fin aka fine salt and Gros sel aka "Big/fat" salt)
Here in Argentina we call it sal gruesa.
same in italy, we just call it sale fino/grosso, fine salt/coarse salt
i needed this video for years
I replied to a verified person now give me likes
hi
Bruh I never expected to see a Minecraft ytuber in Adam ragusea's comment section
Facts
same
I'm a european chef and I've always used flaky salt for salt curing for the reasons stated but I was always so confused as why some salt was jewish and some wasn't. thanks
LoL
I’m also European and in high school we once went on an excursion to a synagogue while learning about different religions.
We met with a rabbi and at the time I was very invested in American cooking channels who all talked about “kosher” salt. Soo I raised my hand and asked her why some salt is kosher.
She was incredibly confused “what?? No, salt isn’t kosher i don’t know what are you talking about” and I was really embarrassed about having asked a seemingly dumb question that I still didn’t have an answer to.
@@SuvuIC Aw, that seems unfair! As an american, I just always thought kosher salt was just the term for big flaky salt. I guess it was a needed distinction in search of a name! And this one name stuck here.
@@SuvuICI wonder about that rabbi since he hasn't said anything about using salt for "koshering" meat.
@@dubuyajay9964he probably just hasn’t been involved in the process. Most rabbis aren’t involved in the food business, only some are
First off, very impressive summary of Kashrut for someone who didn't grow up with it. The only thing that you got (a bit) wrong is the part where you talked about how the requirement to rinse the meat is contrary to food-safety guidelines. That is certainly true, but it's not actually relevant to the typical kosher kitchen. The reason is that this entire process is not done in the home, but rather at the butcher and/or slaughterhouse. As you are now aware, Kashrut is so complex that the process is monitored from farm all the way to the grocery store. By the time you buy it, it's already totally kashered and can simply be prepared and eaten just like a non-kosher piece of meat. Not additional salting or rinsing is necessary.
Yep, I'm aware that people generally don't kasher at home anymore. It's simply the case that I was doing it in my home at that particular moment, and given that I had recently made a video about why washing meat at home is bad, I felt I should acknowledge the apparent contradiction!
@@aragusea That's exactly what I figured. In any case, another excellent video!
Thats neat! And really useful for a modern setting
nice
@Claude Von Riegan
Which is why I can often reduce the amount of salt, to the point of not adding it at all in some cases, when cooking.
Before I found your channel I would have been surprised to see someone talk about salt for 16 minutes
@El Mercenario Cinco huh?
you should check out the book "Salt", its fascinating
Clearly you've never watched a League of Legends video lol
watch any streamer on twitch
Saltier than a fortnite forum...
My Austrian grandmother (born in 1904) called coarse salt 'cooking salt' vs the fine one you use at the table, thus table salt.
Austrian, eh? Ouch.
@@jamesrosewell9081 ?
Those different kinds of salt - or evenmore than those two - have been around in Eruopean cuisine forever, but nobody calls it "kosher" and that is atually correct, as it has nothing to do with that at all. It's just an American neologism.
Kochsalz und Tafelsalz
@@thephidias “Coarse edible salt is a kitchen staple, but its name varies widely in various cultures and countries.”
Anti-American much?
Thank you so much for taking the time and trouble to explain kosher salt. I had no idea why all American recipes asked for it as in the UK and Europe we’ve never heard of it! Here in France “sel de guerande” is the go to choice for home cooks and chefs. For final seasoning we use “fleur de sel” and it really does taste of the sea.
I hear this word non-stop from Binging with Babish and have actually unironically literally never heard of it in my entire life outside of that context of his youtube channel.
Yeah, here in Mexico you salt, and salt
Pepper isn't even that common here, use chilli
@@leonardo9259 I just don’t believe you that salt and pepper aren’t common in Mexico. Do you mean your town in Mexico?
@@WaaluigiBoard oh i think it is a misunderstanding, salt is very common, not pepper
Lol I know, I would never would knew the salt is not even kosher but for koshering the meat, if I didn't clicked this video.
I wish he’d stop specifying. Just say salt goddamn it
Im from London and the question of 'what is kosher salt?' Has plagued me for at least 3 years. I love to cook and use UA-cam a lot for recipes. Iv tried using Google but there has never been a clear answer. Thank you so much for a clear and simple answer. You have put my mind and ease!
The top hit on Google is the Wikipedia article… how did that not clear it up?
@@lookoutforchris there's a bunch of people in the comments claiming "I searched the internet and couldn't find it!!!"
It's called "bulls**t" and "a*s-kissing" xD
A simple Google search or q00videos on UA-cam will answer the question.
Why?
Idk man. The internet is a bizarre place full of people doing s**t for no reason xD
@@thunderkunt5416 get a life lmao
I’m London also - I buy the Diamond Kosher salt off the internet, have you found a British equivalent that’s not too spendy?
Back in China salt wasn't even invented
In France, we have what we call fine salt (Sel fin) and "Big" salt (Gros sel), which, as the name implies, is just bigger salt crystals. Apparently, our "Gros sel" seems to be kind of the equivalent of Kosher salt, but it's very common in households here. We use it all the time on meat for example. Fine salt is mostly used at the table, or when you just need a pinch of salt in a recipe like cake or salad dressing (vinaigrette).
We use honduran gravel salt
Very fine, smaller salt is called "popcorn salt" because that's pretty much all it's ever used for
ditto in brazil, even cognate names for sal fino and sal grosso
America has dozens of available salt for people. An average store has at least 5 available at any one time. In the US, "Himalayan Salt" (which is from Pakistan) or pink salt is quite popular as well. Some salt is quite expensive, and I've only had it at expensive restaurants.
exactly the same in spain
In Italy we call it sale grosso (thick salt), normally we use it to salt water for pasta, to salt focaccia ecc...
Singaporean here. Was confused as heck trying to get kosher salts for recipes. This was a video that I SOOOOO desperately needed!
