A Simple Pantry Trick for Improving Coffee Flavor

• A small pinch of salt in hot coffee can noticeably soften bitterness.
• Used sparingly, salt can round out the flavor and create a fuller mouthfeel.
• Cleaner salts, such as sea salt or kosher salt, work best.

“Cream or sugar?” That’s the familiar question you hear when ordering a plain drip coffee. Some people choose both, some choose one, and some skip them entirely.

There’s another unexpected add-in that has gained attention among coffee enthusiasts in recent years. If you’re sitting down at a breakfast spot, it may already be on the table beside the sugar packets and little metal pitcher of creamer: salt.

Give Coffee a Small Sprinkle of Salt

Adding salt to coffee may sound unusual, but a very small amount can improve an otherwise mediocre cup.

I first came across the idea in a piece cookbook author and molecular biologist Nik Sharma wrote for Food52. I had wanted to try it for a long time, but only recently decided to test it myself. Maybe that was because the coffee I drink with my boyfriend most weekends tends to be dark, burnt-tasting, and lacking in subtlety. He prefers a dark roast from a brand I won’t name, and since he’s kind enough to make the pot in the first place, I keep pouring cup after cup, hoping it will be better this time.

Of course, it never is, so I finally tried the salt approach. I stirred a small pinch into a steaming mug, and the difference was immediately noticeable.

Why It Works

Salt can reduce the perception of bitterness in food. That’s one reason bitter vegetables such as radicchio or broccoli rabe are often paired with salty ingredients like Parmesan or pancetta. Of course, there is more science behind it than that.

To try it yourself, all you need is hot, bitter coffee and a very light touch with the salt. It’s a simple experiment.

What It Tastes Like, and How to Do It

For one thing, it does not make the coffee taste salty. When you add just a pinch to a cup that is only so-so, the flavor becomes more balanced and a little fuller. It also seems less bitter.

I was curious what people who know coffee well thought about the trick, so I asked Irvin Lin, Simply Recipes’ resident coffee expert. “I do not add any salt to my coffee,” he said. “Personally, I find a properly brewed cup doesn’t need any help at all.”

He did, however, offer a few tips for anyone curious to try it: “A tiny pinch is all you need. It’s easy to sprinkle too much salt in coffee, making it...salty. And I highly recommend a cleaner salt like sea salt or kosher salt. Don’t use iodized table salt. It will lend a metallic taste to your coffee.”

Coffee Enthusiasts Take It Further

Next, I asked Tony “Tonx” Konecny, co-founder of the fresh roasted coffee subscription service Yes Plz Coffee. I’m a Yes Plz subscriber and I love their coffee. Drinking it feels like following a story with a beginning, middle, and end. It’s the kind of coffee I sip slowly, never rush through.

His answer was no surprise. “I confess I haven’t tried the salt trick in many years, but I think it’s the sort of thing you treat as a last resort for particularly bad or bitter coffee,” Konecny said. “As a tangent, there are a lot of coffee nerds formulating their brew water to get better tasting extractions by adding magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt) or sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). So in a way the pinch of salt thing is just an earlier version of the same sort of kitchen counter chemistry.”

If you are not familiar with coffee nerd behavior, know that many will go out of their way to make something simple more complicated. Konecny put it more diplomatically: “People will do a lot of fiddling around with toys or additives rather than make the simple switch to starting with really good fresh roasted beans.”

When to Use Salt, If You Use It at All

I would never add salt to the coffee I get from my Yes Plz subscription, because it does not need fixing. It’s excellent just as it is.

But not everyone wants coffee with citrusy top notes and hints of crisp toasted bread. That is not the only way to enjoy coffee, and that is perfectly fine. I still enjoy the pots of my boyfriend’s scorched-earth coffee on weekends. Context matters a great deal in how we experience flavor. If the coffee, or the company, is bad to begin with, no amount of salt—or anything else—will improve it.

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