In this video we’ll conduct a how-to season steak experiment using coarse ground pink Himalayan salt vs sea salt vs kosher salt. Learn the best way how to season steak and watch the video until the very end, you will be shocked!

We’re going to do a little experiment using different kinds of salt to season some strip steaks. Then we’ll experience my favorite part: testing the results. Follow me and let’s turn up the taste.

You can use all sorts of different salts to season your steak

Why does buying something as simple as salt have to be so confusing? There are so many different kinds. You have kosher salt, seasoned salt, sea salt, garlic salt, pink Himalayan salt, and iodized salt, just to name a few. Look, I can’t tell you the differences between every single different type of salt, but I can tell you that salt tastes great on steak. How do I know that? Because salt and steak have been paired together for literally centuries, and there’s no way billions of people could be wrong. But which salt tastes the best on steak? That’s the question we’re here to answer. Personally, I’ve always just seasoned my steaks with coarse ground kosher salt. Why? Because I’ve always heard it was the best. But how do I know if I haven’t experimented? So that’s what we’re going to do.

Season your steak with coarse ground kosher, pink Himalayan or sea salt

We’re going to compare coarse ground kosher salt, coarse ground pink Himalayan salt, and coarse ground sea salt. Now these are all coarse ground, maybe not to the same level, but I tried to get it as close as possible. The one thing that is the same is the amount of salt being used for each: one tablespoon. That way, I know that the amount of the salt isn’t impacting the flavor. We’re going to go ahead and get the steaks seasoned, and then we’re going to get them on a hot grill and finally test the result.

Clean your grill grate before grilling

Before we drop our steaks on the grill, we need to make sure to start with a clean grill grate. You don’t want yesterday’s food on tonight’s meal. By the way, never ever use one of those wire brushes to clean it. We made a video that shows you a real simple, safe way to clean your grill without that dangerous wire brush. The other thing is we’re using a vortex, which really keeps the heat isolated in the center and provides indirect heat all the way around. I have a video you can check out where I made my some amazing chicken wings using the vortex. 

Sear each steak for 1 min per side then indirect heat

I’m will go ahead and sear each steak for about a minute per side and then move it over to indirect heat. Then we’re going to start with the kosher salt steak. We have nice diamond sear marks on the steak, which is one of the neat things about a vortex; it gets so hot, you can really make very pretty steaks with it.

We’ll set the control steak aside, away from the heat over indirect heat. Next up we’ll put down our pink Himalayan salt steak, and after that, our sea salt steak. Then we’re going to close the dome and let them cook.

We are looking for medium-rare steak

They’ll take about five to seven minutes to get to a nice medium-rare internal temperature, and once they do, I’ll pull them off the grill and be ready for the test.

A couple of quick notes: First of all, I used a clean pair of tongs and a clean cutting board to take the steaks off the heat. Thanks to my beautiful wife for cleaning them while the steaks were cooking. Now, let’s go ahead and get these steaks cut and in my belly. Let’s see how they taste. 

We let our steaks rest for 5 minutes

After cooking these steaks, they’ve been resting for about five minutes. Now it’s time for my favorite part. Let’s cut them open, see how they look, and give them a try. First is our kosher salt. We have a really nice medium-rare color on that, and let’s take a bite.

How does the Kosher Salt steak taste?

It’s a good steak. It’s what I’m used to: kosher salt. It tastes about the same as the other steaks that I’ve made. So let’s go ahead and give the pink Himalayan salt steak a shot. We have a nice medium-rare temperature on that as well. Hmm, maybe there wasn’t a lot of salt on that particular piece. But maybe it was just the end of the steak that didn’t get a lot of the salt. Let’s try another piece. It is a slightly different flavor. It’s not a bad flavor. It’s very good, actually. I’m going to try another piece from the center. I want to try to give you guys a sense of what this tastes like.

Can I tell the difference in taste with Himalayan salt?

Honestly, it’s really hard to tell any difference between the pink Himalayan and the kosher. They taste really about the same. Maybe the kosher salt has just a slightly more intense salty flavor. The pink Himalayan tends to have like an earthier flavor. I’m really kind of stretching for distinctions, but they’re very, very similar. 

Sea salt seasoning on the steak

So lastly, we have our sea salt steak. Let’s give that a shot. Again, we have a great color on that, another nice medium-rare steak. How do they look in comparison? Pretty close. Let’s see how this one tastes.

I’m getting a little bit more salt per bite here. Again, it’s really hard to draw any distinctions from any of the salts. I think that I noticed that in its pure form, the sea salt was maybe a little bit coarser than the Himalayan and the kosher. Maybe that’s adding some impact to the flavor per bite, but I have to say these all taste the same. They taste like they were all made with the exact same salt. I taste no difference at all. 

Think you can tell the difference?

So, that’s our test. I would say use kosher salt, use pink Himalayan, use sea salt. I think the real key when using salt is that you use coarse ground salt. Maybe we’ll have to do another experiment using fine ground salt, but I think what happens there is you tend to get more salt per pinch with finely ground salt than you do with coarse ground salt.

But hey, salt away! Use what you have in your cabinet as long as it’s coarsely ground. At least those are the results I’ve come up with. If you liked this post, subscribe to our channel so you’ll never miss another update again. Here at Red Meat Lover, we’re all about cooking meat made easy. And that’s just what you’ll see in every video. We release one video every week. Your subscription goes a long way toward supporting our channels so we can keep on cooking.