Grill Maestro

When it comes to grilling (and cooking general), one of the most powerful tools in your belt isn’t your tongs or your fork or your thermometer - it’s your salt shaker. Salt, technically a mineral and not a spice, intensifies the taste of anything and allows the existing flavor to shine. It’s funny how that works, isn’t it? The clearest proof of this is if you get a bowl of chicken soup. Take one bowl and put everything except salt into it and then compare it with a bowl that’s been adequately seasoned. You will notice that the one with the salt tastes more like chicken than the unsalted one. Amazing isn’t it?

Anyway, how does this come into play with grilling? Salt will take the existing flavor and magnify it. So, if you’re smoking and you don’t use enough salt, you won’t get as much smoky flavoring. If you’re just using straight up BBQ sauce and direct heat grilling - you won’t get as much flavor as you’re expecting. No worries though, just add a little salt and all should be well.

What kind of salt should you use? Well you can get sea salt, kosher salt, or just plain old table salt but they’re chemical identical (NaCl molecules for folks who stayed awake in class) but they come in different textures (Sea salt is made from seawater and table salt is taken from mineral deposits, otherwise they’re the same) and contain some nutritional differences. The main difference is in the “grind,” so to speak. Table salt is always finely ground but sea salt comes in both fine and coarse grain varieties. Another minor difference is taste because of the different minerals that exist in seawater vs. rocks. Sea salt won’t contain iodine or other additives.

The real difference comes down in that grain coarseness and that’s just a matter of preference.