Feature: Plain old salt, it's not

It's the first compound you learn in chemistry class. One molecule of sodium bonds with one molecule of chloride to form sodium chloride, NaCl — table salt.

You need it to live, and the oceans are full of it. When it rains, it pours. You even sweat it out of your body. And yet, something so seemingly commonplace is of vital, irreplaceable importance in cooking.

"What you really want it to do is enhance the natural flavor of food. You don't want to taste salt, but if you're salting a piece of beef, you want it to bring out all the flavor that beef has to offer, without making it salty. It adds depth to your cooking," said Eric Cohen, the chef at Julep's New Southern Cuisine in Richmond.

But all salts are not created equal. The gourmet shelves at supermarkets are stocked with a bewildering array of salts, and the specialized food stores offer even more: algae salts from Japan and South Africa, Celtic sea salt, which must be refrigerated, Chardonnay oak smoked sea salt.

"People are starting to talk about salt tastings the way they talk about wine tastings," said Frits Huntjens, co-owner and chef of 1 North Belmont in Richmond.

Huntjens generally uses regular white sea salt, in fine crystals, from La Baleine — a French, iodine-free brand widely available at supermarkets. He currently is using just one exotic salt, a pink Hawaiian salt, which he uses to season tuna.

"It just has a very distinct flavor. It's sea salt, so you almost taste the ocean," he said.

Huntjens sometimes cooks with herbed salts, too, although he is not using them on his current menu.

"You can use them on pork, it gives it a little bit more interesting flavor. Or chicken, for that matter. Any meat that doesn't have a huge amount of flavor or you want to kick it up a notch, so to speak," he said.

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At Mamma'Zu in Richmond, chef and owner Ed Vasaio uses Muramoto salt for his own cooking but a Sicilian sea salt for his Italian restaurant.

"It's a little wetter, more moist. It's got a textural difference. Flavorwise, I feel you can use more of it than other salt. It's more forgiving. A lot of people think our food is overly salty. I like to lean on it, up to the point of no return, but we never hit it.

"In the '60s and '70s, we were forbidden salt and butter, so a lot of people grew up on these saltless and flavorless meals," Vasaio said.

Jimmy Sneed, whose The Frog and the Redneck restaurant (which closed in 2001) put Richmond on the culinary map, has always believed in the aggressive use of salt. Sneed trained underthe legendary Jean-Louis Palladin, who called himself The King of Salt.

"The salt I use comes from southern Utah. It comes from a single block of salt that was buried 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic period. There's no pollutants, because it's 150 million years old," Sneed said from his new restaurant, SugarToad, in suburban Chicago.

Sneed has been using RealSalt for a dozen years because it is sweeter than other salts. When he talks to schoolchildren, he sometimes makes his red pepper soup without salt. The children complain it is too bitter, so he adds the RealSalt, which demonstrates to them how salt can make foods sweet.

"If I used regular salt, it would get too salty before it got sweet," he said.

Kosher salt — Morton's kosher salt, in particular, which is available at most supermarkets — is the salt of choice at Buckhead's Restaurant & Chop House in Richmond. According to chef Blair Bowles, "It seems to have a little bit more texture to it. It distributes more evenly. When you pinch it, you don't need as much as with regular salt — it has more flavor, it stands out more."

And kosher salt — this time, Diamond Crystal kosher salt — is also used at Chez Max for most seasonings, meats and vegetables. However, for curing salmon and making duck confit, chef and owner

Alain Lecomte prefers the large flakes of Guérande, from France.

Julep's New Southern Cuisine generally uses two kinds of kosher salt. One of them, from restaurant supplier Sysco, has a larger flake than the other, from Diamond Crystal.

"It depends on whether you need the salt to dissolve quickly or how long you want it to lay on the food," Cohen said.

For the restaurant's variation on steak frites, Cohen uses a smoked sea salt for the French fries — "It's not overly salty nor overly smoky. It's nice and subtle," he said.

Every once in a while, Cohen brings out a high-quality sea salt made by Maldon. He has also used sel gris, a gray salt that has to be kept moist, and a very coarse pink Hawaiian sea salt.

"That's fun to play with. It's always fun to play with sea salt," Cohen said.

There can be a fine line between using salt to bring out the best flavor in food and using so much it interferes with one's health.

Lecomte is mindful of recent warnings about the overconsumption of salt and how it can lead to problems with blood pressure and heart disease. And some people eat 15 to 20 grams of salt a day, more than half an ounce.

However, he said, every human needs salt. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that adults should generally consume around than 2.3 grams of sodium to survive — about a teaspoon — but that two-thirds of the population is in at-risk categories and should consume 1.5 grams per day.

But chefs love salt because it makes food taste good.

"I'd definitely take salt on a desert island," Vasaio said.

Daniel Neman writes for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.