Cooking Corner: A little pinch of salt goes a long way

David W. Cowles

Cooking corner

The word salary is derived from salarium, the Latin word for salt. According to legend, Roman soldiers were paid in salt, leading to the phrase “worth his salt.”

Salt is essential to life, and also to enhance the flavor of our foods. However, most doctors agree Americans consume far too much salt, leading to hypertension (high blood pressure) and other ailments.

Much of that salt comes from snack foods, such as potato chips, nuts and pretzels; condiments, such as ketchup and soy sauce; fast foods, especially French fries; and commercially processed foods, including canned soups, pickles and sandwich meats.

There are a number of ways to reduce your salt intake. Most obvious, of course, is to avoid foods that have a high salt content. Another is to taste your food before you add salt to it — it’s likely to be salty enough.

Try seasoning your food with something else, such as a squeeze of lemon or lime juice, or a small amount of citric acid (also called sour salt). Or use Morton Lite Salt, which contains just half of the sodium of regular salt.

Mrs. Dash (made by Alberto-Culver Company, the manufacturer of shampoo, hair conditioner and related products) has 13 different salt-free spice blends that are said to improve the flavor of food.

I haven’t found one of them that I like.

You can also deceive yourself by using kosher salt instead of regular salt at the dinner table. Spoonful by spoonful, kosher salt is less salty than table salt, so it looks like you’re adding more salt than you really are.

While a pound of salt always weighs a pound — remember Gertrude Stein’s famous line, “A rose is a rose is a rose” — because of its larger grain sizes and a more open granular structure, a cup of kosher salt weighs less than a cup of table salt.

Thus, when recipes call for salt by the measure rather than by weight, you’ll need to increase the quantity if you use kosher salt.

That’s complicated by the fact that not all kosher salts weigh the same. Ordinary table salt weighs 10.2 ounces per cup. Morton’s kosher salt weighs 8.1 ounces per cup. Diamond Crystal kosher salt weighs only 5 ounces per cup.

Stated another way: If a recipe calls for four teaspoons of table salt, you’ll need to use five teaspoons of Morton kosher salt or eight teaspoons of Diamond Crystal kosher salt.

Iodized salt

Iodized salt was the first instance of an ingredient added to a product solely for health reasons. It was determined that people in certain parts of the United States — most notably the Great Lakes region — were not getting enough iodine in their diet.

That lack resulted in endemic goiter and other iodine-deficiency disorders, such as mental retardation and cretinism.

Salt producers cooperated with public health officials and, beginning in 1924, they made both iodized and plain salt available to consumers at the same price.

Morton Lite Salt

Potassium is a necessary nutrient for human beings. Some years ago, after reviewing the results of my blood test, a doctor suggested I take potassium chloride pills.

As they were quite expensive, with my doctor’s approval, I bought Morton Lite Salt instead.

Lite Salt contains 50 percent potassium chloride and 50 percent sodium chloride. It’s sold primarily to people who want to restrict their sodium intake, but it can also be used to increase one’s potassium intake.

To this day, I use Morton Lite Salt in place of regular salt at the dinner table. An 11-ounce shaker box costs about a dollar.

Caution must be used with potassium chloride. Whereas a small amount is extremely beneficial, too much can be deadly.

These days, instead of being hanged by the neck, decapitated by guillotine, shot by a firing squad, fried in an electric chair or suffocated and poisoned with cyanide gas, most people who are legally executed receive an injection of a potassium chloride solution.

I did a little research on the Internet and found out that each 11-ounce box of Morton Lite Salt contains enough potassium chloride to do away with seven adults and one child.

Morton also makes potassium chloride pellets for water softeners. Imagine how many people you could snuff out with a 50-pound bag of those!

Cooking Corner columnist David W. Cowles, the Fastest Chef in the West, can be reached by e-mail at dwcowles-gateway@comcast.net.