Is it boring to talk about salt? Adding salt during cooking is universal, right? And to those of us who cook regularly it becomes instinctive, the clench of two fingers, the flick of a wrist; it is also, however, the single most crucial element in cooking when it comes to success, or avoiding failure.
All too readily do know-it-alls raise eyebrows each time a cook or a recipe encourages one to reach for a pinch or two of salt. Especially when the very same cove reaches for a salt and pepper grinder to douse his abstemiously steamed veg, or unsalted rice and fish in freshly ground seasoning. It is lost on the smart Alec in this analogy that the late seasoner is the heavy seasoner, and that every grain of salt he grinds onto his food at the table goes straight into his finely honed gullet. A pinch of salt added directly to your food is a pinch of salt you consume personally, whereas a pinch of salt added up front, in the sweating of an onion perhaps, or transmitted through some boiling water or a simmering sauce, is a pinch of salt that insinuates into the core of the dish, is shared amongst the whole table, is sometimes left in or lost to the sauce.
Irked as I am, I know I am guilty of demanding my food be properly seasoned, and I suspect this means I consume salt at the upper end of the recommended intake. Even now, when I lurk about the stove at friends and families houses, I can be known to sneak a taste of whatever is cooking and add a pinch of salt here and there, if I think it needs it. I see it as a good deed, I’m reducing the need to grind at the table. I am saving them from overselling themselves. This might not be entirely a selfless act though, I can see that.
The thing is, salt makes things taste of something. It enhances flavour, it suppresses bitterness, it enhances aroma. Used judiciously, it is exactly what our food needs, as well as being exactly what we need. Our bodies need sodium in order to transmit nerve impulses, contract and relax muscles, and maintain a proper fluid balance. Granted, it doesn't take much to do this. A Harvard study found that “the Yanomamo people of the Amazon rainforest get by on just 200 mg of sodium a day (about...one-tenth of a teaspoon of salt)...the average American gets 3,400 mg (about 1 ½ teaspoons of salt), while in northern Japan the daily intake is a whopping 26,000 mg (more than 11 teaspoons of salt).” Some of us are indeed super sensitive to salt, others barely react. So there is no one size fits all when it comes to levels of consumption. What I would say though, as touched on above, is that getting salt into what you’re cooking early tends to mean you can end up using less salt overall.
I’m sure we’ve all eaten at people’s houses where the food arrives in front of you with a smug and virtuous announcement, that no, they ‘haven’t added much salt, but please do add more if you need.’ A grinder or little saucer of salt is placed in front of you. I always struggle with the order in which to approach the seasoning at this juncture. They’ve told you it needs salt, but you should try it first, right? If you try it and have to grind a load of salt on to make it edible, is that worse than grinding immediately and then tasting and then having to grind more? And I know that I am going to end up adding salt a few times throughout eating. As there is no seasoning in the core of the thing, each mouthfuls ends up needing its own seasoning; especially as performatively seasoning and tossing your food on your plate, at the table, is certain to illicit disapproving looks. I know, I’ve been there.
For salt obsessed milquetoasts, the good old geeks at Harvard have broken down how salt tends to get into our diet. Their estimate is that 5% of our salt intake is from salt added in cooking, 6% comes from salt added to a dish at the table, 12% is from salt that naturally occurs in the food we eat, and 77% comes from salt in processed food. What that means to me is that we don’t have to worry so much about properly seasoning the food we are cooking, instead we should all try and eat far less processed foods. Pre-made pasta sauces, soups, ready meals etc are so-damn-yummy because of their so-di-ummy (apologies, pretend you didn't read that.)
All of this is to say, I think it’s worth pausing to consider when and how we should season our food. Adding salt to your food is not an evil act. In fact, knowing when to add salt to your food can be the more abstemious act, can reduce the amount of salt you use. Below are a list of things that we call cook on a pretty regular basis, and I have recorded my knee jerk thoughts on how I use salt in each occasion.
I’ve also listed out a few commonly available salts and given you the benefit of my thoughts on them. These are highly personal likes and dislikes, so please do discount them at your leisure.
Salts:
Fine Sea Salt - for me this is the work horse of the salt world. Natural sea salt has a consistent salinity which means you can trust your seasoning with it. Learn how much your pinch is. Mine is just under a quarter teaspoon, and this means I can be comfortable adding a couple of pinches to a dish and know I am on the right side of the salting equation. The fine granules mean you can get quick and even seasoning, especially if going onto the surface of vegetables, a piece of fish, etc. Similarly, it dissolves quickly and evenly into a sauce or a volume of boiling liquid. I would say 90% of your salting needs can be covered with a tub of £1 fine sea salt.
Table salt - where sea salt comes from the evaporation of sea water, table salt, at its best, is mined from salt deposits underground and then refined, normally with iodine and some anti-clumping chemicals added. It is not fundamentally bad stuff, I just find its flavour harsher somehow, which might just be psychosomatic. If at all possible, I’d stick to fine sea salt as your workhorse in the seasoning department, it just has better minerals.
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