I eat tomatoes like apples (with salt, I'm not a monster). No kink-shaming please.
Then again, this is an actual thing in India, albeit with _black_ salt, which is more tangy than bitter and salty.
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?
Edit: basically, it is just coarse salt.
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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.
I still eat my tomatoes like that every so often, it's so good ! Although I think I end up eating quite a bit of salt when I do that which isn't so good...
Obviously, sliced tomatoes with salt is a relatively common breakfast side item, so the idea of just eating tomato with salt isn't that uncommon in the U.S.
Waffle House, one of the larger chains of grill made food offer sliced tomatoes as a side in place of hash browns. I have no found that offering elsewhere. So it makes me wonder how it made to the menu
A few other things great with salt and pepper: grapefruit, watermelon, cantelope, cottage cheese, buttermilk.