Salt Type Converter

🧂 Why a teaspoon of one salt is not a teaspoon of another

All four salts in this converter are the same compound — sodium chloride — so a gram of one seasons exactly like a gram of any other. What differs is how much of that compound fits in a spoon, and the gap is much larger than most cooks expect. Diamond Crystal's crystals are hollow, four-sided pyramids that stack loosely with air between them. Morton's are pressed flat, so they nest. Table salt is fine cubes that pour into every gap. The result is that the same teaspoon holds 2.8 g of Diamond Crystal, 4.8 g of Morton Coarse Kosher, or 6 g of table salt — a spread of more than two to one between the extremes.

That is why “1 teaspoon kosher salt” in a recipe is an incomplete instruction: it resolves to two very different quantities depending on which box is in the cupboard, and the error compounds with every spoonful. On a brine or a dry rub, measured in tablespoons and cups rather than pinches, using Morton where Diamond Crystal was intended puts about seventy percent more salt into the food.

Morton's own salt conversion chart gives 1¼ teaspoons of coarse kosher for 1 teaspoon of table salt, and the same ratio holds down its whole table — a tablespoon of table salt becomes a tablespoon plus three quarters of a teaspoon, a cup becomes a cup and a quarter. That is Morton describing its own product, so it is the same source as the label rather than a second opinion; it is worth knowing because it is the figure a cook is most likely to meet elsewhere.

📦 How precise these figures actually are

A declared serving weight is the most authoritative number available for a specific product — it comes from the manufacturer and it is regulated — but it is not a laboratory value. Under 21 CFR 101.9, serving weights below 2 g are declared in tenth-of-a-gram steps, and multiplying a quarter-teaspoon figure by four multiplies that rounding by four as well. A tenth-of-a-gram declaration carried through that multiplication is good to roughly two tenths of a gram per teaspoon. For seasoning that is far finer than the difference between brands, which is the thing actually worth getting right.

🥄 What the converter cannot know

It does not know how you fill a spoon — scooping straight from the box compacts flaky salt, sprinkling from a pinch bowl does not. It does not know your fine sea salt, which is the one estimate here: grind varies so much between producers that no single figure describes the category, so the 5.6 g per teaspoon used here is a middle value rather than a measurement of your jar. And it cannot tell you how salty the finished dish will taste, because that depends on everything else in it. Salt is one of the few things you cannot take back out, so with an unfamiliar conversion, add most of the answer, taste, and hold the rest.

There is one hard limit. This converter handles ordinary cooking salts, which are sodium chloride. It must never be used to convert a curing salt containing sodium nitrite — the pink cures sold as Prague powder, Insta Cure or similar. In a cure the quantity is a safety limit rather than a seasoning preference, and you use exactly what the cure's own instructions specify.

❓ Common questions

How much table salt is equal to 1 tsp of kosher salt?

It depends entirely on which kosher salt, and that ambiguity is the whole problem. A teaspoon of Morton Coarse Kosher Salt weighs about 4.8 g, which is four fifths of a teaspoon of table salt. A teaspoon of Diamond Crystal weighs about 2.8 g, which is under half a teaspoon of table salt. Those gram figures come from the brands' own nutrition labels, where Diamond Crystal declares a quarter-teaspoon serving as 0.7 g and Morton declares 1.2 g, and from USDA FoodData Central for table salt at 6 g per teaspoon. If a recipe just says kosher salt without naming a brand, weighing is the only way to remove the ambiguity.

How do I substitute Morton kosher salt for Diamond Crystal?

Use less. The ratio is seven teaspoons of Morton for every twelve of Diamond Crystal, or about 0.58 of whatever the recipe calls for. In practice a tablespoon of Diamond Crystal becomes 1 3/4 teaspoons of Morton, and a quarter cup becomes 7 teaspoons. Going the other way, Morton to Diamond Crystal, multiply by about 1.7. This is the substitution most likely to wreck a dish, because a great many American recipes that say kosher salt were written with Diamond Crystal on the counter, and swapping teaspoon for teaspoon puts roughly seventy percent more salt in the pot. Salt cannot be removed once it is in, so if you are unsure, add most of the converted amount, taste, and hold the rest back.

How much Diamond Crystal kosher salt is equal to 1 teaspoon of table salt?

A little over two teaspoons — 2.14, which this converter rounds to 2 1/4. Table salt weighs 6 g per teaspoon and Diamond Crystal about 2.8 g, so it takes more than twice the volume of Diamond Crystal to match the weight of one teaspoon of table salt. This is the direction people underestimate. Substituting kosher for table salt spoon for spoon leaves food noticeably under-seasoned rather than over-salted, which is the more forgiving mistake but a mistake all the same. For Morton Coarse Kosher the same conversion is 1 1/4 teaspoons, which is exactly the figure Morton publishes in its own salt conversion chart.

Can I substitute table salt for kosher salt?

Yes, provided you convert by weight rather than spoon for spoon, and accept two differences no conversion can fix. The first is what else is in the box: USDA FoodData Central records Diamond Crystal's ingredient statement as simply salt, while Morton Coarse Kosher lists yellow prussiate of soda as an anticaking agent, and table salt is commonly iodized. The second is grain size, which changes behavior rather than quantity — fine crystals dissolve fast and vanish into the food, which is what you want in a brine or a dough and the opposite of what you want from a finishing salt. One hard limit applies in either direction: this converter handles ordinary cooking salts, which are sodium chloride, and must never be used on a curing salt containing sodium nitrite, where the quantity is a safety limit rather than a seasoning preference and you use exactly what the cure recipe specifies.

The grams-per-teaspoon figures behind every conversion on this page are the brands' own declared nutrition-label serving weights, as recorded in USDA FoodData Central for Diamond Crystal kosher salt (¼ tsp = 0.7 g) and for Morton coarse kosher salt (¼ tsp = 1.2 g). Table salt uses FoodData Central's SR Legacy entry for salt, table, which gives 6 g per teaspoon. The table-to-kosher figures were checked against Morton's own Salt Conversion Chart, which gives 1¼ teaspoons of coarse kosher for 1 teaspoon of table salt. The rounding rule for declared serving weights is 21 CFR 101.9(b)(7). Fine sea salt has no single authoritative figure, so the 5.6 g per teaspoon used here is the median of the branded fine-sea-salt labels in USDA FoodData Central rather than one producer's number.