I carry an apple to work every day with black pepper & salt pouches from Taco Bell, & my american co-workers have asked me why I sprinkle salt on fruit? I explain them we sprinkle salt on apples, banana, guava, pineapple, watermelon, cucumber, tomatoes, onion, oranges and many other things.

Black salt is not tangy like lemony, it is just rock salt. Sometimes fruitsalts are salts peppered with ground black pepper and or lemon juice. Black salt on its own is earthly salty like ocean water.

guava + black salt is an incredible combo. Sadly, it's very hard to get good guava here in bay area. If anyone knows a good place, I am all ears. I love the the green raw guava more than the white-ish ripe ones.

Any Indian Grocery Store in bay area, in Guava season like summer. Some example chain stores are New India Bazar, India Cash & Carry, and many other single store. I sold these all of this last year as a Cashier, and in cheap as Apples.

Apart from green raw, white ripe, we also had pinkish ripe guava in India. Eating Guava or chewing Guava leaves helped me in mouth sores when I was a kid.

Try a little salt and black pepper on your cantaloupe. It's amazing.

Cantaloupe with jamón (cured pork ham) for lunch and tostada con aceite y tomate (tomato rubbed on a toast with olive oil) for breakfast are both everyday treats in menus in Spain.

Funny story: my first night in Italy (a country where I would go on to spend years, get married and have kids) they served "prosciutto con melone" - cured ham with cantaloupe at the place I was staying.

To this day I love prosciutto, and I like melons, but I can't stand the taste of them together.

That first evening there, I was really worried that all I had heard about how good Italian food was maybe not true - perhaps it was all strange things like what they'd just given me?

My friend from Guadalajara swears by Tajin seasoning on a lot of stuff, including cantaloupes and watermelon and I think kind of everything...

This is pretty common in SoCal. Any puesto de frutas will give you fruta y chamoy y tajin.

watermelon too

Yes watermelon! Not enough people know about this.

You can also pickle watermelon: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/the-nosher/russian-style-pi...

Some Americans, particularly in the South, will salt their apple slices. It's not bad, but I prefer them straight. I do like salt on melons though

I put (kosher) salt on Apples and Watermelon and it is delicious.

What’s special about kosher salt?

It has larger grains. It is called "kosher" salt because larger grain salt (typically coarser than even typical kosher salt) is used to drain the blood from meat and fowl, a necessary step in rendering it kosher by Jewish law.

Edit: basically, it is just coarse salt.

It's a larger crystal, which makes it easier for the salt to pull water out of the watermelon, versus (I'm guessing) just making its way into the watermelon as a dissolved solid.

My understanding for the mechanism by which the salt makes the fruit sweeter is by increasing the concentration of sugars in the flesh that's now surrounded by salted water.

Kosher salt is named for the application of drawing water from meat (which is itself part of the kosher preparation of meat) so it's not too surprising that the salt is also well suited for drawing water from fruits like watermelon.

I use table salt on watermelon and it's great too. I can believe that kosher salt would be better, but I doubt most people would consider the difference immense. But palates vary, so, if you've got both salts around might as well use the bigger crystal.

> My understanding for the mechanism by which the salt makes the fruit sweeter ...

Is that correct? AIUI the primary way that salt makes foods taste sweeter is due to the fact it attenuates our sense of "bitter".

This caused me to look it up. I was way off! https://io9.gizmodo.com/theres-a-scientific-reason-why-a-pin...

This makes me a bit skeptical that the type of salt matters much. Perhaps it's simply easier to get the dosage right with Kosher salt?

Interesting article.

In my experience, yes, salt type doesn't matter too much except for 1) iodine is sometimes quite noticable 2) very minerally sea salts can add flavors

but the amount does (by weight, not volume). Table salt and kosher salt are both very consistent [1] but I use the latter to avoid iodine

[1] but note the brand, iirc morton's is almost 2x as dense as diamond crystal. when in doubt, weigh.

It's a coarse salt, as mentioned.

But also it doesn't have additives like table salt (e.g. iodine and anti-caking agents). Iodine at least has a definite flavor.

It's also very consistently made (though not between manufacturers) unlike some sea salts, and relatively inexpensive so it's the go-to kitchen salt (as against finishing salt) for a lot of cooks; you know what you get in a pinch every time.

It's not special (though it does have bigger granules,) my family is just Jewish.