Bonjour sous chefs,
I just started reading a book called Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat and it is amazing. Nosrat details her experience working in kitchens all over the world and takes that knowledge to create a cookbook that embodies childlike exploration with masterful technique. Over the next few weeks I will be writing about what I have learned and the pitfalls I have fallen into on my quest to become a master chef.
The book, as the title lays out, is divided initially into four chapters: salt, fat, acid, and heat. This week we will be diving into salt and learning about all the ways we have eaten tasteless food in our adult lives. Like many of my professors at university, I’m going to start with a thinking question for you to ponder as you read the rest of this post.
Think about your average breakfast, lunch, and dinner. How often do you salt?
Without further adieu, let’s begin.
Are you ever just hanging out when you are suddenly overcome with a craving for salty food? This is because the human body needs salt to carry out basic biological functions. Salt allows us to deliver nutrients to and from cells and maintain proper blood pressure, water distribution, nerve transmission and muscle movement. The human body is not capable of storing large amounts of salt and this craving is your body’s way of telling you that your salt stores are low, my friend. Lucky for us, salt is delicious. Crazy how nature does that. When salt is added to food it can minimize bitterness, balance out sweetness, and enhance aromas and textures. Let’s briefly explore the different kinds of salt and how to use them because who would’ve known you weren’t supposed to put table salt on everything?
But first, what should salt taste like? Go into your kitchen and dip your finger into your go-to salt container. Salt should taste clean and “free of unpleasant flavors.” Nosrat would say it should taste “like the summer sea.” If not, after reading this post, run to your local market and get that good stuff, girl.
TYPES OF SALT
- Table salt: Your standard, run-of-the-mill, found-in-salt-shakers-everywhere salt. This salt has a very distinct cubic shape which makes it very salty. Nosrat recommends avoiding iodized salt in order to minimize the metallic taste that comes along with it. However, if you salt appropriately while cooking, you will have no need for table salt.
- Kosher salt: This salt has no add-ins and tastes very pure. The two main producers of kosher salt are Diamond Crystal, which crystallizes in an open container of brine, and Morton’s, which is made by rolling cubic crystals of vacuum-evaporated salt into dense flakes. What does this have to do with anything? The production behind salt will yield different flavors. Diamond Crystal “readily adheres to foods and crumbles easily” while Morton’s is “denser and almost twice as salty by volume.” They aren’t interchangeable! So, taste your salt and food as you cook to avoid over-salting a dish.
- Sea salt: Now, there are a few types of sea salts. Firstly, you have your generic sea salt which will have fine or medium-sized crystals that you will use in everyday cooking. This will be used in water for boiling vegetables and pasta, on roasts and stew meats, and in dough or batters. Then you have the fancy sea salts such as fleur de sel, sel gris, and Maldon. They are less-refined creating delicate aromatic flakes with distinct textures. These are more pricey and you would use them to top caramel sauces or delicate garden lettuces.
In summary, your cooking toolbox will need to contain bulk sea salt and kosher salt for regular cooking, and a fancy salt with texture that can garnish food, such as Maldon salt or fleur de sel.
HOW SALT WORKS ON*
- Meat: Salt needs to have time to diffuse into the center of meat, so a little salt in advance will go a longer way than a lot right before cooking. Aim to season the day before cooking, if possible. However, any amount time is better than none. The larger and denser the meat, the earlier you should salt to allow for tender, flavorful meat.
- Seafood: Fish and shellfish degrade when salted too early making them tough and chewy. Generally, salt lightly 15 minutes before cooking. For meatier fish, you could even go up to 30 minutes, but nobody wants a rubbery fish.
- Fat: Use a cautious and light hand. Salt takes time to dissolve into fats because of their low water content, so salt slowly and taste as you go.
- Eggs: Add the salt before cooking! If poaching, lightly salt the water. If cooked in shell, salt before serving. This is an easy one.
- Vegetables and Fruit: Salt + heat = softer veg & fruit. Toss in salt and oil before roasting. Salt water before blanching. Add salt into the pan with veggies and fruit when sautéing. With larger vegetables, like zucchini and eggplant, salt 15 minutes early to allow the salt to be absorbed.
- Fungi: Fungi will lose water and become tough if salted before cooking, so wait to salt until they begin to brown.