6:36 the absolute chaos hand in hand with calm voice over is something of beauty
I don't get what's the problem.
@@smorcrux426 The fire among other things
@@smorcrux426 he put the chops too close to the broiler so the fat jumped and caused fire
Something to add here: Kosher salt has no Idodine (as the video mentions). Iodine kills bacteria and stops fermentation. That's why you want to use kosher (or iodine free) salt for fermentation. Learned that the hard way (RIP my miso from 2019)
i don’t think the “kills bacteria” aspect of salt is the iodine, btw. non-iodized salt does that still.
@@threestans9096 Get back to us when you have made miso/chutney
@@LeeGee or just look it up
There might be another reason your miso didn't work. Iodine seems to have a small effect at most, probably even no effect on fermentation:
"The use of iodized salt did not statistically significantly influence microbial populations in the fermentation. Thus, there is no basis for the popular held belief that the use of iodized salt inhibits the growth of the bacteria important for the sauerkraut fermentation. A statistically near significant effect (p = 0.06), however, was noted for the effect of iodine on yeasts and mould populations in the fermentations performed without starter cultures."
Another study concludes:
"Stable fermentations with pH-values below pH 4 were achieved, using both iodized and non-iodized salt. No effects on the counts of total aerobic bacteria, LAB, enterobacteria and yeasts and moulds were determined using iodized salt compared to fermentations conducted with non-iodized salt.
The iodine content in the gherkins depended on the iodine concentration in the brine and remained unaffected by fermentation and pasteurization."
So it should be safe to use for fermentation and at most might potentially affect the shelf life of your product.
@@KiinaSu Thanks for your input! You are completely right in that I don't know exactly what killed my Miso.
Can you link sources for your quotes, that would be super helpful in trying to pin this down.
As far as I know, Miso is one of the more delicate fermentations, as you start it with a very specific fungus, which might be more susceptible to Iodine than the microbiotic helpers in Sauerkraut. But I also don't know that for sure, which is why I'd like to check the sources of your quotes, maybe they go into depths about this as well :)
Thank you. I've had people tell me everything from Kosher salt being deemed Kosher by Jewish authorities on the matter to "all salt is salt." SO: It's KosherING salt, and it's coarse for some very good reasons. Why was this so hard to explain for so many people. I've been using Kosher salt as I've been learning to cook and I see Bobby Flay do it. My mother was a baker so I understand why regular table salt is used their. Such a great video.
I assumed kosher salt was called "kosher" because it wasn't iodized. I never knew it was coarse due to the reasons you explained. As a professional cook, I always understood that we used coarse salt (kosher or sea salt) was because it was easier for us to control the amounts we use when salting food with our hands. Iodized salt has smaller grains so it's really much harder to control and eyeball the actual amount of sodium we're using in our dishes.
i always thought it had something to do with avoiding sea-water salt because of shellfish or something.
It wasn't until approximately the 20th C that iodinazation was even known to be a possible thing. How did it ever become non-kosher? White granular sugar wasn't a thing until the new world was discovered. How did it not become subject to a kosher determination?
@@mrcryptozoic817 iodized salt is kosher it just can’t automatically be deemed kosher for Passover without a certification because the process of making iodized salt can use corn products which are not kosher for Passover.
Do the tastes and flavours ( using iodized vs non-iodized salts) of the food differ ?
@@sauravbasu8805 no.
I'm in Europe, but I love watching Food Wishes videos and I've been wondering about Chef John's persistent use of kosher salt for ages. So thanks for explaining it so clearly (and interestingly).
I'm in Australia and watch Chef John all the time and was annoyed about the constant use of 'kosher salt'.Easy fixed,like everything nowadays i googled it and the explanation was about the size of the salt grains and they said that US chefs use the bigger grain salt for better control of the amount used(you get much more in a pinch of kosher salt was the final determination) Cheers Mate.
Chef John actually has a video about differences in salt. Not specifically about kosher salt but more in the sense of why salt in recipes need to be adjusted depending on which one you have. It's a very old video so might be hard to find.
Edit: link to Chef John's video: ua-cam.com/video/XGCY9Cpia_A/v-deo.html
In Chile and Argentina they call it "sal parrillera" which literally translates as "grill salt". Both countries have a long tradition of outdoors cooking and it's particularly focused on meats.
Same in Brazil, we have "sal fino" e " sal grosso" and more recently "sal de parrilha" on between.
those are actualy diferent things. in US those are called "rock salt"
@@khhnator we don't really have kosher salt here (Brazil), they can only be found in very specific ultra orthodox kosher grocery stores, or super expensive import stores.
@@juliabogajo wrong, kosher salt is just sal grosso. O nosso sal grosso é um pouco maior, mas você pode achar facilmente sal de parrilha ou simplesmente moer o sal grosso.
Espera. Entonces la sal kosher es sólo sal gruesa? Ctm y yo como weon buscando sal kosher aquí en Chile 😂
This might sound weird but can you do a video of how to properly/scientifically clean after cooking/eating? How to wash dishes, basically. Should you soak? should you rinse/drain your sponge with cold water? When should you use an iron sponge? Do you have to use soap if there's only cookie crumbs on the plate? Etc.
you are really determined huh
Excuse me IRON sponge??
I mean soaking can only be bad if what you're cleaning can rust. At minimum it loosens up the caked on stuff. And obviously you have to scrub with soap and water regardless of whether you soak or not
@@justinpartridge7255 Yes. Also known as steel wool. Scrapy scrapy
@@SuperCompany007 yes, they should be called 'iron sponges' tho and I will never call them anything else again.
I'm always blown away by all your home work and research for your videos. Very informative and much appreciated. Thank you Sir.
my dad worked for morton salt in high school in the 70s, they had him lowered on a cord into these huge silos knocking salt crystals off the sides
I wonder how many people who watched this video ate salt touched by your father
Badass!
