Salty & Clever
The Salt Calculator
How much salt, in the salt you actually own. Percentages by weight for meat, dough, brine, pasta water and sauce — plus a converter between Diamond Crystal, Morton, sea salt and table salt.
Salty and Clever · the salt calculator
How much salt, in the salt you actually own.
Salt is the only seasoning where the recipe and your box can be off by more than double and nobody says so. A tablespoon of Diamond Crystal and a tablespoon of table salt differ by a factor of about 2.1, which is the difference between seasoned and inedible.
The way out is to stop counting spoons and start counting percentages. Every line below is a percentage of the weight of the thing being salted — which is portable between brands, between kitchens and between countries, and is what professionals have used all along.
How much salt does this actually need, and what does that look like in the salt I own?
Show the arithmetic
The same weight of salt, in every box
Weigh it if you can. The volumes are a conversion of a weight, rounded to something a spoon can hold.
The recipe says one salt and you own another
Put in what the recipe asked for, then read off what to actually use.
Work backward from what I have
Every rate this instrument uses
| Job | Rate | Ordinary range | Percentage of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meat, dry-brined | 1% | 0.5–1.5% | the raw weight |
| Ground meat, sausage | 1.5% | 1–2% | the meat weight |
| Vegetables, roasted | 1% | 0.5–1.25% | the trimmed weight |
| A pot of pasta water | 1% | 0.5–1.5% | the water weight |
| A wet brine | 5% | 3–6% | the water weight |
| Bread dough | 2% | 1.6–2.4% | the flour weight |
| A soup or a sauce | 0.9% | 0.5–1.2% | the finished weight |
Where these numbers came from — some of them are assumptions
- Roasted vegetables at about 1% of trimmed weight House assumption
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A house working figure.
- Pasta water at about 1% of water weight House assumption
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A house position, and a defensible one. Practice ranges widely and some respected sources go higher.
Seawater is about 3.5%. Water salted to that strength is inedible, which is why 'as salty as the sea' is the most repeated wrong instruction in cooking.
- A volume of cooking liquid is treated as having the mass of the same volume of water House assumption
-
Cannot be verified because it is not a fact about the world; it is a modelling choice.
AUDIT S4. Correct to within a fraction of a percent for pasta water and thin brine. Progressively less true for a reduced stock, a sweetened liquid or a cream sauce, which are denser than water. The instrument discloses this wherever it applies rather than burying it.
- Soup or sauce at about 0.9% of finished weight House assumption
-
A house working figure, close to the low end of perceptible seasoning in a liquid.
Against the FINISHED volume. Season a pot early, reduce it by a third, and the same salt lands near 1.35%.
- Fine sea salt, about 5.6 g per level teaspoon Typical for the category
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Not a brand figure and not universal. Fine sea salts vary substantially with crystal size and how dry they are.
Recorded spread: 5.0 to 7.0 across products sold as fine sea salt
AUDIT S3. The legacy calculator presented this identically to the two brand figures above. It is a category approximation and the instrument now says so. Weigh it if the dish is sensitive.
- Table salt, about 6.0 g per level teaspoon Typical for the category
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A fine, regular cubic crystal, so it packs the most densely of the four. Anti-caking agents and added iodine shift it slightly.
Recorded spread: 5.7 to 6.4
AUDIT S3. Category figure, not a brand measurement.
- Diamond Crystal kosher salt, about 2.8 g per level teaspoon Widely published
-
Consistent across major recipe-testing references and the brand's own nutrition panel arithmetic. A hollow-pyramid crystal, which is why it is roughly half the mass of table salt at the same volume.
Recorded spread: 2.7 to 3.0 depending on how firmly the spoon is levelled
The single most important constant on the site. It is the reason volume-based salt instructions do not travel between brands.
- Morton coarse kosher salt, about 4.8 g per level teaspoon Widely published
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Consistent across major recipe-testing references. A flattened crystal, denser in the spoon than Diamond Crystal.
Recorded spread: 4.6 to 5.0
- Dry-brining meat at about 1% of raw weight Widely published
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The most consistently repeated figure in modern recipe-testing writing on dry brining.
- Ground meat and sausage at about 1.5% of meat weight Widely published
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Charcuterie and sausage practice clusters here; the upper end is firmly in cured-sausage territory.
Higher than a whole cut because grinding multiplies surface area.
- Wet brine at 3% to 6% of water weight, traded against time Widely published
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Standard brining practice. Strength and duration trade against each other.
