Should You Add Salt To Your Coffee? A Discussion on the Pros and Cons

Salt serves many essential purposes, with seasoning and preserving our food being its primary use. But it can also remove stains, clean greasy surfaces, and be used as mouthwash. But perhaps most surprisingly, many cultures add a pinch of salt to coffee as a way to reduce the bitterness and enhance its flavor. Should you add salt to your coffee as well? To answer that question, let’s look into where people add salt to their coffee, their reasons for doing so, and the best technique for doing it properly.

Where Is Coffee with Added Salt a Thing?

The idea of putting salt into coffee might sound strange to someone from Canada, but there are plenty of cultures around the world where it has either been standard practice for decades or has recently caught on. For instance, in Türkiye, it is an informal tradition for the bride-to-be to serve her future husband and his family coffee with added salt before their wedding. In addition, sea salt coffee, which consists of an iced americano topped with salted milk foam, can be found on the menu at coffee places in such Asian countries as Taiwan and Vietnam. Putting salt into coffee is also something they do in parts of Europe, such as in Northern Scandinavia and coastal regions of the continent where coffee is brewed using brackish, salty water.