Salt Conversions: Why a Teaspoon of Salt Is Not a Teaspoon of Salt

The problem is crystal shape

Salt is sodium chloride whichever box it comes from. What differs is how the crystals are formed, and that changes how much air sits between them in a spoon.

Fine table salt is made of small, dense, regular cubes that pack tightly. Coarse kosher salt has large, flat, irregular flakes with substantial gaps between them. Same spoon, very different weight.

A teaspoon of coarse kosher salt is roughly half the salt, by weight, of a teaspoon of table salt.

What that means when you substitute

If a recipe was written with kosher salt and you use table salt spoon-for-spoon, you have nearly doubled the salt. This is the most common way a home cook ruins a dish that was going fine.

Going the other way — using kosher where table salt was intended — leaves the dish tasting flat and under-seasoned, and people usually blame the recipe.

The safe method: convert by weight, not by spoon.

Salt in baking, where you cannot taste as you go

Cooking lets you correct. Baking does not, which is why the amounts matter more.

Bread. Around 2% of the flour weight is the standard: 10 g of salt for 500 g of flour. Below about 1.5% the loaf tastes flat and ferments too quickly, because salt is what restrains the yeast. Above about 2.5% the rise drags noticeably.

Cakes and cookies. Usually ¼ to ½ teaspoon per batch — 1.5 to 3 g. It is not there to make the bake taste salty; it sharpens the sweetness and rounds out the other flavours. Leaving it out makes a cake taste oddly hollow.

Brines, which are ratios

Brine strength is salt as a percentage of the water weight, and this is where working in grams pays off immediately.

5% brine — 50 g salt per litre of water. Quick brines for chicken and pork, a few hours.

3% brine — 30 g per litre. Long brines, overnight, and for fish.

Iodised or not

Iodised salt has potassium iodide added, which matters nutritionally and, in some ferments, can slightly inhibit the bacteria you are trying to encourage. For sauerkraut, kimchi and long pickles, use non-iodised salt.

For everything else the difference is undetectable, and iodised salt exists for a good public-health reason. Use it.

The practical rule

Buy one salt and learn it. Whatever you keep beside the stove, get used to what a pinch of it does, and then convert everything else into that.

If you bake seriously, weigh it. Salt is one of the few ingredients where a couple of grams is the difference between right and wrong, and it costs nothing to be precise about.

The grams to teaspoons converter covers salt and every other small-quantity ingredient, and the teaspoons to tablespoons page has grams-per-spoon figures for the rest of the leaveners and spices.

Frequently asked questions

How many grams is a teaspoon of salt?

About 5.7 g for fine table salt, 5.4 g for fine sea salt and about 3 g for coarse kosher salt. The crystal size is what changes the answer.

Can I swap kosher salt for table salt one for one?

No. Coarse kosher salt has large flat crystals with air between them, so a teaspoon holds roughly half the salt by weight. Swapping directly makes a dish either flat or far too salty.

How much salt should bread dough have?

Around 2% of the flour weight is standard — about 10 g for 500 g of flour. Less and the loaf tastes flat and ferments too fast; more and the rise drags.

Does salt type change the taste?

Sodium chloride tastes the same whatever the crystal shape. What changes is how much you actually added and how the crystals dissolve — flaky salt on top of a finished dish gives bursts of salinity that dissolved salt cannot.

What is the safest way to convert a salt amount?

Convert by weight rather than by spoon. Work out the grams the recipe intended, then weigh that amount of whatever salt you have.