Salt is sprinkled from a height because the grains separate as they fall and spread across the surface at even intervals. Salt shaken right above the food, by contrast, piles up in one spot: that bite is too salty while the one beside it has none. Taking a pinch between your fingers and sprinkling it from 25 to 30 cm while moving your hand closes that gap. The same method works for meat, vegetables, and a baking sheet.
The difference comes from the distance the grains fall. Salt released between your fingers fans out in the air like a small cone, and that cone widens as the height increases. Salt dropped from a few centimeters lands in a palm-sized patch beneath your fingers. The same pinch dropped from 30 centimeters spreads across an area the size of a plate, leaving equal gaps between the grains. This even coverage matters especially for meat, fish, and vegetables destined for the oven, because the salt cannot be mixed through them; it stays where it lands on the surface.
In practice, take salt from a small, wide-mouthed bowl rather than a shaker. Pinch the salt between your thumb and first two fingers, then rub your fingers together to release it while your hand is 25 to 30 cm above the food. Keep your hand moving slowly from one end of the surface to the other. Salt both of the meat’s two sides and the sides of thick cuts in the same way. The holes in a shaker pour salt in a narrow strip, so it will not distribute the salt as evenly; a shaker is fine at the table but is not preferred at the counter.
Salt also needs something to cling to if it is to stay on the surface. Salt sprinkled over completely dry vegetables slides off onto the sheet pan and collects at the bottom, so toss vegetables for roasting with oil first, then add the salt. For fried food, salt the pieces as soon as they come out of the oil and have drained, while the surface is still hot and oily; salt sprinkled over cooled fried food will not stick and will fall to the bottom of the plate. Salad greens work similarly: the salt either dissolves in the dressing or is sprinkled on after the leaves have been tossed with it.
The method has another benefit: it helps you measure. A pinch taken from the same bowl by the same person carries a similar amount of salt each time, and your hand gradually learns that amount. At first, you can drop a few pinches onto a scale to see their weight; this links “two pinches” to the grams in a recipe. There is also an easy way to try sprinkling from a height: place a dark-colored sheet pan on the counter, sprinkle salt from two different heights, and compare how the grains spread.
When handling raw meat, follow one more rule: never reach into the salt bowl with fingers that have touched raw meat. If the hand holding the meat goes into the bowl, bacteria from the meat’s surface can get into the salt and then spread to the next salad or cooked dish. Before you start salting, take the amount you need onto a separate plate, season the meat from that plate, and discard any salt left over. Salty, damp, or oily fingers can also make the salt in the bowl clump. Sprinkling from a height is unnecessary for dough and mixtures, where the salt is already distributed by stirring.