10 Salts You Should Always Have In Your Pantry

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Salt has been a prized commodity since ancient times due to its ability to both preserve food and enhance its flavor. Perhaps our ancestors instinctively understood its fundamental role in health too, as it's essential to maintain optimal fluid balance and support the functioning of muscles and nerves.

The process of gathering salt is traditionally referred to as "winning," an indication of the value placed on it. So essential is salt to food that many of our most basic culinary terms derive from it. Sauce, salsa, and salad all come from salt being ubiquitous in their preparation, salami is meat cured with salt, and "marinate" comes from the ocean, the original source of salt.

Today salt is available in many textures, shapes, colors, and flavors, and each can add something special to your cooking. Some salts, often called finishing salts, are best saved for sprinkling over a finished dish. While others are used for brining meat and poultry to add flavor and succulence, and for salting pasta water (⅓ ounce salt for every 2 pints of water is the rule of thumb). A similar ratio ensures great flavor when boiling vegetables and also locks in their color. Here's a round-up of the salts you should always have in your pantry.

Unlike table salt that typically contains iodine and anti-caking agents, natural salt is any pure salt that has undergone little or no processing. It may be mined from dried up ancient seabeds and saltwater lakes, or harvested by evaporating water from the ocean, saltwater springs, and aquifers. Sometimes this is done using wind and sun, sometimes by artificial heating.

Natural salt is often marketed as kosher salt, though that can mean either salt that's been certified kosher by a kosher authority (agency) or uncertified kosher-style salt that is similar in appearance. The name came about because natural, unprocessed salt is traditionally used to make meat kosher.

Blood is forbidden under Jewish dietary laws. So cooks remove it from meat before cooking by spreading a layer of salt on it to draw out the blood. The salt used needs to be of a consistency to cling to the meat; too fine and it will be absorbed, too coarse and it will fall off. Kosher salt became the common term for any natural, unprocessed salt that's the right consistency to cling to meat.

Natural kosher salt is many people's go-to seasoning in the kitchen, and some swear by it as the end-all and be-all seasoning for perfect steaks.

When saline water is evaporated to make salt, crystalline structures form. Generally sun and wind evaporate salt water down to a concentrated brine that's then pumped into pans to be gently heated, forming crystalline flakes.

The salinity of the brine, the humidity, and the temperature and speed at which the water evaporates, all play a part in determining the shape and size of the crystals. The most famous and sought-after crystal shape is the pyramid, found in salts like English Maldon and American Pyramid Salt. Other processes produce wide flat crystals or box-shaped ones of varying sizes.

Flake salt is often used for finishing dishes because of its appearance, pleasing crunch, and burst of saltiness. Its ability to dissolve quickly however, also makes it popular in cooking and other preparations, like beet-cured gravlax.

Because of its lightness, 1 teaspoon of flake salt weighs much less (and is therefore less salty) than 1 teaspoon of table or natural salt. So, if substituting salt flakes for another salt in a recipe, measure it by weight (ounces) rather than volume (spoons or cups) to ensure the correct salt level.

Fleur de sel is the most prized natural salt. The name "flower of salt" refers to the small delicate salt crystals that form on the surface of evaporating sea water in large shallow coastal ponds. As the small salt crystals undergo minimal processing, fleur de sel is usually an off-white color and slightly damp. It's traditionally associated with the Atlantic coast of France, where wooden rakes are still used to gently scrape the valuable crystals off the surface of the more common sea salt that collects beneath it.

It's also harvested in other European countries including Portugal, Spain, and Greece, where it was previously discarded in favor of the easier to harvest, more cost-effective, sea salt below it. Today fleur de sel is produced in Canada, Mexico, Cambodia, and Australia.

Regardless of location, fleur de sel production requires precise climactic conditions and hand-harvesting by experienced professionals. The cost of production means it always commands a premium price and is mainly used as a finishing salt where it's pure flavor and delicate grains can best be appreciated, including a sprinkle on sweets like salted caramels.

