skinny girls & mayonnaise

Salt. The quintessential seasoning. In use since the day that first cave guy realized that the yak carcass tasted better and lasted longer if you sprinkled it with the white crystal you gathered down by the coast.

Snow-powdery Maldon salt

Not all salts are created equal. If you use that round canister with the girl with the umbrella on it, I will ban you from visiting this post. The culinary world these days is filled with every manner of salt from every corner of the world. Most of it is not worth your time. But feel free to experiment and find the salts you like best. There are black smoked salts, red lava salts, pretty pink salts from Australian rivers, smelly sulfurous salts from the Himalayas, you name it. Here’s my two most important salts:

KOSHER

This is the workhorse. Every kitchen should have Kosher salt as their main salt. It works well for cooking and is flaky and light for sprinkling. Morton’s (the kind with the girl and the umbrella) makes a good Kosher salt (NOT in a canister) that I like.

MALDON

This is the finest salt, in my opinion, for sprinkling. I use relatively little salt when I cook, and prefer to season afterward. And this is my seasoning of choice for fine cooking. It comes from England and is formed of these gorgeous little pyramid crystals. It’s like crystal snow on your food, with the most elegant, sexy little crunch. And it’s not as expensive as some of those other salts that the folks at Williams-Sonoma will try to convince you that you can’t live without.

RUNNERS-UP

I also like the French classic, fleur de sel, as well as that pink river salt from Australia. Some of the Hawaiian salts are nice, although the crystals tend to be a little large and hard for my taste. But experiment and see which salts you like best on your food.