@@larbmining i wonder if he ever accidentally sneezed in some impurities
My Uncle works there and that "mineral" salt is just the salt at the bottom of the barges after it's been shipped, so yeah don't eat that stuff
** OSHA has entered the chat **
those scenes of white powder on a jeweler's scale is going to blow up the Adam YTP genre...
Please let me know if you find any in case I miss it.
g i v e t i m e s t a m p
@@se7en427 10:24
I need a ytp with both ragusea and babish about *KOSHER SALT*
@@jesusitobeley2999 God bless 😂💙
I've been waiting for this video for three monts. I follow a lot of american recipes 'cause I love american food, and when someone was saying "kosher salt" I didn't know wtf that was. Thank you man,
Love from Catania, Sicily
The concept of an Italian looking to America for recipies is crazy to me. What do you classify as "American" food? I've had people from other countries ask me before about what american dishes they should try and I never know what to say. All my favorite foods are american takes on another cultures food. Like new york style pizza, american italian, or tex-mex. But to me it feels silly to suggest someone try our pizza when theyre asking for "american food"
@@GucciCaligula What do you classify as "American" food? - everything they got from europe, asia, etc :D
@@GucciCaligula Mac & Cheese immediately comes to mind for me
@@GucciCaligula The US has an incredible output of technical recipes and translation of international recipes into a standardised language and often with obscure ingredients substituted to those more easily found internationally.
@@GucciCaligula barbecue
Morton is the flacked salt that restaurants use all day to cook n season!! The expensive Sea n Pink salts etc are finishing seasoning at the table!! Its kinda fun to have both salt n pepper grinders at the table with the nice stuff!!
I needed this video so much.
Me: "I can't find Korsher salt anywhere!"
Adam: "It's only called Kosher salt in the US. It's coarse flaky salt".
Me: "Ohh... I already have that stuff in my home. Thanks!"
Same! All this time I've been thinking «man, _everybody's_ talking about Kosher salt and using it in all their recipies, I really gotta try to find some to see if it's really that much better than regular salt» when I've been using Kosher salt all along.
Same ☝
Yup for last few years since watching American cooking TV shows and UA-cam cooking channels I've been confused about Kosher salt. Now I'm like finally someone explains and I know I have that in my store cupboard. Now I can get simply back to cooking.
Since I switched to Kosher salt in the kitchen, I don't use table salt except in recipes measured by volume. I recently ran out of my go to brand, so I used some pickling salt. Not the same thing at all. Kosher salt is coarse, but coarse salt (aka pickling salt) isn't the same thing. So, if you can't find "Kosher", be sure you find something that is flaky. Otherwise things will come out twice as salty as you expect if you are used to Kosher salt.
@@JayAbel coarse salt and picking salt are different: pickling salt is finer than table salt. At least in México you can get a variety of salts without the stupid "kosher" name attached to them, in the package you can see if it is mineral or sea salt, if it has iodine, if it says refined then it has anticaking, it can be fine, coarse, coarser, rock salt and in flakes.
I am from Russia. And I've had that question from your earliest videos
хелло Раша
привет мой русский друг
Adam: I bought this damn microscope, you best believe I’ll make use of it!
I smile every time that thing comes out.
and the jewelers scale as well xD
@@juanrivera4440 "Jewelers" scale . . .
@@stentor1980 indeed that is what i said :)
@@juanrivera4440 I wasn't correcting your spelling. Those were air quotes. Let's just say most of the people buying those scales aren't jewelers or food youtubers. ;)
I wish we'd just keep the "kosher" out of it and call it what it is: coarse salt. This would really emphasize what the value proposition is, and might even help dispel some popular-but-incorrect beliefs about healthiness.
Same same same
Also I hate the fact that it's linked to a religion
Sad that the states relates so much to religion. Creating conservative rubbish
At the end of the day, salt is salt. Having such a variety and brainwashing people into believing there is a difference, well, it's good for business. Yeah Capitalism.
Oisin O’Sullivan:
When I was a kid my step-mother let me choose the middle name for my newborn half-brother, it is one I have never seen or heard until just now….Oisin!!
Yeah when I watched a youtube video for cooking they almost always use kosher salt and I just gave up because there's no way to find it in my country because judaism isn't that big here. So they just left me confused.
I think these advantages of kosher salt are mostly from the fact that you are handling the salts in a way more optimal for kosher salt - pinching them, and this most likely comes from habit of using kosher salt. As someone using exclusively table salt, I never pinch salts. If I use shaker on the table side, I have pretty good feeling of how much salt comes out each shake. For cooking, I have little container of salt with little spoon, so consistent measurement and application is never a problem.
The cheapest and most commonly sold quantity of table salt at a chain grocery store here in San Diego is $.79 for a 16 ounce cylindrical cardboard carton, with or without added iodine.
Kosher salts average about 50-70% as salty as standard table salt, and are certainly well over twice as expensive (relative to the cheapest table salt) by weight.
Thus, it costs >double the price and need to use more to indeed effect an equal degree of sodium chloride content in the food.
On the other hand, plain table salt just doesn't fit the bill like Kosher salt will on the rim of margarita cocktails!
I adopted my grandfather's habit of using a salt shaker to shake into my palm and using that to gauge how much salt I'm going to put on my food. Then I just brush it off my hand onto the food.
Absolutely, I also find it weird that he mentioned that the salt container can get dirty in the context of touching it around raw meats and then presented sticking your fingers into an open container of kosher salt as somehow cleaner...
I'm using my shaker for nearly 15 years now. Never had issues with cleanliness with it. Requires the same amount of cleaning as a knife or a cutting board.
@@iunnyrhalldorsdottir8248he is right, though its not because anyone touches the lid with dirty hands. My salt shakers usually clog up because the salt gets clumpy at the holes everytime I use it to salt actively steaming foods, like pasta water, simmering sauces etc.
I've always wondered about what all of the yt chefs talk about when they refer to kosher salt, but never have I dared to ask or google this. So thank you for enlightening me.