- Legumes and Grains: To flavor dried legumes from within, add salt when you soak them or when you begin to cook them. If your legumes and grains are still tough, keep simmering! The most common reason for tough beans and grains is undercooking. Be weary of over-salting water when cooking grains because the long cooking time will allow for more of the salt in the water to be absorbed.
- Doughs and Batters: The addition of salt strengthens gluten in doughs, making it more chewy and elastic. Prepare yourself, here comes a lot of info. Salt takes a while to dissolve in foods with low water content, so add to bread dough early. Leave it out altogether from Italian pasta dough, allowing the salted water to do the work. Add early to ramen and udon doughs to strengthen the gluten to get desired chewiness. Add later to batters and doughs for cakes, pancakes, and pastries to keep them tender.
*very brief, practically a summary of a summary, don’t come for me.
HOW TO USE SALT
Rule of thumb: When salting water, make it taste like your memory of the ocean. Don’t be appalled at how many handfuls of salt you add. Most will be thrown out when the water is drained, so you’re not actually consuming that much sodium. This method will help to ensure your food is evenly and thoroughly salted within.
- Timing: Salt is very slow to diffuse, so when cooking something big or dense, season the ingredient as early as possible to give it time to reach the center. Heat helps with this diffusion, so warm food will absorb salt faster. Lastly, water helps with salt absorption, so watery cooking methods can be helpful when you don’t have time to salt in advance.
- Measuring: The best way to learn how much salt to add is to practice. I know that doesn’t help much, but the type of salt you have, size of your pans, how much water you use and a hundred other variables are different than my own. Nosrat’s general ratios are 1 percent salt by weight for meats, veg, and grains, and 2 percent salinity for water for blanching veg and pasta. So yeah, take that as you will, but I suggest salting with confidence for a while until you figure out your own measurements.
- Techniques: Firstly, you got the good ol’ palmful. This is when you’re salting large amounts of water. Secondly, the ever reliable “wrist wag”. Described as, “lightly grasping the salt in your upturned palm and letting it shower down with a wag of the wrist”. This method is used to season trays of vegetables and larger cuts of meat. It can be practiced on a bare baking sheet in order to understand and perfect your distribution until it is even. Lastly, the delicate pinch. Rarely used during the cooking process, the pinch is best utilized to perfect the final garnish. A pinch of salt can top slices of avocado on grilled bread, halved hard-cooked eggs, or delicate caramels.
- Layering: When tackling a dish, you need to consider the different forms of salt you will be adding before you begin. The “salt” in your dish could be pickled vegetables, cheese, hot sauce, olives, or anchovies. Always taste as you go and use logic to assess whether additional salt is needed.
- Balancing: Sometimes we over-salt and sometimes we under-salt. It’s not the end of the world. You can dilute your food by adding more water/stock/rice/potatoes/etc to an over-salted recipe. Continue to add more of the main ingredient while adjusting everything accordingly to compensate. If this will yield too much food, halve your over-salted concoction. Freeze one half of the over salted mixture for another meal, and dilute the remaining half. Sometimes food isn’t over-salted, you just need to balance it. Add a few drops of acid or fat, such as lemon juice or olive oil. If it tastes better, apply the change to the rest of the batch. Sometimes the over-salted portion is the liquid, so you can remove the food from the water or soup and try to adjust the liquid in order to prevent too much salt from absorbing into your main ingredients.
- Improvising: Ask yourself 3 questions when using salt: When? How much? In what form? Soon your answers will form a road map for improvisation. Through fearless experimentation you can become that friend who can make something out of anything. I believe in you.
So, how often did you salt? How often are you going to salt now? When I read this book all I could think about was there is no way people salt everything that goes on to their plate. Then one day, I decided to salt my go-to tomato sauce and it was like I had been a shell of a human my whole life. Never knowing the potential of flavors and how it could transform the simplest of recipes into an explosion in your mouth. Cliché and corny? Yes. Wrong? No. Don’t let me fool you, though. I’ve over-salted one too many dishes when experimenting with these new techniques. If you get nothing else from this novel of a blog post, get this: for the love of god taste as you go and don’t be afraid.
Salt with abandon,
P.S. If you liked this post and want to see more of our opinions on the world of food, check out this post.
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