The rock salt in our pantry can be mined from the land or from when salt is evaporated from the ocean. It's a culinary-grade version of the coarse salt used in winter to melt snow because saltwater stays liquid below the freezing point of normal water (32 degrees Fahrenheit).

As it's relatively inexpensive, rock salt can also be put to functional (rather than flavoring) uses in the kitchen. It's mixed with ice to pack around the churn of old-fashioned ice cream machines to lower the temperature. A trick that can also keep frozen goods solid in a portable cooler and make the most efficient ice slurry for quickly chilling drinks.

Rock salt is often cleaned to produce a pure white color, but its appearance can vary depending on what other minerals or impurities (such as clay or algae) are present. In dishes like Oysters Rockefeller, it makes a practical and attractive base for uneven shaped shells as it stabilizes them for cooking and serving.

Rock salt is hard, with less moisture than most salts, and so is often used in salt grinders. As an inexpensive salt, it's also popular for salting pasta and vegetable cooking water and in brines for meat and poultry. The "corn" in corned beef is an old word for seed or berry, referring to the pieces of rock salt used in its preparation.

Often called Celtic grey salt, or sel gris, this damp coarse salt was traditionally harvested from the Guérande Peninsula in what is now the Loire region of France but was historically part of Brittany, France's Celtic region.

Today Sel de Guérande and Sel de l'Île de Ré are French grey salts with names protected by their European Union PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) accreditation, while Celtic grey salt is produced in different locations around the world.

Its grey color comes from the minerals in the tidal clay salt beds in which it forms, that also give it a unique, slightly mineral, flavor. This distinctive flavor makes it great in pickles, brines, and vegetable cooking water. Its color and mineral content can turn cooking water a little cloudy and cause a harmless foam to form on the surface.

Celtic-style grey salt is available in both coarse and fine grains. While coarse is best for cooking, fine-grained grey salt makes an interesting garnish for sweets, like dessert blogger Heather Baird's crisp pecan sandies. Due to its high mineral content, coarse Celtic grey salt is also sometimes used in bath salts and even cosmetics, such as skin scrubs.

The most famous pink salt, sendha namak, is mined deep in the Himalayan Mountains of Pakistan. It's a hard rock salt that works well in grinders and can also be pulverized into a fine powder. Brick-sized blocks of Himalayan pink salt are used to cook on because they retain heat so well.

Around the Peruvian towns of Maras and Pichingoto in the Andes, locals harvest pink salt from mineral-rich spring water pumped into terraced evaporation ponds, as their ancestors have since pre-Hispanic times. The salt is available in both coarse and fine grades and generally used in cooking.

Other pink salts include French Sel de Camargue PGI and Australian Murray River pink salt, colored by salt-loving pink microalgae. Both of these pretty fine salts are typically used as finishing salts.

Indian black salt (kala namak) is deep purple when it's mined from the Himalayas — once ground, it becomes pinkish with flecks of grey. It has a distinctive sulphureous aroma due to the minerals in it and is popular among vegan cooks for adding an egg-like flavor to dishes such as tofu scramble. It's also a traditional ingredient in Indian dishes from salted lassi to chaat seasoning.

As well as using salt to add flavor to dishes, Hawaiians traditionally needed it to preserve food for their sea voyages. Extracting salt from the ocean is an ancient practice in Hawaii, where it's called pa'akai, meaning "to solidify the sea."

Hawaiian salt is harvested when seawater, trapped in shallow coastal rockpools or pumped into man-made ponds, evaporates under the hot tropical sun, similar to salt winning elsewhere in the world.

Unique to Hawaii, however, is the practice of blending natural sea salt with volcanic red clay. A clay called alaea is collected from the mountains of Waimea on the Big Island. Waimea means sacred or reddish water due to the iron oxide that stains the local water and clay deep red. Mixing alaea clay into salt is believed to imbue it with a spiritual element, and red salt is used to purify and bless everything from temples and homes to canoes and tools.