Same here! I’m not American and for YEARS I wondered what kosher salt was! I even asked a couple of jewish friends (not American either) and they had no idea!
Not looking things up is stupid....
Specifically the brand that most recipes are referring to is Diamond Crystal, it's the one most often used in restaurants here. That's the one with the smaller flakes that are lighter and airier.
@@greenmachine5600 No it's not? This just never has been a question that would have bothered me enough to find out.
I Google everything in existence. It's a compulsion. If I don't know something I find the answer then pretend I knew all along.
Adam brings a very analytical yet journalistic mindset to cooking and I appreciate that very much.
My late Jewish mother was a superb cook. She never in her life used measuring devices if any sort. She eyeballed any ingredient needed, and always got it right. By the way , kosher meat is better than its un kosher variant, and many of the best chefs know this.
As a Brit, when I went to NYC I remember kosher salt was one of the first things I looked for in the store just so I could try it. I was always so confused at every recipe calling for it so this video was perfect!
hey Adam! I'm Jewish and wanted to say that you did an amazing job of portraying that side of things, thank you so much for always doing your research and due diligence
Yawn
I heard you guys as jews, dont read Isaiah 53 and some other passages from the Tanakh. Why is that?
@@blumythefool777 What do you mean? I'm Jewish, lay it on me
@@blumythefool777 I heard some of you don't read Nostra aetate. Why is that?
@@blumythefool777 I heard google is your friend.
Great video!!!
One thing I might add, from a “Kashrus”perspective, when you salt the meat you must hang it or put it on a grate because like you said, it will sit in it’s own juice.
Great explanation. Was always curious about this. Morton Course Kosher salt is also best used to scrub out and clean cast iron cookware, without removing the seasoning (by using detergents).
adam really just made me watch a 15 minute video whose ultimate conclusion was simply that kosher salt is bigger and easier to use and I loved it
Hey Adam, I think it would be very interesting to see an episode on nutritional yeast! Most people who go vegan say they really love it and that it was a great discovery, but not many seem to know wtf it even is haha
I'd actually enjoy a "vegan meat replacements from the viewpoint of someone who eats meat" kind of video from him. It'd be interesting to learn more about the options out there that isn't just the Impossible branded meat patties.
This will be neat! I am not a vegan, but it has a nice cheesy flavor.
@@kyleuhlig1529 This is a great idea, I've been veggie for years and I still have to stop and think for a sec to remember the difference between seitan and tempeh
Oooh I’d love that!!
i second this
Hi Adam, I'm a rabbi and I need to clarify what you saw at 1:54: salt with iodine IS kosher but just not kosher for Passover without special Passover certification as it may come from a grain starch that would be problematic on Passover itself.
@@puppieslovies Further evidence, if you even need it, that all religion is bunk
People who consume iodine reasonable amounts are healthier regardless of what some may claim Same with Rice grains wheat barley oats and meals corn etc
@@ozvoyager Show some respect.
For your info, as a native Hebrew Speaker I've googled this issue in an Israeli supermaket Website out of curiousity and have ealsily found an Iodine Salt product , Melach Haaretz מלח הארץ, with a Kosher for Passover seal from BADATZ. As a Rabbi you would most likely know this means most Rabbininte Supervisions could tehcnically approve this type of salt as KOSHER at all times under Jewish Law.
@@israteeg752 He didn't say that salt with iodine isn't kosher for Passover. He just said that it isn't kosher for Passover without additional clarification.
Basically, that it's a harder certification to get than just "kosher".
Melah ha'aretz existing doesn't prove him wrong.
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but, 'kosher' salt , at least to my knowledge, means also that the production process has been blessed at a minimum of every 5 years. ie; salt sources are blessed before processing. I may be wrong, but I have been witness to this kinda thing.
what if your salt has been in storage? Does the "kosherness" of it go off/leak out, and does it need to be blessed again?
I love when Adam's kitchen turns into like a grade 6-12 science lab, complete with scratched-down notes.
@@TheJadedView What about Alton Brown?
@@ArchangelExile who?
Alton brown from good eats. As much as I love Adam I've got to give it to Alton. He still does stuff on UA-cam
As an Israeli, I was very confused when I came across American cooking videos on UA-cam and they mentioned kosher salt. I would have to go out of my way to get salt that isn't kosher, and the kosher ones come in all imaginable varieties, so I really had no idea what they were talking about. Thanks for the video
For me each type of salt has a different flavor and texture
Table Salt has a biting taste
Kosher Salt has a sweet taste
Himalayan Salt has a buttery taste
Sea Salt has a océany taste.
So for me as American, it’s about getting a different flavor profile based on what I’m cooking.
@@moniquewrites9046 they have no sweetening compounds nor oils/fats in them, so your "buttery" and "sweet" tastes are just you being weird.
You can actually look up the general chemical compounds for each and prove it to yourself if you'd like, all that differs is the purity of the NaCl and mineral additives.
But hey, if you want to believe salt with no oil or fat in it somehow tastes buttery then whatever man, hurrdurr purple tastes like amethyst to me amirite.
@@xelgodis80085 it 100% doesn't matter if it's in or not if that's what he gets from it and he def knows there isn't any rl butter or shit inside bruh who tf would think that but u are rly being a toxic kid here lol
@@xelgodis80085 and idk whats "weird" bout saying u can taste ocean in sea salt, that's a a fact lol if u think something can't give u a taste or feeling like it tastes like something different u are the one beein weird... Imagine everything on the world tasting same for everyone wtf would be shit AF
@Sascha Berger maybe reread what I said.
And yes, with very few outliers we all have the same neural responses and the same exact types of taste buds. That's exactly why restaurants are a thing, it's a reliably repeatable experience.
Hey Adam. I was drinking a diet soda today, and it brought up the question of artificial sweeteners: why do people think it is bad and why do others think it is not bad? I would love a definitive answer to this question that I have been wondering.
