This is some useful information explaining the uses and types of edible salts. I stole it from post on another forum . I found it useful to know what all the differences and uses. Many of these we have already in our homes, if not all of them.

Rock Salt; sodium chloride. a mineral, no additives.

Table Salt: Sodium chloride. Rock salt with anti-caking and iodine.

Pickling Salt: no additives, anti-caking or iodine. basically small grain rock salt.

Kosher Salt: No iodine or additives. large crystals. May contain anti-caking??

Sea Salt: comes from evaporated sea water. Can contain minerals and fish poop. Sea salt is said to have added flavor from the mineral content. Different sea water has different flavor.

Curing salt: 94% table salt, and 6% sodium nitrate. Sometimes known as pink salt, cure #1, FS Cure, or Ultra Cure. Be sure to understand the uses and cautions of using sodium nitrate in your food for curing meat.

Basically edible salt comes down to two categories: salt with additives, and salt without. Also noting that sodium nitrate in a pure form is usually in a gas state and has to be fused to other molecules, in this case, table salt.

So how is it valuable to me ? a big bag of table salt for six bucks at the wholesale place can be used for : french fries, pickling but will discolor and become cloudy, yet still completely edible and good taste, making proscuitto by packing it down with salt and weight, and salting and drying fish, jerky and other cuts of meat.

Salt with no additives make clear pickles and doesn't cloud.

Curing salt, which by the way costs $4 per 500 gram bag. A single 500 gram bag will cure 300 pounds of raw meat. Or $15 bucks of cure is enough to cure, dry, or preserve over a thousand pounds of meat. This is really valuable, but noting that ancient man nor the Romans had this.

Other noteworthy mentions of salts are that the different styles of salts that have larger or smaller grains , have higher or lower concentration by volume. meaning fine salt has more mass per given volume than does course salt. Iodine is added to table salt in the same manner that fluoride is added to water. Iodine deficiencies cause health problems, so they add it to salt.

At the end of the day, is salt valuable? Yes. You can use a 40 pound bag of table salt valued at 6 or 7 bucks to preserve, pickle or dry anything. Noting it may be cloudy, or discolored, but the taste and preservation is fine. Its also fine for making prosciutto. Any edible salt will work for anything ( not counting curing salt).

Kosher salt, seas salt, and picking salt can all be used as a substitute for table salt. Kosher salt is great for rimming the glass for Margaritas and Ceasers. They can also be used to preserve, and dry or pickle all foods.

Curing salt, cheap like dirt for what it can make with small amounts by volume. For ten bucks, I can cure an entire moose if required.

Hope it wasn't too boring of a read for those that made it to the end. All of the previous posts were correct in their information. I've added 120 pounds of table salt in pails (pails cost more than the salt) and 30 bucks worth of curing salt to the stash. Including the cost of the pails, about sixty bucks for enough salts to cure and preserve an amount of food that my partner and I can survive for probably five to eight years.