We sometimes receive feedback that certain recipes are "too salty." Keep in mind that the salt listed in the ingredients is a recommendation, and what constitutes a "good amount of salt" in foods is ultimately a personal preference.
With that in mind, we find that the problem of a recipe being too salty is less a "quantity of salt" issue, but more of a "type of salt" issue.
Our culinary team tends to use Diamond (brand) salt, and here's why:
Not all salt is made the same. In fact, the process by which the different salt brands produce salt affects their ultimate "saltiness". To illistrate the point, we'll use two common salt brands: Morton and Diamond. Each brand makes salt differently. Morton salt presses salt granules into large flakes with rollers, making each granule quite dense (read: more "salty"). Diamond stacks salt pyramids to form a large hollow crystal (almost snowflake-like), which allows each granule to dissolve and disperse flavor quickly. In sum: one is dense (intensely salty for its volume) and the other is hollow (expected level of saltiness).
So how can you adjust for this in recipes where one is measuring salt by volume?
If we continue with our example brands, a cup of Morton’s salt can weigh almost twice as much as a cup of Diamond’s salt, and therefore taste twice as salty.
Jill Santopietro at Chow.com came up with the following equation simply by weighing the salts:
1 teaspoon fine sea or table salt = roughly 1 1/4 teaspoons Morton’s kosher salt = roughly 1 3/4 teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt
And according to NY Times' measured equivalencies:
[4.5 tsp Morton > 8.25 tsp Diamond] and [4.5 tsp table salt = 10.125 tsp Diamond].
Those are some significant seasoning differences.