Important to this discussion is what type of sweetener we're talking about. Saccharine (Sweet n Low) has the most sugar-like flavor, and while it's not great for you, it's probably a lot less harmful than the empty calories it's replacing. Tab, often credited as the very first diet soda back in 1959, used Saccharine right up until it was discontinued last year.
Aspartame lies on the opposite end of the spectrum. It has an awful metallic taste, it's alarmingly carcinogenic, and it's the sweetener that has been steadily replacing better tasting, less harmful options over the last couple decades, such that now everything from diet coke to fresca is sweetened with it. This is the specific artificial sweetener that people are frequently upset about when the topic of artificial sweeteners comes up. It's so ubiquitous in soda today that other sweeteners don't really make it into the discussion.
I'd like to hear what Adam makes of all this though. His fine-tooth comb is second-to-none.
So this is just from my quick google research, so take it with a grain of salt, but supposedly the scientific consensus is that artificial sweeteners are not any more worse for you than most other types of sweeteners (aside from the lower calories), and the idea of them being bad for you is mostly an urban legend propagated by a discredited doctor trying to sell books (I don't remember his name off the top of my head, but he's not a nutritionist or related to food science and anyway, and I'm pretty sure he's the same guy who came up with the "masks cause CO2 build-up myth").
The reason why a lot of people stick to this myth is because:
A. people generally don't care about the scientific consensus because most people are not that scientifically literate and
B. People generally have reservations about anything considered "artificial ingredients" despite most of them being completely harmless or just the scientific name for something natural.
I'm sure there probably are some genuine Health deficits regarding artificial sweeteners, there's basically nothing in existence that doesn't have some kind of drawback, but the idea that it is somehow inherently dangerous or "worse for you than sugar" is mostly fiction.
@@pennyforyourthots Two points: 1. "grain of salt": That's almost as good as when they say the movie title in a movie. 2. IMHO the more valid concern is how the Pancreas seems to respond the same to natural and artificial sweeteners, thus potentially explaining why sugar-free beverage substitution doesn't seem to affect Type II Diabetes rates in those who switch to them.
I love all of your answers. But I think I want adams research when he interviews a scientist. Not to say your opinion doesn’t matter. I just want adams answer.
@@donsullivan1256 I'd like to see a deep dive with a scientist as well like with his MSG video or HFCS video that didn't really relay new facts, but just verified which ones were correct and which ones were outdated and then organized all the points into a consensus even if that consensus "maybe, kinda" like with HFCS.
I'm not sure about the claim.
Different salts react differently in many dishes. Very few top chefs use that much salt really, salt is used to add nuances to cuisine. I've been Michilin recognized for my work in the past. However, myself and many top chef who I work with today prefer Malden sea salt flakes from the U.K.
We usually avoid anything labeled as 'Kosher'.
By the way, MSG has also been
adopted into the list of 'Kosher'
as well. Food for thought?
Seeing “Yikes” in the broiler made me laugh lol love you Adam
i googled "kosher salt" yesterday, hoping your video to pop up. Was left disappointed that you didn't make a video on it.
Today, here we are :)
bababooey
What a coincidence
My family is not from the US so as you might expect, we use Morton Table Salt. The trick is that we don't pinch the salt in our fingers when adding to food. We always use something like a tablespoon to help with that, which we keep in the same jar as the salt :)
Thank you for clarifying this. I had heard of kosher meat and understood the concept of it, but didn’t understand the kosher salt. Not that it mattered much since I don’t eat meat, but I pondered.
I shop at SEAsian markets, and their equivalent of kosher salt is called "natural" or just sea salt, whereas typical table salt is specifically labelled "fine" salt. I like it because the Vietnamese sea salt I get isn't super purified, so it is less salty than most American sea salts so I feel safer just measuring by eye, and it has some interesting other flavours going on.
interesting, i buy a lot of my staples at vietnamese/chinese markets usually but not salt. ill give it a try tho, sounds interesting
Sea salt is a lot different from kosher salt.
That's pretty much why I exclusively and only use pink himalayan salt and celtic sea salt. Tastes better to me and healthier than pure NaCl, for (at least by way of analogy) similar reasons to why complex carbs with fiber is healthier than simple carbs with no fiber.
@@jeremyphillips3087 Perhab it true, perhab it not since kosher salt is basically just salt but bigger.
@@Nhatanh0475 sea salt has other minerals than nacl. also the shape of the salt affects taste.
Thanks Adam! As a Swiss guy who watches tonns of American food tubers, I really *needed* this video.
Why didn't u just ever look it up?
I've been using Kosher salt to cook for about 15 years now, ever since Alton Brown recommended it on Good Eats. And he expressly said it was because it was easier to tell how much you're putting on because you can see the salt, unlike table salt.
so it's for people who don't concentrate on what they are adding to the dish.... like the people who are cooking and trying hard but still stuff it up.
At culinary school we only used Kosher salt. The Chef said the regular salt with the small grains made dishes taste more salty. I find he is right, I am not sure if it is harder to measure with the small crystals or something else.
cup for cup he is correct. Volumetric measurements are inaccurate when measuring solid ingredients, as the amount of air in the measure is different. So one will weigh more than the other.
But if you weigh salt... large grains, or table salt..... weight for weight it has precisely the same amount of salt (NaCl) in it.
Measuring weights (rather than volume) ensures accuracy and repeatability in any concoction, or recipe for cooking.
I've worked in restaurant where they also used kosher salt on the tile floors to prevent slips and falls. We would just shake boxes out onto the greasy floors and it worked great actually
It can be used to clean cast iron as well
I also use it to sometimes to keep my front steps clear of ice.
"What is Kosher salt?"
Salt that has been circumcised.
I literally LOL'd, thanks for making my day!
Personally, I’ve always preferred my salt without foreskin, so this is perfect for my needs.
I hate you
@@Tentin.Quarantino that's what Harvey Weinstein said
YOU WILL NEVER HAVE MY FORESKIN!
