🧂 Salt
Also known as: table salt
Added to cheese and butter.
Salt here means ordinary table salt, sodium chloride. In dairy, it is added mainly to cheese and butter. Milk itself also has a little natural sodium, but it does not taste salty.
In cheese, salt does several jobs at once. It adds flavour, helps press out extra whey and stops unwanted microbes from growing. Cheese is salted in different ways: rubbed with salt, put in brine, or salt is added straight into the curd. Brined cheeses such as brynza and feta are usually especially salty. Butter can be salted or unsalted. Salt adds flavour and helps butter keep longer.
The WHO advises adults to eat less than 5 grams of salt a day, which is about one level teaspoon. Too much salt is linked to high blood pressure. Britain's health service, the NHS, counts cheese with more than 1.5 g of salt per 100 g as “very salty”. Many cheeses are just like that. So it is better to eat cheese in small pieces, and strong-tasting cheeses let you get by with less.
How it connects to milk
How it connects to Cheese
How it connects to Cured meats & charcuterie
🧂 Salt ← contains ← Curing of meat → kind of → 🥓 Cured meats & charcuterie
Links
- Needed for
- 🧀 Cheese, 🧀 Pecorino Romano, 🧀 Cheddar, 🧀 Pecorino Siciliano, 🧀 Pecorino Toscano, 🧀 Pecorino Sardo, 🧀 Semi-hard cheeses, 🧀 Butterkäse, 🧀 Caciocavallo, 🧀 Emmental
and 109 more
🧀 Gruyère, 🧀 Harzer, 🧀 Kashkaval, 🧀 Kefalotyri, 🧀 Minas cheese, 🧀 Provolone, 🧀 Rumi cheese, 🧀 Scamorza, 🧶 Pasta filata cheeses, 🧀 Tilsit cheese, 🧀 Tulum cheese, 🧀 Tête de Moine, 🧀 Wensleydale, 🧀 Abondance, 🧀 Altenburger Ziegenkäse, 🧀 Arzúa-Ulloa, 🧀 Asiago, 🧀 Banon, Philadelphia Whipped Original Cream Cheese Spread, 🧀 Bitto, 🧀 Bleu d'Auvergne, 🔵 Blue cheeses, 🧀 Beaufort, 🪨 Hard cheeses, 🧀 Bleu de Gex Haut-Jura, 🧀 Bleu des Causses, 🧀 Bleu du Vercors-Sassenage, 🧀 Bonchester cheese, 🧀 Bra (cheese), 🧀 Brie de Meaux, 🧀 Brie de Melun, 🧀 Brillat-Savarin, ⚪ Soft cheeses with a bloomy rind, 🧀 Buxton blue, 🧀 Cabrales, 🇪🇸 Spanish cheeses, 🧀 Caciocavallo Silano, 🧀 Camembert de Normandie, 🧀 Cantal, 🧀 Casatella Trevigiana, 🧀 Chaource, 🧀 Danablu, 🧀 Emmental français est-central, 🧀 Fiore Sardo, 🧀 Fontina, 🧀 Formaggella del Luinese, 🧀 Fourme d'Ambert, 🧀 Gorgonzola, 🧀 Grana Padano, 🧀 Idiazabal, 🧀 Istarski ovčji sir, 🧀 Kasseri, 🇬🇷 Greek cheeses, 🧀 Anevato, 🧀 Galotyri, 🧀 Graviera Kritis, 🧀 Kalathaki Limnou, 🧀 Katiki Domokou, 🧀 Krasotiri Ko, 🧀 Ladotyri Mytilinis, 🧀 Batzos, 🧀 Xygalo Siteias, 🧀 Pichtogalo Chanion, 🧀 San Michali, 🧀 Sfela, 🧀 Tsalafouti, 🧀 Formaella Arachovas Parnassou, 🧀 Laguiole, 🧀 Livanjski sir, 🧀 Langres, 🧀 Mont d'Or, 🧀 Montasio, 🧀 Taleggio, 🧀 Quartirolo Lombardo, 🧀 Toma Piemontese, 🧀 Raschera, 🧀 Galbani Bel Paese, 🧈 Soft cheeses without mould, 🧀 Piave (cheese), 🧀 Ossolano, 🧀 Neufchâtel, 🧀 Olomoucké tvarůžky, 🟠 Washed-rind cheeses, 🧀 Pecorino del Monte Poro, 🧀 Pecorino di Filiano, 🧀 Picodon, 🧀 Picón Bejes-Tresviso, 🧀 Pont-l'Évêque, 🧀 Provolone del Monaco, 🧀 Provolone Valpadana, 🧀 Pélardon, 🧀 Queijo de Cabra Transmontano, 🧀 Queijo S. Jorge, 🧀 Queijo Serra da Estrela, 🧀 Queso de Burgos, 🧀 Queso de Murcia al vino, 🧀 Queso Majorero, 🧀 Salers, 🧀 San Simón da Costa, 🧀 Selles-sur-Cher, 🧀 Slovenská parenica, 🧀 Silter, 🧀 Stelvio, 🧀 Tome des Bauges, 🧀 Tomme de Savoie, 🧀 Tomme des Pyrénées, 🧀 Valençay, 🧀 Époisses, 🧈 Butter - What is made from it
- 🧀 Halloumi
- Where it is found
- Curing of meat, ⚪ Jameed, 🧂 Brined cheeses, 🫕 Smen, 🧀 Pecorino, 🫙 Labneh, 🫒 Californian-style black olives
- Who produces it
- 🧂 Brine
- Part of
- 🏭 Milk processing at the dairy plant, 🔄 How cheese is made
Frequently asked questions
Why is salt added to cheese?
Salt adds flavour, helps separate the whey and protects the cheese from unwanted microbes. Without it, most cheeses would keep less well.
How much salt per day is safe?
The WHO advises adults to have less than 5 grams of salt a day. Cheese and salted butter count towards this amount too.
Recipes
What to read next
- Curing of meat — Curing of meat is treatment with salt, often with nitrite, applied dry, as brine or by injection: salt binds water and, together with drying, makes meat suitable for long keeping.
- ⚪ Jameed — A dried, salted yogurt of sheep's and goat's milk made in Jordan for centuries during the milk season. The key ingredient of mansaf, a dish on UNESCO's intangible heritage list.
- 🧀 Pecorino Romano — Pecorino Romano is a hard, cooked Italian PDO cheese made from fresh whole sheep's milk in Sardinia, Lazio and the province of Grosseto, ripened at least 5 months (8 for grating).
- 🧀 Semi-hard cheeses — Pressed cheeses of medium moisture that ripen from a few weeks to several months, such as Gouda, Edam and Monterey Jack.
- 🧀 Cheddar — A hard aged cow's milk cheese from Somerset; the word is free to use, but West Country Farmhouse Cheddar and Orkney Scottish Island Cheddar are protected.
Similar
🧫 Rennet · 🧫 Starter culture · 🧫 Lactic acid bacteria · 🍬 Sugar