Sea salt is used for far more than seasoning food. It plays a role in cooking, food preservation, skincare, wound care, pool sanitation, and managing chronic skin conditions. Because it retains trace minerals like magnesium, calcium, and potassium (unlike heavily processed table salt), it brings slightly different properties to each of these applications.
Cooking and Finishing Dishes
The most common use for sea salt is in the kitchen, but the grind size determines how you should use it. Fine sea salt dissolves quickly, making it a good everyday option for seasoning at the table or mixing into sauces and dressings. Coarse sea salt works well for salting meats in advance of cooking, where the larger crystals dissolve slowly and draw moisture to the surface for better browning.
Extra-coarse varieties like Maldon are best used as finishing salts, sprinkled on a dish right before serving. The appeal here is texture and visual contrast: large, crunchy flakes that add bursts of salinity rather than uniform seasoning throughout. Fleur de sel, harvested from the surface of saltwater ponds in Brittany, France, is another premium finishing salt. Its flat, delicate flakes add a mild briny flavor and a satisfying crunch to salads, chocolate desserts, and fresh bread. These finishing salts lose their texture and subtle flavor when cooked into hot dishes, so they’re always added last.
Sel gris, a grayish, fluffy salt made from sea foam, falls into the same category. It has a lighter salt flavor than standard sea salt and is better suited as a final touch than as an ingredient cooked into a recipe.
Preserving Meat and Fish
Salt curing is one of humanity’s oldest preservation techniques, and sea salt works the same way any salt does in this process. When you pack meat or fish in salt, osmosis pulls water out of both the food and any microorganisms living on it. This creates a solute-rich environment where bacteria and molds struggle to grow because they can’t retain the water they need to survive.
The result is preserved foods like gravlax, salt cod, prosciutto, and beef jerky. The salt doesn’t just prevent spoilage. It concentrates flavor and changes the texture of proteins, which is why cured meats have a distinctive firmness and depth that fresh cuts don’t. Coarse sea salt is typically preferred for curing because the larger crystals dissolve more slowly and distribute more evenly across the surface of the food.
Skincare and Exfoliation
Sea salt is a popular ingredient in body scrubs because its rough, granular texture buffs away dead skin cells without the risks associated with harsher exfoliants. Unlike scrubs made with crushed nut shells or plastic microbeads, salt crystals gradually dissolve as you work them into skin, reducing the chance of micro-tears or irritation.
Beyond physical exfoliation, sea salt’s mineral content may help rebalance the skin. The magnesium, calcium, and potassium found in sea salt support basic skin functions, and salt naturally helps regulate oil production. If your skin’s mineral balance is disrupted, you can end up with dryness, dullness, and irritation. A simple sea salt scrub (mixed with a carrier oil like coconut or olive oil) can address surface buildup while delivering those trace minerals directly to the skin.
Bath Soaks for Psoriasis and Eczema
Soaking in a sea salt bath is a form of balneotherapy, a therapy with roots in Dead Sea health tourism. Dead Sea salts are especially rich in magnesium, and a clinical study published in the International Journal of Dermatology found that bathing in a magnesium-rich Dead Sea salt solution improved skin barrier function, enhanced hydration, and reduced inflammation in people with atopic dry skin.
For psoriasis specifically, the National Psoriasis Foundation notes that some patients use Dead Sea salt baths as a complementary therapy alongside their prescribed treatments. In one survey, 17% of men and nearly 8% of women with psoriasis reported using Dead Sea salts to help calm itching, reduce redness, and soften rough patches. This isn’t a replacement for medical treatment, but it can provide relief between flares or alongside other therapies.
Oral Rinses and Wound Healing
Saltwater rinses are a simple, widely used remedy after dental procedures or for minor mouth irritation. A randomized controlled trial testing a sea salt mouth rinse on patients recovering from oral surgery found appreciable wound healing improvements in the salt rinse group compared to controls, with no adverse effects reported. Participants rinsed with 15 milliliters of the solution for at least one minute, twice daily, for four weeks.
For a homemade version, the basic principle is the same: salt dissolved in warm water creates a mildly antiseptic solution that draws fluid from swollen tissue and helps keep the area clean. If you’re recovering from a dental procedure, wait at least 24 hours before starting rinses to avoid disturbing any clot formation.
Nasal Irrigation
Saline nasal rinses help flush out allergens, mucus, and irritants from the sinuses. The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology recommends a recipe of 3 teaspoons of iodide-free salt mixed with 1 teaspoon of baking soda as a base mixture. You add 1 teaspoon of that blend to 8 ounces of lukewarm distilled or previously boiled water for each rinse.
The key detail: you need salt without iodine, anti-caking agents, or preservatives, as these additives irritate the nasal lining. Pickling salt or pure sea salt without additives works well. Always use distilled or boiled water (never straight tap water) to avoid introducing harmful organisms into your sinuses. You can refrigerate a prepared solution for up to three days, but mixing fresh each time is ideal.
Saltwater Swimming Pools
Saltwater pools use dissolved sea salt to generate chlorine on-site, eliminating the need to handle and store chlorine chemicals directly. A device called a salt chlorine generator uses electrolysis to convert the dissolved salt into chlorine gas and its sanitizing byproducts.
The salt concentration in these pools is low, typically 3,000 to 5,000 parts per million. That’s well below the threshold where most people can taste salt, and roughly one-tenth the salinity of the ocean. The result is water that feels softer on skin and eyes than a traditionally chlorinated pool, while still being effectively sanitized. The pool still contains chlorine; the salt is simply the raw material the generator uses to produce it continuously.
How Sea Salt Compares to Table Salt
Sea salt is still 90% or more sodium chloride, compared to 97 to 99% for table salt. The difference is that remaining fraction: sea salt retains up to 60 trace minerals from the seawater it was harvested from. These minerals contribute subtle flavor differences and the slightly off-white or gray color you see in less processed varieties. They do not, however, make sea salt meaningfully lower in sodium on a gram-for-gram basis. If you’re monitoring sodium intake, sea salt and table salt should be treated as roughly equivalent.
The practical distinction is more about texture and grain size than nutrition. Coarse sea salt flakes take up more physical space than fine table salt granules, so a pinch of sea salt flakes delivers less sodium than a pinch of table salt simply because less of it fits between your fingers. That’s a measurement difference, not a chemical one.