10:00 In my experience with fine grained salt vs any type of coarse grain, in general the actual issue is that people sometimes underestimate the amount of salt when using regular salt because its small size makes it dissolve much faster when applied to meat that isn't 100% dry and people cannot see how much salt they have applied as easy. So people that aren't used to it on meat, salt the shit out of it when using that, which ironically seems to be the opposite of how the "Kosher" salt is claimed to work.
I've never had a problem appropriately salting food with a common table salt shaker. I just don't get it. I guess people are generally idiots that can't even figure out the most basic cooking tasks. Sad comment on the human race, really.
The average shake of salt only dispenses a few hundred miligrams of sodium. You're have to go overboard with alot of shaking to oversalt food with a salt shaker.
In addition, if the food is undersalted, people can easily add more salt to their own taste. Preference for salt is going to vary from person to person, as it should, as we don't all have the same sodium needs in our diets.
If using a recipe that calls for an amount of kosher salt by volume, a general guide if substituting table salt is to use half the quantity. This is, of coarse, only a guide for the reasons Adam highlighted, as different types of kosher salt are denser than others.
@Ian Rolfe When I switch out kosher salt for table salt in a recipe (or vice versa) I weigh the amount in the recipe and use the same weight of the other kind. That way I account for the different crystal sizes.
Your ability to transition into an ad is flawless. Its an art.
the amount of study and effort that this guy puts on his videos is amazing! what should just be a simple video, he then turns in into this fulfilled with knowledge content. Great work Adam!!
@@dancooper6002 Not sure if this is what you mean but here in Germany groceries are easily half the price as in the U.S., and fresh produce is usually higher quality too.
@@dancooper6002 What is your source?
@@dancooper6002 I've lived in both countries as well, and I pay far less for groceries here than I ever did in the U.S.
I'll ignore your condescending and emotionally-charged tangent.
FINALLY a great explanation to us Europeans what Kosher salt really is. Thanks Adam!
yes, I now know that it doesn't matter in the slightest. Just use any salt. Weigh it if you are unsure.
As someone who has had to train countless new cooks, I can tell you it is more common to over-salt with regular table salt. When you're seasoning 6 to 12 pans at a time full of food on hot flaming burners for the entirety of a 3-hour service, you just need that extra accuracy.
if you are used to throwing in a teaspoon of lumpy salt, then obviously the same volume of table salt will be saltier.
But some people WEIGH salt, and that is accurate for any salt, even if you have to mix different sizes.
It is all NaCl..... salt. It is not rocket science. Measure by weight = accuracy and repeatability in cooking.
Thank you! As a British cook I've always wondered about this topic!
Kosher salt is a rabbit hole I fell down some years ago researching one day. I live in Michigan and learned that Diamond Crystal's alberger/kosher salt for the North American market is made in one of their facilities here! Alberger kosher salt supposedly is what they use at Mcdonalds on their fries bc it distributes and seasons evenly well.
after watching this episode, I've stumbled down the Ragusea rabbits hole.. i started here and have gone through at least a couple hours of content and decided the best way to say thanks is to come back to the beginning and show my gratitude.. thank you!
Yeah. He's a genius, but a very likeable one at that.
I’m also in the rabbit hole. It’s refreshing watching a video with no copy and paste intro and outros. It’s worth watching the sponsorship in the middle. Plus, he answers all the questions I’ve been asking with most of these videos
This has be uploaded for 6 minutes and has over 5k views. This shows how good the content is that people are excited to watch it right away.
Best Food person on UA-cam.
Adam is so yummy
And it's 15 minutes *talking about salt*.
@@JoshDragRace0688 nah
You're spot on with this. I've been hearing about Kosher salt since watching Rachael Ray 20 years ago. So many other US chefs always make a point of mentioning they are using Kosher salt. Never have I seen it in stores in my country though lol
It’s sold under a different name I guarantee. If all you have is table salt I feel very bad for you.
@@lookoutforchris I have some salt that is called coarse salt, which is just kosher salt by it's description.
Also, we don't feel sorry for ourselves because most people In Where I'm from (India)use table salt to make a huge variety of amazing dishes that don't use "Kosher Salt". although, we usually don't Kosher or dry brine our meat here, the salt is usually added after the meat has been put in the pot to boil\fry or just season it on a cutting board.
@@lookoutforchris most countries have a variety of different size salt crystals. BUt they are called salt, table, flaky, sea, without the Kosher being mentioned. Most of us from overseas had to feel guilty about being unkoshered... but we were, we just didn't know it. We have had to cook for 100's of years without Kosher being mentioned on the packets of salt.... we are deprived.
My husband worked in a large salt field area for 26 years. Sodium Chloride is salt as you said. Pink, white, blue or green, all the same basically. Interesting explanation, thanks!
not all the same. some are processed. some have more minerals. some have additives.
Pakistani pink salt is potassium chloride, which can stop your heart or interact with anticoagulants. And rumoured to fund radical suicide bombers. I use sea salt, sodium chloride. 😊
As a professional cook I have used kosher salt for my entire career. The more you practice using exact amounts of salt the more precise you will be. Everyone’s pinch is different, but experienced cooks will have the same pinch every time.
As a novice (at best) chef, I really hate it when recipes/cookbooks use terms like a "pinch of salt" or "season to taste". Neither makes any real sense the first times you try cooking it . It's a bit like going back 600 years and get an order to make something that's 25*11 inches (based on the inch size they used, which differed from countries, villages, worksites, and people) and using your inch-measurements and then send it back to them to use on whatever they needed it for.
@@RannonSi if you ever see a pinch it is usually around 1/8th tsp or less. Either that or it is from a very old recipe where you weren’t supposed to understand it because it’s supposed to be a secret. If it ever says season to taste, it means do exactly that. Taste it, does it taste salty enough to you? If it is something that you can’t taste, i.e. raw meats, then season till it looks right. You’ve eaten seasoned meats before, about how much salt/pepper would you add till it tasted good for you. Usually this is in recipes that are liquid and you can just taste the change immediately, or where the flavor of the dish comes down a lot to preference in this one department.
