Let's Talk About Salt, Baby
Bonneville Salt Flats. If you’ve never been to see this stunning area of Utah, highly recommend. Dustin Humes/Getty
We talk a lot about salt around here, mostly because we need rather a lot of it for fermentation. But what we don’t really talk here about is what kinds of salt are appropriate for your ferments. This is going to be a short article (surprise!) because what we’re really talking about today is misconceptions surrounding salt and fermentation.
What kinds of salt are okay to use when I’m fermenting?
You may use any salt except those that contain iodine.
“What? But… every YouTube channel I ever see, and most articles I see on the internet say I need to use sea salt or Redmond Real Salt!,” you say. And yes, you’re right. They do all plug these high priced salts, and they do tell you that you can’t use the cheap, grocery store brands of free flowing salt. But they’re wrong.
The only salts off limits to you are iodized salts.
Iodine inhibits fermentation. Free flowing table salt, however, is not iodized. The main claim here is that the anti-caking agents inhibit fermentation and may contain compounds that are not healthy for humans to consume in larger quantities. The two most commonly touted superior salts are Redmond Real Salt and Himalayan Pink Salt. Both of these salts, however, contain not only similar compounds to those being objected to, but tend to contain much higher levels of heavy metals and other such, even when those levels are still under legal limits in a given nation. Ironically, your best shot of avoiding the higher heavy metal and other compounds typically found in salt is to use refined salt.
That’s not meant to scare y’all. It’s mostly meant to tell you that you aren’t avoiding much, if anything, that you think you are when you pick the fancier salts. What you are actually getting from the fancier salts is a fuller flavor profile, because it does have so many more minerals in it. You’re also getting a substantively higher price tag. Unless you buy your sea salt at the dollar store, Ross, TJ Max, Home Goods, Marshalls, and similar discount-type stores. Then you pay $1-3 for a good amount of salt.
Here’s a lovely little lineup of products Morton sells to the public. Note that Morton makes the overwhelming majority of American salts.
What you may have noticed in the picture above, and also probably in the grocery store, is that companies like Morton make a wide range of salts. And this, honestly, is where I hit my sticking point with these nonsensical, bogus claims. In general, the claim is that if you can’t use Redmond or sea salt, you should default to pickling/canning salt or kosher salt. Very, very occasionally, I’ll see someone say to use ice cream/rock salt instead.
But guess what, folks? Kosher salt is a large flake version of table salt. Rock salt is the pebble version (this is a the least refined of them). Pickling salt? Super tiny table salt. So while we are telling people not to use the single most affordable non-iodized salt around (free-flowing table), we are also telling them that it’s okay to use smaller and larger versions of the same so long as they spend more money to do so. I don’t think people realize that’s what they’re saying, but it is indeed what they’re saying.
This is how I feel literally every single time I hear or read these claims.
Why do I even care about this?
I care about this for two reasons:
intellectual honesty: this is the smaller reason I care about this issue, but facts are facts and y’all know it bothers me when we pretend that facts are not facts.
Economic bias: fancy, expensive salts price people out of fermentation.
Fermentation should be about the most affordable way to get healthful foods into your diet. You are generally just in need, in the simplest forms, of some vegetables, salt, and water. Maybe a weight if you can afford one, maybe not. Maybe you use a pasta sauce jar, maybe you buy a Weck.
But, if you are economically disadvantaged, it would be inane to go spend a lot of money on salt. Truly inane, when as much of your food money as possible could be going to… say… food? You’re also not gonna be buying fancy jars, weights, and similar equipment when you’re in this income bracket. It’s washed pasta sauce jar for this, y’all. And no weights. Just lots of burping and using a spoon to push anything rising above the bring back down. Or maybe just leaving the spoon pushing things down and a towel thrown over the top since you can’t use a lid with the spoon handle sticking out of the jar. If y’all’ve never done it this way, give it a whirl! It’s super convenient, and I won’t pretend that I don’t recycle all manner of jars that used to have prepared food in them for fermented prepared foods. Because I do recycle these in this specific manner, and I do it because it will never be possible for me to afford every single Weck or other brand jar I really need (I prefer Weck above all others, but I have a broad range). That’s because I’m average, run-of-the-mill middle class, so I can’t just buy $40 dollar boxes of jars on a whim. Like most of y’all, I suspect.
But those of you who are struggling? Really struggling? You’re not buying any jars and you’re always recycling the ones that came with food in them. That has been my life multiple times, and it’s stressful enough without people telling you that your salt (or jars) aren’t good enough. That you still aren’t doing a good enough job feeding your family healthful foods. Etc. People say a lot of messed up stuff to people who live in these situations.
I know some of y’all are reading this and thinking I’m being a bit melodramatic here. Others of you are nodding your heads vigorously in agreement. Some of y’all, maybe even a lot of y’all, are feeling that pinch from inflation enough to be nodding your heads even though you’re not in that place right now. Sometimes, inflation can remind otherwise financially secure people that that place of suck exists, even if it’s not knocking on their door.
Food equity and food independence matter, and I think after the last two years we probably all understand this. That’s why this bothers me me so much that I finally had to say something: we understand that quality food isn’t as accessible for some portions of our society as it is for others, yet we still make claims that are false while pricing people out of affordable, delicious, and healthful ferments.
This also probably sounds pretty silly coming from someone who works for a company that charges $13 for the least costly of our cultures. I get that. What y’all know about that price tag is that if you take care of your culture, it will take care of your grandchildren, and your grandchildren’s children, and so on, which does dramatically lower the overall cost. What most of y’all probably do not know is that Positively Probiotics donates both money to food equity charities and cultures to impoverished individuals. It’s a thing, and we have never mentioned it before because it wasn’t relevant to anyone we weren’t helping in the moment.
But since I do look like I’m sitting here from my high horse, I’m telling you that we walk the walk so that you know that our focus on food equity and access happens in practice as well as in our rhetoric. It’s also why we often will tell you ways to get ferments that rob us of a sale from you, why we try to help you save cultures you’re working hard to kill, and why y’all sometimes find cultures you never ordered in your order. Those aren’t mistakes; those are gifts, because we’re trying to expand access to healthful options. We also, at times, send actual food to people within the Positively Probiotic community who are in need, as well as helping them locate and access local area resources.
There’s a big part of me that hates everything in that last paragraph, because I strongly believe that charitable acts should happen silently, without drawing attention to oneself or others. That said, since I’m lecturing about food equity, kind of have to disclose that Sabrina and I put our money where our mouths are.
So what can you use?
You can use any salt that doesn’t have iodine. Of the sodium chloride types. I know one of you smart Alecs is gonna email me asking about whatever nonsensical other salts (epsom or whatever) in a moment of uncontrollable troll instinct if I don’t say that. Please no troll emails. I get plenty of trolling at home.
This is a no troll zone. I get enough trolling from the two I already live with! Mark König/Getty
