Morton Lite Salt, 11 oz, 2 Pack

Potassium chloride is responsible. Half the blend is potassium chloride, which registers as salty but also carries a bitter, faintly metallic edge. Sensitivity to it varies a great deal between individuals, which is why one person finds it indistinguishable from salt and another cannot get past it. The effect is strongest where salt is tasted directly and weakest where it dissolves into something with fat, acid or spice.

Use it where the salt is dissolved and outnumbered rather than tasted on its own. It disappears into soups, braises, chilli, tomato sauces and heavily spiced food. It is most obvious on plain food salted at the table, such as boiled potatoes, eggs, plain rice, popcorn and green salad. Many people blend it with regular salt instead of switching over completely, which cuts sodium partway and keeps the taste closer to normal.

Not in fermented pickles or sauerkraut. There the salt concentration is a safety control, favouring the bacteria you want and holding back the ones you do not, and extension food preservation guidance is that salt substitutes are not safe in fermented foods. In vinegar pickles and ordinary canning, salt is there for flavour only and the amount does not affect safety, but potassium chloride can turn bitter in a jar over months, and Morton's own canning advice is to use a dedicated canning and pickling salt.

Not as a cure. Curing requires a nitrite mix such as Morton Tender Quick, and Lite Salt contains no nitrite, so it cannot preserve meat or produce cured colour and flavour. For a plain flavour brine it will dissolve and season, but half of what is doing the seasoning is potassium chloride, and its bitter edge concentrates as a brine reduces or as a dry brined surface dries out.

Lite Salt is a half and half blend of table salt and potassium chloride. Morton Salt Substitute contains no sodium at all. That makes Salt Substitute the larger sodium reduction of the two and also the more bitter, since there is no ordinary salt left to mask the potassium chloride. Lite Salt keeps enough real salt to taste closer to what people expect.

Because potassium intake is medically significant for some people in a way ordinary salt is not. Kidney function and several common medicines, including certain blood pressure drugs and diuretics, change how much potassium the body holds on to, and a potassium chloride salt adds meaningfully to daily potassium. That makes it a question for your own doctor or pharmacist about your own circumstances, not something to work out from a label.