I'm gonna go ahead and say that's pure bs that you make up, you don't have a way to test that shit
Thank you! Well done. This video is professional quality. Both audio and visual work is excellent.
I'm so glad I found this channel. It combines cooking with science and history while still being entertaining. I'm a decent cook, but, I'm learning so much.
Watching this as a European is a bit like a Panda listening to an eagle talk about its favourite flight manoeuvres.
@couch potat different species
Then again, European meat is a lot tastier, so salt isn't really necessary, even though salt is commonly used in Europe. In America meat quality is so terrible that salt is an absolute necessity. Even some of the higher graded meat in America barely passes as food for human consumption in Europe.
@@be2Gee I dont know what state you live in but I can easily get my hands on high quality meat from my local grocery stores in the midwest. Sounds like you live in a state that doesn't have much livestock.
@@haloninjax542 or they get cheap meat and then complain about it. Or they don’t season it well
@@be2Gee you know most meat sold here comes from mass produced, antibiotics-pumped animals as well, right?
Seriously! it's about time this video came about. Being from the UK, I had no idea what I was looking for.
if you dont want salt to "clump up" keep it in the fridge, keeps it dry. I place my sea salt in the fridge in a open container to dry, then use this in my grinder, I also keep the salt grinder in the fridge.
We always use sea salt for everything and its kind of in-between table salt and kosher salt in terms of how big the crystals are
Lauren: Adam why is the floor covered in salt
Adam: it was too small
Oh, no! The salt grain size is to small for my self-induced comercialy fueled expectations! It is such a mess I've made just handling the salt instead of using a salt grinder, or even a simple biggwr holed shaker!
@@GeorgeBuftea ???
@@jackdaw7792 sarcasm. Salt is salt. Debating on kosher salt os plain stupid, as is Adam saying it is a complete mess after dropping some regular salt grains just because he forgot how to pinch.
@@GeorgeBuftea This isn't about debating salt, this is about the benefits of different salt grain shapes in professional cooking and why they're labelled like that in the United States. I don't get what the hell your problem is. It's salt. The shape of a small thing does have a major impact on how you use that thing. Live with it.
@@jackdaw7792 i have no problem, and I'm having a hard time understanding why you're getting so pumped up over my opinion. It's just salt, like you said, and I bet you the two guys commenting around that are professional cheffs it's neither me or you, to even make a point. So yeah, it's just salt, NaCl, in any grain size it might be.
Lots of people that haven’t worked in a kitchen making complex dishes as a line cook don’t seem to understand the superiority of using pinched salt vs salt shaker/grinder.
You have so much more portion control when pinching salt. And yes they do get dirty and clog up where you would end up under salting a dish.
@@sayarimamani3605 No one asked you to spout bullshit + ratio
Talking about salt this video has been a massive help and so much information. I use Halen Mon (sea salt in Welsh) for my big flake salt. It's delicious and has very pretty flakes. I also did the tour and they take the sea water thru a tunnel, filter it then boil it to increase the sea level then use big flat trays to evaporate the water producing the salt flakes.
I love how you used Waitrose over say Asda (Walmart). Waitrose is seen as a posh mainstream supermarket that a lot of people won't shop at as they see it as expensive when actually they price match with Tesco another popular supermarket. Waitrose is the place to got for unusual ingredients and has far more choice than other supermarkets near me.
Hello I use Morska Sol (sea salt in Bulgarian) when I do my Gotvene (cooking in Bulgarian) especially when preparing Meso (Meat in Bulgarian) for Salata (salad in Bulgarian) I use Obiknovena Sol (regular salt in Bulgarian) zashtoto (because in Bulgarian) e (is in Bulgarian) po-lesno (easier in Bulgarian) da (to in Bulgarian) q prusnesh (synonym for to spread in Bulgarian) po (on in Bulgarian) cqlata (the entire in Bulgarian) povurhnost (surface in Bulgarian) na salatata (the salad in Bulgarian) i (and in Bulgarian) da q razburkash (to stir it in Bulgarian)
Kosher salt is great for tenderizing steak.
I let my steak warm to room temperature, and rub some kosher salt into the steak. This helps the meat relax, making it very tender.
I’ve tried other salts, they don’t do as good as a job as kosher salt does.
I also use kosher salt in a dry rub for my fall off the bone ribs
In France we have fleur de sel (salt blossom) which is a salt harvested in sea water ponds dried by the sun. The flakes are kinda the same but the price is crazy high so we only use it as a "finishing" salt , on a steak after it's cooked for example
in my country's language it roughly translate to 'rough salt'.
so there is "fine salt" and "rough salt"
and most times rough salt comes in massive chunks (3-4 times the size of regular rough salt) and in a container that grinds them into regular rough salt.
also in Hebrew kosher salt is called rough salt. I think the name itself is an american thing
in Ro, we gave a type of rough salt "sare grunjoasă" that we use for pickles and meats but it's not flaky like what I see here called kosher. ours is bigger, like small cubes
As a former chef, I can say the reason why many chefs use kosher salt is that it's more controllable in that it's harder to mistakenly over salt. When you grab a large pinch of kosher, it's actually LESS salt than standard granular. It's a matter of grain size and density. A "pinch" of kosher will have less sodium than a pinch of table salt.
The larger grains also have a better tactile feel to them which makes it easier to feel how much you're grabbing because you're usually not looking at the salt bin/cup/holder when you're cooking, and the larger size makes it easier to see as you're adding it to the dish.
In a kitchen, you're using it to season dishes far more than dry brining or seasoning meat.
That was all included in the video genius master former chef.
@@matthewcrosby3615 You're welcome, padawan.
This directly contradicts Adam's experience relayed in the video. He got almost twice as much salt in each kosher pinch than he did with table salt.
