Enhance Your Cooking With One Ingredient

There’s been a salt revolution in my kitchen over the past year. After reading Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.* (an absolute must-read. I’ve read it in-detail twice and recommend it to anyone who will listen!), I further solidified my love and appreciation for salt.

Why Salt Is So Important

Salt is a CRUCIAL (and often overlooked) component to making food taste good. Salt helps your ingredients taste more like itself and heightens the flavor of your food.

The key is learning all the ways to utilize salt. After all, you don’t want to be eating a salt lick, but you also don’t want bland food. The best way to master this is to always, always, always taste your food as you cook! Your taste buds are the best guide to making great food and balancing flavors, instead of just hoping for the best when you’re finished cooking.

For example, if I notice flavors in a sauce or soup falling flat while cooking, I add salt and taste it again to see if it’s balanced. Although salt definitely should not be the only way you balance your food, I think it’s the best starting place to transform your cooking.

Basic Salt Tips To Enhance Your Cooking

Season (salt) your food before AND throughout the cooking process, not just at the end with the salt shaker on your table. By then, it’s normally too late and the salt you add will just sit on top of your food—resulting in food tasting salty instead of flavors that are enhanced by salt.

Sometimes it’s not about adding more salt, but more TIME to let the salt work its magic. One of the best ways to understand this phenomenon is salting meat. The sooner you add salt to your meat before cooking (though normally not more than a day in advance), the more time salt has to diffuse itself into the meat. This allows the meat to be properly seasoned throughout, not just on the outside! This transforms the flavor, making meat juicy and tender.

Here’s a helpful guide of how far in advance you should salt your food. To be honest, I normally don’t remember to salt meat until an hour or two before cooking unless it’s a special occasion. But, an hour is better than nothing!

2 Days In Advance

• Big roasts

• Thanksgiving turkeys

1 Day In Advance

• Chicken (thighs, breasts, legs, etc.)

• Duck

• Steaks (ribeye, filet, new york strip, etc.)

• Pork (tenderloin, belly, shoulder, etc.)

15 Minutes Before Cooking

• Thicker fish filets

Right Before You Start Cooking

• Fish Filets (salmon, halibut, tilapia, cod, etc.)

• Shellfish (scallops, shrimp, etc.)

• Vegetables for roasting or grilling (potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, squash, etc.)

• Scrambled Eggs

• Pots of water that you plan on using to boil vegetables or pasta

As You’re Cooking

• Sauces

• Sautéing vegetables

Before You Serve (This is a great time to use fancy salt!)

• Most Salads

• Tomatoes

• Baked goods you want to sprinkle a little salt on to balance out sweetness

Once You’ve Served

• Hopefully, no salt is needed here because you did such an awesome job at seasoning before and during the cooking process!

Get yourself a lil’ salt bowl. Or just a tiny Tupperware. I find it helpful to feel how much salt I am adding to my food. I also think it’s easier to distribute salt evenly when I’m sprinkling it with my hands rather than using a shaker/grinder.

There are other sources of “salt” besides salt grains. Depending on the type of meal you’re making, cuisine, etc., it might be more fitting to add more Parmesan cheese than salt. Parmesan is a source of that salty-goodness taste that transforms the flavors in your food. Experiment with layering your sources of salt and taste throughout to find the right balance. Other salt sources include:

• Certain cheeses

• Capers and olives

• Picked vegetables, fermented foods, or anything stored in brine

• Miso

• Soy sauce

• Cured meats

Types of Salt To Use

There are two different types of salt you should have in your kitchen—1) Everyday cooking salt and, 2) Fancier salt reserved to top foods with. If you are only going to buy one, DEFINITELY go with everyday salt.

• 1) Kosher Salt (Your Basic, Everyday Salt)

  • Kosher salt doesn’t contain iodine or additives, so it tastes like pure salt. Use kosher salt for practically everything—seasoning meats, adding to your pot of water before cooking pasta or boiling vegetables, tossing with vegetables before roasting, etc.

• 2) Sea Salt (Fancier Salt)

  • Although it takes many forms, sea salt is typically coarser and more expensive than kosher salt. Think of the fancy salt flakes on top of caramels or brownies. One of the fancier brands is called Maldron, and it can be used to pinch on top of chocolate cookies, salads, or wherever you see fit when “finishing” foods with salt. I typically just use the sea salt carried at Trader Joes!

Normal table salt found in salt shakers is typically iodine-enhanced. Although this salt is better than no salt at all, it has a slight metallic taste that isn’t as “pure” as kosher or sea salt.

This is not a comprehensive guide by any means, but I hope it’s a great starting place to leveling-up your salt game!

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Notes:

*Much of this information is a condensed form of the content in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. I would highly recommend grabbing a copy to learn more about salt’s role in cooking and the overall science around balancing the four components of great food!