Substitute for kosher salt?

[Tuomo Pursiainen]

First of all, thanks for writing the books and making the excellent videos! I have really enjoyed reading them and cooking from them.

I like the new book a lot, excellent guides and tasty pictures (my two-year-old son likes to read it with me and we "eat" from the pictures

). Otherwise Chicken Involtini with Prosciutto and Basil is one of our new all-time favorites.

In Finland I’m able to get most of ingredients, but it’s impossible to buy kosher salt. Chris’s excellent “All About Salt” gives good pointers, but what’s your advise on substituting kosher salt? I usually use sea salt but only half of the amount specified.

Also a nice feature for your future books would be indicating the amounts using also the metric system. It’s not that bad to do the math once, but I hate to write on books

.

BR,

Tuomo

 

[Jamie Purviance]

Thanks for your kind words, Tuomo.

I think you have already found the best solution of all. I would love to cook exclusively with sea salt. I prefer the taste even over kosher salt. The trouble is, where I live it is quite expensive. Kosher salt is more affordable and quite good, but sea salt is the best of all.

I've heard talk from my publisher that some translations of the books might be coming to Europe, in which case all the metric conversions would be done for you.

Regards,
Jamie

 

[Tuomo Pursiainen]

Thanks for the reply. As sea salt is one of the cheapest things you can buy from grocery stores in Finland, I haven't given much value to it. It was nice to hear that I'm not "missing out" on something because of this

. Don't know if I should tell this, but we use sea salt liquid to keep main roads open during winter... Also farmers put it to hay to keep it from molding...

As translations take a lot of time (or never appear, since there's only 5 million Finns) I'm perfectly happy to buy BBQ and grilling books from US when they are published.

 

[Pat Barnes]

What would be the equivalent amout of sea salt vs. Kosher? I know that that's tough because even different brands of kosher are different. I usually use Penzy's Coarse sea salt and grind it myself.

 

[Jamie Purviance]

Pat,
In my experience equal amounts of kosher salt and sea salt have the same "saltiness." The most significant difference is the size of the salt crystals. Sea salt is usually sold in larger crystals that don't pack as tightly into a teaspoon or tablespoon, so you need to add a bit more sea salt to compensate for the little air pockets in a spoonful of sea salt. Or you can grind your sea salt crystals so they are the same size as kosher salt crystals. Then you can use the exact same amount of either type.
Jamie