Kosher Salt to Table Salt Conversion: Chart and Calculator

Yes, by volume you need more of it. Table salt weighs 6 g per teaspoon, Morton Coarse Kosher 4.8 g, and Diamond Crystal 2.8 g (USDA figure and the two makers' labels), so 1 teaspoon of table salt becomes about 1 1/4 teaspoons of Morton or 2 1/8 teaspoons of Diamond Crystal. For a tablespoon it is 1 1/4 tablespoons of Morton or 2 tablespoons plus 3/8 teaspoon of Diamond Crystal. Going the other way, 1 teaspoon of Diamond Crystal is under half a teaspoon of table salt. For brines, where the percentage matters, weigh the salt instead and skip the conversion.

No. Both are kosher salt, but Morton's crystals are dense flat flakes and Diamond Crystal's are hollow pyramids, so a cup of Morton weighs 230 g (label: 1.2 g per 1/4 teaspoon) and a cup of Diamond Crystal weighs 134 g (label: 0.7 g per 1/4 teaspoon). Swap them one for one by volume and you get 72% more salt with Morton or 42% less with Diamond Crystal. Recipes that say kosher salt without a brand usually mean Diamond Crystal if they come from a test kitchen and Morton if they come from a box; if you cannot tell, weigh it.

By weight. A scale that reads to 1 g makes every salt on this page interchangeable, because 30 g of Diamond Crystal and 30 g of Morton are the same amount of sodium chloride even though one fills a 1/4 cup and the other does not. Volume only works when you know which salt the recipe was written for, which is what the chart above is for. For brining, curing, and fermenting, where a percentage point changes the result, weigh it every time.

It works, and the iodine does not change the salt's weight, so the numbers on this page apply. Most cooks avoid it because iodized salt can leave a faint metallic taste and the anti-caking agent clouds the brine. Pickling salt is the same 6 g per teaspoon with nothing added; kosher and plain sea salt are the other clean choices.

Crystal size and what is riding along with the sodium chloride. A flake dissolves on the tongue in a burst; a dense grain dissolves slowly. Unrefined salts carry water and minerals, which is why Redmond Real Salt is about 96% sodium chloride by weight and Celtic light grey is about 81% (worked out from the sodium on each label). Once the salt is dissolved in a brine the crystal shape is gone, and only the sodium chloride count matters, which is what this calculator matches.

Work out which salt the recipe meant, enter the amount in the calculator with that salt as the one you have, and pick the salt in your cupboard as the one you want. The result is the volume that carries the same sodium chloride. If the recipe does not name a salt, older American recipes and boxed-mix directions mean table salt, and recipes from magazines and test kitchens usually mean Diamond Crystal. When you have converted it once, write the gram figure into the recipe so you never convert it again.

Not once it is dissolved. A brine is a percentage of sodium chloride in water, and the water does not know which box the salt came from. What changes is how much you scoop to reach that percentage (a cup of Diamond Crystal is 134 g, a cup of table salt is 288 g) and how fast it dissolves (fine grains go faster than coarse). Unrefined salts need a little extra weight to cover their water and mineral share; the calculator handles that automatically.

Yes. Fine sea salt measures like table salt, 6 g per teaspoon, so it takes about 1 1/4 teaspoons of Morton or 2 1/8 teaspoons of Diamond Crystal to match one teaspoon of it. Coarse sea salt varies too much by brand for a chart figure; weigh it. Flake sea salts such as Maldon are the light end, about 2.8 g per teaspoon, close to Diamond Crystal. The site's fine sea salt figure is treated as table salt because Morton's own conversion chart substitutes the two one for one.

Brining: kosher or pickling salt, whichever you can weigh, since it all dissolves. Fermenting: pickling salt or plain sea salt, with no iodine or anti-caking agent. Finishing: flake salt (Maldon), fleur de sel, or a coarse pink for the crunch. Curing: Cure #1 measured by weight on the bacon curing calculator, never a swap for any salt here. Everyday cooking: whatever you have, as long as you know its weight per spoon, which is what the density table on this page gives you.

Curing salts (Cure #1, Prague Powder #1, Insta Cure #1, and the nitrate version Cure #2) are table salt blended with 6.25% sodium nitrite and dyed pink. They are safe in a weighed cure, 0.25% of the meat's weight for Cure #1, which gives 156 ppm nitrite against the 200 ppm limit in 9 CFR 424.22 for dry-cured bacon. They are not safe as a substitute for any salt on this page, in either direction, which is why they are not in the list. Keep them labeled and separate from the table salt, and dose them on the bacon curing calculator.

They weighed differently. Morton's conversion chart comes from its label weight, 4.8 g per teaspoon, so 1 teaspoon of table salt (6 g) is 1 1/4 teaspoons of Morton. America's Test Kitchen scooped and weighed about 5 g per teaspoon of Morton and rounded to 1 1/2 teaspoons. For Diamond Crystal the label gives 2.8 g and ATK measured 3 g, which lands at 2 teaspoons either way. This page uses the label figures because you can check them on the box. In grams the disagreement disappears.