A Restaurant Staple Comes Home

Diamond Crystal kosher  salt has been a staple of restaurant kitchen since the 1880's Yet  home chefs have always had a hard time of getting the restauranr quality salt for their own cooking and baking. Now that's about to change.

New conrtibutor and cookbook author Marnie Hanel wrote about this much loved restaurant kitchen staple in yesterday's New York Times Food section.Kosher salt is popular.It's even seen on the trendy show "The Bear" as the main character ,a splenetic chef called Sidney instructs his chef de partie to salt T-bone steaks "like a sidewalk" with it. Ina Garten calls the salt perfect and it's been used in recipe testing in both Bon Appetit and America's Test kitchen magazines' recipes. when rumors of it being discontinued in 2010 france Lam, the editor in chief of the cookbook publisher Clarkson Potter went out and bought ten boxes. why is it so desired? Because unlike regular table salt, the crystals are hollow and lightweight, giving them a brittleness. This makes them easily crushable.This makes the salt the ideal seasoning because it dissolves quickly in food.Recipe developers favor it over its' competitor Morton's which is denser and nearly twice as salty. It could ruin a recipe if too much is added in.

However it could be a hard sell with home chefs. Many associate salt with the iconic Morton's umbrella and the lirtle girl underneath it instead of the famed crystal and star  on the box. It seems that ninety percent of home chefs prefer Mortons' kosher salt despite its' drawbacks.Diamond Crystal's parent company the one hundred and sixty year old Cargill enlisted the fairly new Enlisted Design to redesign everything about it.It's new target demogrpahic is young and trendy, the aspiring home chef with  two avatars the academic(a guy with a goatee) and the entertainer(a girl with an Afro and multiple nose piercings). The traditional granny  figure is secondary. The new box is an eye catching tomato red with sharp serifs.It comes in three sizes, three pounds twenty six ounces and one pound. The redisigned box has a description which helps buyers discern what it is. The designation kosher confuses them.Is it pertaining to religion or its' type - its' both. The salt is called flakes like Malden's sea salt. whole foods and Trader Joes' for $8.99 and whole foods has it for $10.99.

Many home chefs will use the new Diamon Crystal kosher salt. It's a good addition to recipes and enhancing foods. It's definitely worth trying.