How Many Cups Is A Pound Of Kosher Salt

I proceed running into a roadblock with my recipes. Salting is the key element to seasoning nutrient, and I don't know how much salt to tell people to utilize.

I use Diamond Crystal Kosher salt considering I salt by hand. The big crystals of Kosher salt are easy to grab and sprinkle, unlike tabular array table salt, which has such tiny crystals that I tin't get hold of it. I know that a two finger compression of Diamond Crystal Kosher gives me a half teaspoon of salt. (Yes, I measured.) I've been using information technology for a while, and I have a good feel for how information technology works.

But when someone takes that into their own kitchen, with their own fingers and a dissimilar brand of salt, what does it mean?

With salt, density matters*. I've read that Diamond Crystal Kosher salt, with its large flakes, weighs one-half equally much past volume as table salt, with its tiny grains. In other words, a half cup of tabular array salt packs in as much salt as a whole loving cup of Diamond Crystal. (Morton's Kosher supposedly weighs in between the two, at ¾ cup).
*Salt...it is your density.

I should take this data at face value. It's from Cooks Illustrated, so I'm certain they did their inquiry. But I amborderline obsessive-compulsive thorough. I decided to measure all the different types of table salt I use, from ultra-fine grained pickling salt to Maldon sea common salt with its huge flakes.

Conversion Chart

To catechumen from one salt to some other: The row is the salt the recipe calls for, and the cavalcade is the common salt you want. Find the row for the recipe'south common salt, then movement to the right until you get to the cavalcade of the salt you have, and multiply the corporeality in the recipe by that number. (Then I cheat a picayune, and round to the nearest number that matches my measuring spoons.)

Instance 1:A recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt, and you have Mortons Kosher salt. Discover the Diamond Crystal row, go across until you get to the Mortons Kosher column, 0.7. The multiplication is like shooting fish in a barrel: you want i x 0.7 = 0.7 tablespoons. (Since I know a tablespoon is three teaspoons, and iii*0.7 = 2.i teaspoons, I round downwards a little and apply 2 teaspoons of Mortons.)

Example two: A recipe calls for 1 teaspoon table table salt, and yous have RealSalt fine sea salt. Detect the Mortons table salt row (1st row), so go across until y'all become the RealSalt fine body of water salt column, one.2. Y'all need 1.two teaspoons of fine ocean salt. (And I would round up to 1.25 teaspoons to make for piece of cake measuring).

Data

Here are the raw numbers:

Common salt Type	Weight of ¼ loving cup (grams)	Weight of ¼ cup (ounces)	Replacement Percent Diamond Crystal Kosher
Morton's Table Salt	76.0	two.68	59%
Morton Pickling Common salt	74.0	ii.61	61%
La Baleine Coarse Ocean Salt	66.8	2.36	68%
Real Salt Fine Ocean Table salt	65.0	2.29	70%
La Baleine Fine Ocean Table salt	64.eight	ii.29	seventy%
Real Common salt Kosher Salt	64.0	2.26	71%
Morton's Kosher Salt	62.0	2.19	73%
Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt	45.2	one.59	100%
Maldon Sea Common salt	33.two	1.17	136%

What did I learn from this?

Cooks Illustrated was right. A one-half loving cup of tabular array salt equals ¾ cup of Mortons Kosher equals 1 loving cup of Diamond Crystal. Roughly - information technology slightly over weights table salt and nether weights Morton's Kosher, only it'due south close plenty.
Fine sea table salt is not a i:i replacement for salt. I buy fine ocean salt from the majority bin at my local health food store at $0.69/lb, and employ it every bit table salt in my blistering recipes. I causeless fine body of water salt has the aforementioned crystal size equally table salt. Oops. Turns out, fine ocean salt is closer by weight to Morton'due south Kosher than it is to table salt. Bounding main table salt must take a crystal with more air in it than table salt. If you'll alibi me, I have to get set a few of the recipes in my archives…

Fine ocean common salt and fibroid sea salt accept the same density: I assumed coarse sea salt would be lighter than fine sea salt. Nope, wrong again. They are basically identical; in my tests they were inside a couple grams of each other, with the coarse sea salt weighing a tiny bit more than than the fine ocean salt.
Morton's Kosher table salt is not quite weight specific. I read that Morton's Kosher was designed so that its weight would match water, for utilise in sausage making. Since a pint (of h2o) is a pound the earth around, a pint of Morton's Kosher should too exist a pound. Close, but not quite. By my measurements, ii cups of Morton's Kosher counterbalance one pound, one and a one-half ounces.
Pickling table salt has the same weight every bit tabular array salt: I expected pickling salt to be heavier than table common salt; I heard it had even smaller grains, to help it dissolve faster. It turns out the 2 are almost exactly the same weight. Table salt is ever then slightly heavier. So, why apply pickling salt when pickling? Table salt has added ingredients to proceed the common salt pourable in boiling environments. (Like the ad says, "When it rains, it pours.") Those extra ingredients make pickle brines cloudy. Other than that, pickling salt and table table salt are the same thing.

Oh, and the Maldon common salt? It is astonishing. The flakes are huge and blusterous. It is a great finishing table salt, sprinkled on just before serving. It adds a hit of salty crunch without over-salting the nutrient. Don't apply it any sooner in cooking, though, or it will dissolve. There is no difference betwixt dissolved Maldon, Kosher, or table salt - they're just salt at that point. Maldon is very expensive to be "just table salt".

What do you think? Questions? Other ideas? Leave them in the comments section beneath.

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