Technically not TIFU, but today I finally figured it out.
It was a normal afternoon about a week ago and I had nearly run out of salt at home. After my class for my Masters ended, I went for my usual shopping trip at the nearby grocery store. I was about to check out when I remembered I had to buy the salt - I knew the bus was coming soon so I took a quick look, grabbed the cheapest product with a label containing the English word "salt" which looked exactly like salt, and paid for my groceries. I'm a native English speaker living in a Nordic country and my knowledge of the local language isn't amazing, but I knew the word for salt was the same and was pretty sure I had what I needed.
Fast forward a week and my old container of salt has completely run out, so I use the new one to make my usual dish of vegan mashed potatoes and greens (with oil instead of butter, it tastes incredible). A minute or so after I finished sprinkling it, I smelled a very strange smell and felt a sensation in my nose that can only be described as a worse version of the "water up the nose" feeling. I ate a bite and threw away the rest, worrying that the food might somehow be spoiled or that I maybe forgot to wash some detergent off the pan or the ladle. I also noticed that it didn't taste very salty, but I figured I might just have not used enough salt and I'm used to using much less salt in my food anyway.
The day after, I heated up some pre-seasoned potatoes which I consumed without incident, and today, two days after that, I used the same "salt" to season some frozen French fries. As you might guess by now, I had the same reaction. This was getting a bit too weird for me to process on my own at home, so I called my mom and told her I was worried I might be having some kind of reaction to potatoes (my brain initially forgot the normality of the pre-seasoned potatoes entirely). Step by step, I started to put things together and realized that it must have been one of the spices I was using, and the only spice I hadn't put in my food before this mess started was the "salt".
After searching reputable sources to see if any type of salt might cause what I experienced, I started to worry that what I had bought wasn't salt at all. After Google Translate failed to help, I finally used Wikipedia to find out I was right. When I bought it, I had noticed that the label read something like "heart salt" in English; it turned out that rather than sodium chloride, I had bought...ammonium bicarbonate, a leavening agent used in many baking products which can irritate the nose. I was aware of the compound but not of its old name, "salt of Hartshorn", from which the name still used in many Nordic countries derives.
Tomorrow I'm going to go and buy some real salt so that I can enjoy the taste of the food I make again...
TL;DR: bought what I thought was salt but was very much not salt due to a misunderstood translation.
I was expecting dishwasher salt tbh!
I was thinking about rock salt
I thought of bath salt.. (like epsom salts)
I thought about smelling salts
You're the closest without going over.
That's... Just salt.
I did a little Google and more or less! Apparently the only differences really are sometimes additives like anti caking and granule size.
I've never owned a dishwasher, my knowledge is very minimal to be honest. But it was interesting to find that out, thank you!
It's winter here in Canada-land.
I was also expecting this to be about road salt.
In my defence, Nordic countries would use it too. :P
That's where my Canadian brain went, I spent the whole time wondering how many impurities are in road salt, and how bad is it to consume?
Yea, it's really bad to consume actually. I have a separate set of gloves I use when I put it down.
It's not just the impurities but the additives that will cause you an issue.
I grew up in New Hampshire, so road salt/rock salt was a big part of my childhood
Licking it off the street, apparently. ;-)
Well, rock salt is pretty distinctive looking, and it still does taste like salt.
That's... Just salt.
Not food grade salt though.
Without recommending to eat it, a assume it must be quite pure. I think otherwise the ion exchanger in your dishwasher will get ruined.
I was thinking ice melting rock salt
Which is also... just salt.
With rocks in it. I don’t recommend eating and unless you need rocks in your gizzard.
Lol, no, the name is because of how it's mined, rather than acquired via evaporation. Rock salt is just "salt", and the chunks are just chunks of "salt".
lol right back at ya.
Rock salt has impurities making it unsuitable for cooking. The rock salt miners aren’t required to remove the impurities because the intended use is not human consumption.
Another example—Non potable water is still water. But it’s not fit for human consumption.
I was expecting OP to chip teeth on salt for ice cream makers
For my fellow Americans, this is water softener salt.
How small of a container would OP need to confuse this for table salt? Doesn’t seem reasonable to me.
I dont know how dishwasher salt is sold, but i imagine its smaller than the 20lb bags of water softener salt. Also OP did not buy dishwasher salt.
