Understanding the Difference between Rock Salt & Sea Salt

If you’re going through the market looking for exotic gourmet flavors or de icing materials, you’ll come across two popular kinds of salts: sea salt and rock salt. Both types of salts can be used as table salt alternatives. This blog will help you learn the difference between both, so you know your salts better. Let’s get to it!

Fundamental Differences

Sea salt is obtained through the evaporation of sea water. The evaporation leaves behind the residual solids (mainly salt) from the sea water which can be collected and sold for your tasting pleasure.

The drying sea water leaves behind all the impurities, so there are high chances of contaminants mixing with the salt. Therefore, sea salt is often treated using pure water filtration methods to minimize impurities in the sea salt. So, from the ocean to the box, sea salt has to be processed.

Sea salts are sold as gourmet salts that can be used by chefs or those with a finer palate. It is added in food like you would with normal table salt, and many claim that it tastes different than rock salt. So, for those of you looking for that tangy sea flavor element for your food, gourmet sea salts might just be the answer. The content of sea salts may vary because differences in salinity exist between seas. 

Therefore, where you harvest your sea salt can change the sodium chloride content of it accordingly.

Coming to the much versatile rock salt now, and how it’s made. Rock is actually mined from the earth. It is found as a mineral halite and has a rather interesting geological formation if compared with that of the flavorsome sea salt.

When lakes and oceans dry out, they leave evaporated sediment behind which eventually becomes a part of the earth’s strata. Rock salt is naturally made while sea salt is manmade.

Rock salt is usually cheaper than sea salt too. Additionally, since mineral halites vary in color due to the presence of impurities, so does rock salt. Pure rock salt is white in color. Typical rock salt impurities include gypsum and sylvite. The aptly named rock salt is a highly crystallized salt that comes in large chunks.

Both sea salt and rock salts contain a high amount of sodium chloride, typically 100%. The sea salts are relatively flaky, while rock salts are large halite chunks.

Food and Other Applications:

Both of these salts are high in sodium chloride therefore, consuming both in excessive quantities can be harmful when you’re looking which one is the least harmful for consumption, or which one is healthier (. Rock salt can be harvested from salt mines as brine and treated with chemicals to remove minerals as part of the refining process. These removed minerals can be sold for industrial use. Furthermore, rock salts are widely used as ice melting agents to make ice cream. Sea salt is usually restricted as a food additive. Sea salts have also been used for food preservation.

If you’re looking for ice melter salts or rock salt for food, you can have the finest quality over at Rock Salt USA where you can get different kinds of rock salts at affordable rates.