It also looks striking on the table and adds a unique flavor to local dishes, such as pipikaula (similar to beef jerky) and kalua, the pit-roasted pork that's essential to any luau.

Its rich deep color makes Hawaiian red salt a natural finishing salt and its subtle earthy taste adds a distinctive note to salt rubs and marinades. Use it to add an authentic touch to Hawaiian poke.

Black salt is produced in various countries by combining salt with activated charcoal. In Hawaii it's called hiwa kai and made by mixing natural sea salt with charcoal from burnt coconut shells. Hawaiian black salt has a subtle smoky flavor and is a popular finishing salt for grilled meat and seafood.

On the island of Cyprus, large pyramid-shaped sea salt crystals are mixed with charcoal from soft woods including linden, willow, and birch. Its attractive shape and crunch make Cypriot black salt a great finishing salt for salads and vegetables.

Black Icelandic salt is made from Arctic water evaporated in salt pans heated by natural hot springs; a salt winning process used in Iceland since at least the mid-18th century. The salt mixed with activated charcoal dries into small pyramid-shaped crystals that make a versatile finishing salt and, as with the other black salts, look great crushed around the rim of a cocktail glass.

While black salt is sometimes called "lava salt" it's unlikely they contain actual lava, which consists of inorganic rock rather than the organic charcoal created when plants are burned. Activated charcoal is processed in a way that produces many small pores, greatly increasing its surface area and ability to trap impurities. Black salt is therefore sometimes said to be detoxifying, though the micro-amounts of carbon in it are unlikely to have significant health benefits.

Salt is cold-smoked over many types of wood to produce a range of smoked salts, from pale and subtle to dark and powerful. Smoked salts vary greatly in color, flavor and intensity depending on the type of wood used and how long they've been smoked. A short smoking can impart a soft beige hue, whereas Danish Viking smoked salt spends days in the smoker until it's almost black and smells like a campfire.

Any food-grade wood can be used to smoke salt. Fruit woods, like applewood and peach, impart a more subtle flavor, while hickory and mesquite are much stronger. Smoked salts from around the world can add a touch of regional flavor too, such as Olsson's Red Gum Smoked Salt, smoked over Australian red gum for a taste of the outback.

Textures vary as well, giving a wide range of potential uses. Flakes and fine grains, especially those with a rich brown color, look great as finishing salts, and coarser grains can add a smoky note to marinades, salt rubs, soups, and stews.

Using smoked salt is a great kitchen hack to give a characteristic smokey flavor to traditional barbecue dishes, such as brisket, cooked indoors over gas or electricity rather than outdoors over coals. While smoked salt is an obvious seasoning for steaks and other meats, think outside the square too and use it to add a smoky kick to your next grilled cheese sandwich.

Combining them with salt is one of the few ways of preserving fresh truffles to enjoy beyond their short season. Truffle vinegars, oils, mustards, and other "truffle" products are almost inevitably flavored by synthetic truffle aroma, sometimes with flecks of real truffle added for appearance.

Growing in earth, truffles can carry botulism spores, which are harmless in the presence of oxygen. Once a truffle is put into an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment however, such as submerging it in vinegar or oil, any botulism spores become dangerous. So products containing real truffle must be pasteurized to kill potential botulism –unfortunately, this also destroys the volatile oils that provide natural truffle aroma.

As salt is a natural preservative, mixing fresh black truffle with it is a great way to get your truffle fix year round; store truffle salt in the fridge for maximum shelf-life.

While truffle oil can taste a little overpowering, a sprinkle of truffle salt imparts a subtle whiff of earthy truffle to everything from mac and cheese to French fries. It's especially appropriate where fresh truffles shine: eggs, butter, rice, and pasta. So use truffle salt to amp up scrambled eggs, buttered popcorn, risotto, or creamy pastas.