Not all salts are created equal: From table salt to kosher and flaky sea salt to savory smoked salt there’s a lot on the market. And one chef who knows this all too well is Ina Garten. The beloved culinary icon doesn’t stick to just one type of salt—instead she stocks her pantry with three.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 Food Network | 2021-10-23 18:00:09 |  1,630,773 Views |
Our 5 Favorite Recipes from Ina Garten | Barefoot Contessa | Food Network
The bottom line is Garten’s go-to for most of her cooking: kosher salt. Unless otherwise noted this is what Garten regularly recommends using in her recipes; Garten specifically opts for Diamond Crystal brand kosher salt. Garten avoids table salt (which many home cooks use as their go-to salt) because she says it’s too salty and tends to have a metallic taste. Kosher salt avoids this pitfall: It doesn’t contain iodine the additive that causes that metallic taste. Kosher salt can be marine or mined (Diamond Crystal’s version is sea salt) and it tends to have coarser crystals or grains compared to table salt and a fairly clean flavor profile.
The name kosher salt comes from its use in the Jewish culinary process of making it kosher or “kashrut.” This involves using the salt to draw out the blood from meat making it kosher. Somewhat confusingly kosher salt is not automatically kosher so check the label if that is important to you. That said the Diamond Crystal brand is indeed kosher.
Garten noted in a kitchen tour for the New York Times that Diamond Crystal kosher salt isn’t as salty as some other kosher salts on the market — meaning if you follow one of her recipes and use an alternative kosher salt you might want to use a bit less. If you’re looking to follow in Ina Garten’s footsteps know that you’ll likely pay a bit more than your average salt: It has quite a culinary following among chefs and home cooks and is considered a premium salt so three pounds of it will run you about $13 (with some variation between stores of course) — that’s compared to just a few dollars for the same amount of table salt; there are other less expensive kosher salts on the market too.