@@styx85 Search "is Kosher salt saltier" or something similar - there's a lot of explanation out there, including why Morton's Kosher is "saltier" than Diamond Kosher, and why table salt is saltier still. Most chefs prefer Diamond over Morton's when salting during the cooking process.
@@wty1313 I think the tactile memory also has a lot to do with the brand of kosher salt used. They all feel different and most restaurants have been using diamond because honestly, it's cheaper from the supplier. If you have been working in kitchens from a young age, it becomes very familiar.
I know using different brands just feels weird to me haha.
The other advantage of kosher salt when used in cooking is the slower dissolve rate, making it easier to have even distribution of salt throughout whatever it is being used for, soups especially.
You have no idea how much I wanted somebody to explain this.
Your videos like this one are fascinating and genuinely brighten my day (and I _really_ needed that today), so thank you Adam.
Also (and I swear this is true), I somehow screwed up typing “Adam” on my phone so badly that when I read it back it had changed it to “Batman,” which brightened my day even further.
In Germany, you can buy a salt called Saldoro Ursalz mittelgrob, which is a medium coarse stone salt. I've been using it for years with recipes that call for Kosher Salt and it totally works, the weight-to-volume ratio seems identical to Diamond Crystal
Adam: "That's what the Morton girl symbolizes"
*"So that's what it does"*
Also the slogan, "When it rains, it pours". TIL the thing that's "pouring" is the salt, and the rain is literal rain.
WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS MEANS IT HAS SO MUCH ANTI CAKING AGENT IN IT IT DOESN'T CLOG UP THE SHAKER AND HE DID MENTION IODINE WAS AN ADDITIVE ALSO.
I actually made the switch from kosher salt to regular iodized salt in my cooking. Haven't noticed a difference but I'm glad to be getting the added iodine.
It can make a big difference if you're adding it to things you're curing, like kimchi (user kosher salt).
I like the part where he says “kosher” and “salt”
My haters throw rocks at me and IT hurts. I hope they don't throw The Rock at me because I like him as an actor. GAGAGAGAGA!!! I am funny!!! I am the funniest UA-camr EVAH! Please agree, dear dc
Kosher
Salt
K O S H E R S A L T
Salt of the kosher
Yeah me too
Thank you SO MUCH for this video. I watch a lot of cooking videos and I always wondered why some recipes and chefs would opt for kosher salt. I didn't understand the difference and even with watching other videos I felt they lacked the details for me to properly understand. This video broke it down perfectly! Thanks 😊
I'm not joking when I say Adam has taught me a lot more than the teachers have in my two years of high school. I'm going to culinary school in a few months and Adam's videos have taught me a lot, even if that wasn't his intention, about food, food science, and just general tips to use around the kitchen
Thanks Adam :)
Thank you. I appreciate the factual information regarding kosher salt. I just got a box of Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt and my wife asked me what that means and why did I need it. I had to be honest, I had no idea...now I do. I'm glad that you continue to poke holes in darkness.
A few years ago, a cook posted a recipe that had drastically different results when using two different brands of kosher salt. Makes sense-the volume of NaCl would vary greatly, depending on the processing method. The recipe got edited and re-distributed, specifying a particular brand of kosher salt.
I’m mystified, though, by the number of baking recipes that specify kosher salt added to batters, rather than as a finish.
Because most home bakers measure ingredients by volume rather than weight.
What happened to measuring with grams?
If I get a kosher salt recipe I tend to do it by weight, as various salts with different grain sizes weigh different amounts by volume. If you do it by weight, then you have the right amount, no matter what the volume may be.
Im british and recently got into fermentation, Im here because a recipe called for Kosher salt and I have absolutely no idea what that is, or why it would need to be kosher in the first place.. here to learn!
Around 2005 , my Grandmother had a goiter removed from her chest. She had spent a couple of decades on a reduced salt diet. The goiter was 36+ pounds , the size of a medium pizza. After opening her up , the surgeon actually snapped a picture of it before removal. It looked just like a big ol' chicken liver. I would say that iodine is a necessary nutrient just like Morton states on the salt box. The picture was a big hit when passed around before thanksgiving dinner that year. LOL
*gags* that story is actually amazing *gags again*
We are also 6 neutrons 6protons 6 electrons. The electrons do not work if the right type of salt isn’t consumed. Table salt is useless for electrons, only natural salt makes them work correctly and we need more salt than the government recommends……funny that huh? It’s no accident that that rubbish ends up on our Table or the reduced requirement stated by gov “experts”
They also told us not to soak veg as it looses nutrients however they don’t say it takes TWENTY MINUTES to soak off the pesticides
They also told us not to wash chicken as it can splash bugs around the kitchen. but, if you wash it in water n lemon juice it takes out the ammonia from the (left in) kidneys!!
Cholesterol is needed for health too! It’s all one big con and it feels like we’re being INTENTIONALLY harmed by the “government guidelines”
@@Just_Sara lmao!! Cool story tho, goes to show they seem to be harming us!
@@coolcat6103 In the US most of us eat way more salt than is necessary - my body tells me this when I get thirsty after eating too much of it. Among other electrolytes, sodium is indeed needed. The sodium chloride on our tables does indeed work, because if only natural salt worked, I'd be dead. And I guarantee if if you dissolve "natural salt" and table salt and recrystallize it yourself at home, you'll have an identical product other than the natural salt leaving behind a wee sprinkle of minerals and the table salt leaving behind a wee sprinkle of it's added source of iodine. I'd love the scientific sources for your information, by the way.
@@Just_Sara no I meant the table salt makes them work incorrectly, on 50%. Yes Americans eat too much table salt and that’s why everyone is so sick (amongst other things) the gov recommended dose is too low for the RIGHT type of salt. I can’t go into it here I can’t be bothered to type it all out nor the time It was just a general comment for further research If interested.
I've had this question for so long, thank you for answering all of my Google searches I haven't gotten around to.