Expressed as a percentage of the WATER weight, not of the finished solution. The two conventions differ by a few percent of the result and the instrument states which it uses.
- 1 avoirdupois pound = 453.59237 g Definition or standard
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International yard and pound agreement, 1959. Exact by definition.
- 1 US liquid quart = 946.353 mL Definition or standard
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US liquid quart is defined as 57.75 cubic inches. Exact by definition.
Converting that volume to a mass in grams assumes the contents have the density of water. True enough for water and thin brine; an approximation for anything else. See assumption.volume-as-water-mass.
- Bread dough at 2% of FLOUR weight Definition or standard
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Baker's percentage is a defined convention: every ingredient is expressed against flour weight, not total dough weight.
The legacy tool got this right and said so. Taking 2% of total dough instead would overshoot by roughly two thirds on a typical hydration.
What this instrument does not know
- It does not know what is already in the dish. Cured meat, stock, cheese, soy, miso, olives, canned beans and bought broth all carry salt this instrument has not counted.
- It does not know your salt. Two boxes labelled fine sea salt can differ by a quarter in the spoon.
- It cannot taste. Every figure here is a starting point that assumes you will taste and correct.
- It has no view on health. These are seasoning rates, not dietary advice.
- For a wet brine it calculates the salt in the water, not the salt that ends up in the food, which depends on time, surface and thickness.
The record stays in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you download it yourself.
Why a teaspoon is the wrong unit for salt
Salt is sold in crystals of wildly different shapes, and a spoon measures space rather than mass. Diamond Crystal is a hollow, pyramidal flake that packs badly and holds a lot of air. Morton kosher is a rolled, flattened grain that packs tighter. Table salt is a dense little cube with almost no air between the grains at all.
So one level teaspoon holds about 2.8 grams of Diamond Crystal, 4.8 grams of Morton kosher, and 6 grams of table salt. Doubling the salt in a dish is not a rounding error. It is the most common reason a recipe that worked for the writer fails in somebody else’s kitchen, and almost no recipe warns about it.
Percentages have none of that problem. One percent of the weight of the food is one percent whatever is in your cupboard, whatever country you are in, and whatever the crystal looks like. It is the only unit that survives being written down.
These are working numbers, not laws. Season toward the middle of the range the first time, taste, and move it. What matters is that you moved it from a number rather than from a guess.
Dry brine beats wet brine, nearly always
A wet brine works by osmosis and it does put water into the meat, which is why a brined turkey feels juicy. The water is the problem. It dilutes the flavor of the meat itself, it waterlogs the skin so it will not crisp, and it needs a bucket, a fridge shelf and a gallon of liquid you then have to pour away.
A dry brine — salt rubbed on and left uncovered in the fridge — does the useful half without the water. Salt draws moisture out, that moisture dissolves the salt, and the resulting concentrated brine is reabsorbed carrying the seasoning inward. The surface then dries in the cold air, which is exactly what skin needs to crisp.
The trade is time. A dry brine wants at least twelve hours and is better at twenty-four to forty-eight for a large bird. If you have four hours, salt it anyway: shallow seasoning beats none. If you have four hours and a small piece of meat, that is the one case where a wet brine earns its bucket.
The one that is always wrong
Pasta water is not meant to taste like the sea. The sea is about 3.5 percent salt, which is roughly three and a half times what a pot of pasta water should be, and anyone who has actually followed that instruction has made inedible pasta. One percent by weight of the water is the working number, which is a scant two teaspoons of fine salt in a quart of water.
The reason it feels salty in the pot and correct on the plate is that pasta only absorbs a fraction of that water. What you are seasoning is the pasta itself, from the inside, and it is the one chance you get.
Where this goes next
Salt is the first thing a recipe gets wrong when it is scaled, because most cooks scale everything at once. Salt does scale linearly with the mass of the food. Heat, time and pan surface do not.
Free, next door
The Scaling Calculator takes a recipe up or down and shows which numbers move with it and which do not. The Roast Clock works a roast backwards from the moment you want to carve, including the pull temperature nobody prints.
The one you pay for
The Field Manual is these tables printed — salt percentages, hold times, yields and temperature bands — sized for a cupboard door, for the evening when your hands are wet and the laptop is in the other room.
Also free: every number on one page, the pan calculator, the board calculator, the bar calculator, the oven traffic calculator, all of them.
