americans come (important)

so I've been watching these american cooking shows and they always use something called 'kosher salt' wtf is that
I tried to google it but apparently it's a jewish food thing, is it true?

Pretty sure only middle aged American women watch that stuff

but kosher salt is like, grainier. Look up Norton, thats the most common brand we use. Its for cooking, not putting on fries

Kosher salt is a larger/coarser grain of salt that is ideal for the koshering process where regular salt is does not hold up as well. When I say the koshering process, it refers to the process of removing the blood from meats (including poultry) prior to cooking. Another difference is that kosher salt usually does not have iodine or other additives. I think iodized salt comes with some health benefits if you aren't getting it from somewhere else, but I don't know too much about it. Regardless, what it comes down to, from my experience (which is not that of a professional chef or anything), is that when you want to season a steak before cooking it kosher salt is the way to go. Any time you want to season a meat with salt + pepper and potentially let it rest to draw out some extra moisture before cooking I think kosher salt is the way to go. When you are mixing it into a sauce/glaze, salting your water for pasta or any use where it will be disintegrated into a liquid I think it's pretty much the same. Also baking is super specific sometimes, so if a recipe says kosher salt vs salt, make sure you use kosher salt. If you only have one on hand and a recipe calls for the other you have use 1/2 the amount of table salt in place of kosher salt (or vice versa, double the amount of kosher salt than the recommended table salt). This is because again, the coarser grains leave a lot of gaps and empty space in your measuring device that aren't left by the fine table salt.

i automatically read "kosher salt" in gordon ramsay's voice