kosher salt

No kitchen should be without kosher salt. It is inexpensive, has no additives save an anti-clumping agent and dissolves quickly in to whatever you put it.

Pour some into your hand. Walk your fingers through it. Both visually and texturally you can see it is coarser. Yet this courseness does not make it grumpy and gritty. Oh no. From this coarseness comes its beauty, its usefulness, its strength, its love. Yes. Feel the love.

Set a spoonful of regular table salt and a spoonful of kosher salt side by side. Notice how the table salt packs itself in, grain to grain, becoming mass, blocks of constriction, overpowering.

Now look at the kosher. White beachlike granules. Hold up your hand to shade the modest sparkling. Breezes, lemon-scented winds carrying tastes yet to be created, dancing across the senses like barefooted Astaire and Rogers, swirls through the spaces awaiting wishes. Indeed it is the spaces, the silence between the notes, which softens and warms the cook's heart when he reaches for it.

Kosher salt facilitates boldness. It stretches a humble canvas upon which to splash bold or intricate flavors without fear of adjusting for an over-active hue. Go wild with sage, marjoram, thyme, parlsey, rosemary. Add oils, vinegars, edible flowers. Add all this and more, never again having to taste and worry, "Does it need more salt?"

That's why every kitchen needs kosher salt.

Kosher Salt or Koshering Salt

I'm Jewish. I'm religious. But I buy regular salt in the supermarket like everybody else does. As long as you ensure there's no additives, salt is salt is salt.

What may be being referred to is Salt for the purpose of Koshering meat. One of the laws of Kashrut (the Jewish dietary laws) specifies that we can't eat any blood, and therefore it has to be drained from the body of the animal. This is why reason for the method of ritual slaughter, with a swift cut through the neck (shechitah).

Following on from this, the meat is then salted to draw out the blood. And this is where koshering salt comes into the game. As mentioned, it's coarse and doesn't clump, and is therefore easy to spread all over the meat. It's then left on the meat for a while (I can't remember how long), and rinsed off.