Specialty salts have become all the rage these days where you can find black salt from India that has its own unique taste and pink sea salt from the coast of Hawaii that carries the flavors of that region's coastal clays. There are numerous types of sea salt that vary in size, consistency (some are sticky and some are bone dry while some flake and others crumble) and of course flavor.

But cooking is a harsh process, and the best analogy I can draw is the god-awful cocktail/fru-fru coffee analogy. Why waste ultra-premium vodka on a blended fruity drink that will mask the delicacies of well made vodka, and in fact mask the flaws of an inferior one. Why use fifty dollars pound Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee on a frozen caramel frappacino when all you are going to taste is caramel and whipped cream?

Well the same can be said for these specialty salts. They are best suited to finishing a dish, especially ones with minimal and delicate flavors. Many high end restaurants will offer an array of salts that the chef has determined to compliment a given dish. But as far as cooking, there is little difference in flavor and finish when using these salts to cook with.

The heat of cooking will pretty much render any nuance null and void, add to that the infusion and total chemical mix of flavors and herbs during cooking, and I bet there isn't a chef or foodie among us that can distinguish the difference in a finished dish. But on the dish itself, well, there is where sea salts shine.

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