Where this stops
A screen is the wrong place for this when your hands are wet.
The percentages and the conversions above are the whole of the salt arithmetic and they are not going anywhere. The thing they are bad at is being consulted mid-cook, at the counter, with a phone you do not want to touch.
The Field Manual — $9 is thirty-seven printed pages generated from the same code these calculators run on — salt, temperature, timing, yields and quantities — laid out to be taped to a cupboard door and read across a kitchen.
A print-ready PDF. Yours to print as often as you like. Fourteen days, no reason required.
How this calculator works, and where every number in it comes from
Salt is the only seasoning where the correct amount is a fixed percentage of something you can weigh, and it is the one people measure in spoons of a substance whose density varies by more than two to one between brands. Those two facts together are the whole reason this page exists.
The densities, which are the root of the problem
A teaspoon of Diamond Crystal kosher salt weighs 2.8 grams. A teaspoon of Morton kosher weighs 4.8. Fine sea salt is 5.6. Table salt is 6.0.
So a tablespoon of Diamond Crystal and a tablespoon of table salt differ by roughly 2.1 times. A recipe that says one tablespoon of kosher salt, followed by somebody holding the other box, is not a small error. It is more than double.
The percentages, written out
Each figure is a percentage of the weight of a specific thing, and getting the denominator right matters as much as the percentage.
Meat, dry-brined: 1.0 percent of raw weight, usable range 0.5 to 1.5. Ground meat and sausage: 1.5 percent, range 1 to 2. Roasted vegetables: 1.0 percent, range 0.5 to 1.25. Pasta water: 1.0 percent of the weight of the water, range 0.5 to 1.5. Wet brine: 5.0 percent of the weight of the water, range 3 to 6. Bread dough: 2.0 percent of the weight of the flour, not the dough, range 1.6 to 2.4. Soup or sauce: 0.9 percent of the finished weight, range 0.5 to 1.2.
Conversions used throughout: one pound is 453.6 grams, one quart of water is 946 grams.
Three worked examples
A fourteen-pound turkey, dry-brined at one percent. 14 multiplied by 453.6 is 6,350 grams. One percent is 63.5 grams. In Morton kosher at 4.8 grams a teaspoon that is 13.2 teaspoons, which is where the familiar rule of one teaspoon of Morton per pound comes from. In Diamond Crystal at 2.8 it is 22.7 teaspoons, which is why the same bird salted from the wrong box tastes like a different bird.
Four quarts of pasta water at one percent. 4 multiplied by 946 is 3,784 grams of water. One percent is 37.8 grams, which is about 7.9 teaspoons of Morton or 13.5 of Diamond Crystal.
A kilogram of bread dough. Two percent of the flour, not the dough. If the recipe is 600 grams of flour, that is 12 grams of salt, and salting the 1,000 grams instead would give you 20, which is two thirds over and enough to slow the yeast noticeably.
The claim this page exists to kill
Pasta water should taste like the sea is the most repeated instruction in home cooking and it is wrong by a factor of three and a half. The sea is about 3.5 percent salt. Pasta water wants about 1 percent. Follow the sea and you make inedible pasta, then spend the rest of the dish trying to balance it.
The second useful claim: a dry brine beats a wet brine most of the time, because water is the problem rather than the solution. A wet brine adds moisture to the surface that then has to be driven off before anything can brown. A dry brine seasons through and dries the surface, and a dry surface is the precondition for browning at all.
Assumptions, and when this breaks
The percentages assume salt applied to raw weight with time to distribute. Salt on the surface and salt given overnight are doing two different jobs, which is set out in salt does one thing in ten seconds and something else entirely overnight.
Brand densities are measured for the named brands. A coarse sea salt or a flake finishing salt sits outside the four listed and will read lighter than any of them, so weigh it rather than converting it.
It breaks for anything already salted: cured meat, brined olives, stock with salt in it, canned beans, soy sauce, miso, anchovy, parmesan. In those dishes the percentage is arithmetic applied to an unknown starting point, and the only method is to season at the end and taste. It also breaks on anything you intend to reduce, because salt does not evaporate and a sauce reduced by half is exactly twice as salty.
Every density and percentage above is listed on Every Number This Site Runs On, which is where the constants live so a calculator, a post and a printed kit cannot drift apart. For the reasoning rather than the arithmetic, start at season to taste assumes a procedure nobody is ever taught.
Where this goes next
You have the number. Now use it.
Put the number to work
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