What in the world is dishwasher salt?
It's salt that you pour in your dishwasher to help deal with hard water and break down things like limescale and stops your dishwasher leaving streaks on glasses and things.
I was expecting something like sal ammoniac.
Haha, we make "kakemenn" here in Norway with hornsalt, and just opening the oven after baking them is like getting punched in the face. I'm actually more surprised that you didn't smell it first before using it. The kids like to get unknowing people to smell the jar and watch their response.
It's literally what was used as smelling salts for fainting people lol
Yeah honestly this is the part a lot of people forget. Work trips sound dreamy until you’re actually on one and realize it’s just your same job but in a prettier timezone. She’s probably juggling long days, late dinners, and zero real downtime. Letting her do her thing and just being the calm, supportive partner here will go way farther than flying out and stressing her schedule even more.
Sir, this is a Wendy's
r/lostredditors
Sounds like a real a-salt on your senses.
Take my disgusted upvote.
Honestly same, I gagged just reading the part about the nose-burning smell. Instant upvote.
Honestly, that upvote is deserved. A pun that committed that hard needed recognition.
Dad I told you, mom only pity laughs at those jokes.
Honestly, that pun landed way too clean. Your food suffered but your wordplay definitely didn’t.
Badum-tsh
Sounds like A.I.
Reminds me of this classic:
https://youtu.be/2ozof2g_jYc?si=WInVbET77GiZYXiV&t=39
Better yet, speaking of language:
https://youtu.be/s-mOy8VUEBk?
No idea what I just watched
A god damn classic is what.
The downfall of Europe. And it's been a long time coming. :-(
Notice how they all speak enough English to make themselves understood? Yah.
Hjortetakssalt in Danish. Ammonium Bicarbonate. Smells awfully while stuff bakes (releases ammonia), but leaves excellent baked goods when done.
I had started cringing by the end of the 1st paragraph. Glad it wasn't toxic. Learn that word for table salt!
At least you didn't mess up with pink salt.
Lol i can just picture that face when you bit in and went wtf is happening
You imagined me dying and laugh about it?
The Himalayan stuff?
No, there's a curing salt (sodium nitrite) that's artificially colored pink to prevent accidental usage. It's very toxic unless used in specific ways.
Sounds unfortunate that Himalayan salt is also pink
For sure. We've lost a lot of cultural knowledge around food, so I'm surprised there haven't been cases of people thinking it's just a trendy pink salt.
It looks very different, though, it's bright and artificial looking. You can't mix them up.
Maybe YOU can't mix them up. Then we have people like OP... ;-)
(joking)
Yeah! Like how every driver knows to go on blue!! /s :P
Ackshuaallly, chemically, ...
Baking soda is a type of salt. Baking powder is... not yeast, but like food for it. Weird grandma black magic.
Neither are salt like table salt that OP wanted.
In Canada, all of our packaging is bilingual: English and French. Often the front of the package is English and the back is French.
This means that even Anglos who don't speak any French are accustomed to seeing the French words for everyday products. You see "SEL", and you recognize it as salt, or see "SUCRE", and you know it's sugar.
Many years ago, my uncle baked a huge batch of apple pies for a family gathering. The first person to take a bite, immediately started coughing. The pie was horrible, and somehow spicy.
My uncle had grabbed "cayenne" (pepper), thinking he was getting "cannelle", which is French for Cinnamon.
He had spent all day, baking a dozen pies with cayenne pepper.
He didn't notice the colour? He might just not be very observant in general lol
That is a whole lot of words for buying the wrong kind of salt...
It says more about you that you think a couple paragraphs is "a whole lot of words"
Idk I found “class for my masters” and “vegan mashed potatoes” descriptors to be a bit odd and that OP just needed to work Masters and Vegan in there, but the rest of the story was entertaining.
Not really, I’ll mention shit that happened while I was at X university sometimes and it’s not that I’m doing it like “Oh once while I was doing my masters at X this…” and it’s not to cram in that I have a masters or went to X, it’s to give context
Fair, the details just felt a little out of place to me, but I guess detail never hurts. Especially considering the story was about salt, the type of mashed potatoes is definitely relevant.
A whole lot more than that story needed. It's not Proust, it's an anecdote, punch it up.
you accidentally seasoned your food with literal baking ammonia and turned your kitchen into a ww1 gas chamber 😭 lowkey the most chaotic grocery fail ever, please tell me you kept the bottle as a war crime trophy fr??
Impressive you even found the stuff, usually hjartarsalt/hirvensarvensuola/hjorthornssalt is with the baking stuff, not the salt/spices. I’ve only ever seen it used for leavening baked goods
Here in Sweden it's usually in the spice section. Salt is in it's own spot, still impressive.
That's one way to keep your sodium levels low lol
ammonium bicarbonate... is that not baking powder? (not soda) ugg, oh god. o0
Defo NOT salt. Poor OP. Good investigative work though.
TIL people in Norway put sal votaile in their baked goods
Brilliant learning experience. I will remember ""salt of Hartshorn", in future.
That stuff is so much more expensive than regular salt where I go shopping. Maybe I should bring some back from the nordics next time I go. 😅
TIL. New one for me too.
Impressive, if you were not vegan I would suggest you make some lovely sveler with the hjortetakk/hornsalt
Hjorthornssalt?! Hahaha, tasty!
Reads like chatGPT
Like... no way a human tells this story without saying "Baking Soda."
And the vegan aside was so out of place.
History makes OP look like a football posting bot
I don't think you know what ChatGPT is. Also, sodium bicarbonate is baking soda, not ammonium bicarbonate...
And yes, I do post mostly on /r/soccer because I enjoy watching football. I didn't know that made me a bot
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The stuff OP bought isn't baking soda. The thing I personally find the strangest is this being as cheap or cheaper(?) as table salt. Where I live (Europe, but not the Nordics), ammonium bicarbonate is pretty much exclusively sold around Christmas in tiny packages and one package with 15 g or so is already 5-10 times the price of one 500 g pack of table salt. Is baking gingerbread a competitive sport where you live, OP?!
You can buy it all year round in Norway and probably the other Nordic countries as well.
I'm sure the actual salt from the same brand was cheaper, but the nearest salt I saw on the shelf (which I have bought before) was genuinely much more expensive. I can tell you the exact cost difference next time I'm at the same grocery store if you're curious, but the ammonium bicarbonate definitely wasn't incredibly expensive and comes in 65g containers :)
You're not buying salt at that size. You're buying a cheap ass salt shaker with the salt thrown in as a bonus.
Yeah, that's crazy. You make pasta or blanch some veg, and your whole salt purchase is down the drain.
It doesn't read like ChatGPT at all. The sentences flow like how a real human would speak and aren't excessively polished. There aren't excessive witticisms or cringe overused parallelisms. The events are all described in an appropriate order like how a person would tell a story.
What exactly made you think this was ChatGPT? Or did you just want to throw the accusation around without basis? I think it is a necessary skill these days to be able to accurately identify AI text, and it really isn't too hard tbh -- but this post has absolutely zero tells
Why would anyone suddenly start talking about baking soda? That kind of weird tangent doesn't sound like normal human behaviour to me. Is this something you often do, bring up baking soda for no clear reason? Must make for weird dates.
Try to go a day without saying “baking soda” challenge
Baking soda-- FUCK!
Morton iodized salt, blue cylinder with a girl in yellow carrying an umbrella. It feels as iconic as the danish cookies containing a sewing kit.
Or if you're pinching pennies, the store brand will cost half as much. But it's like 1.5 pounds of salt and should last you ages, so the $1.00 is pretty insignificant.
I’ve never seen that package in the Netherlands, not sure it’s as ubiquitous as you think it is
Sorry, I meant in the US. I misread before, thought you were a Nordic person that came to the US. :-)
FWIW, this is what I meant. It's looked the same for like 50 years.
That sucks
Good to see OP really living up to the stereotype by making sure to let everyone knows they're vegan in a post where its completely irrelevant
Completely irrelevant even though she was talking about food, right
Honestly a sprinkle of salt is absolutely necessary for mash and veggies, they'd be bland as heck otherwise.
Heart salt here is potassium chloride, no-sodium salt, but doesn’t taste as described. Good catch!
haha wow buying salt could backfire that hard😂 guess some mistakes comes from the tiniest things....
Haha, finally someone figured out that salt isn’t just for taste! Who knew it could be such a hero in disguise? 😂
Who knew 'salt' could cause so much confusion! 😅