Do’s & Don’ts of Salt in Cooking
Salt is a magical ingredient. The right amount of salt will enhance the flavors of the ingredients and make them taste even better. But if you add too much or add it at the wrong time, food can change textures or become inedible.
Salt is also a preservative - it has been used for hundreds of years in every culture to lengthen the shelf life and stability of food. (This was extremely important before refrigeration because it helped reduce the water activity in food.) Now chefs are utilizing salt to cure deli meats, create fermentations, and change the perspective of a food. We hope to educate you on how to use salt during cooking to elevate your dish.
Here are the Do’s and Don’ts of using salt in cooking:
Do:
Salt in stages, tasting along the way.
Salt will have the opportunity to dissolve into the food.
Helps layer flavors in a dish.
Salt meat in advance as the salt causes an osmosis effect and will permeate throughout the muscle.
Heavily salt pasta water, it should be as salty as the sea.
Add a pinch of salt onto ice cream and fruit, we highly recommend grapefruits and granny smith apples.
Do Not:
Cook broad beans or peas in salted water as it hardens and cracks the skin.
Salt mushrooms before or while they are cooking as it makes them limp and will not brown.
Only salt at the end of the cooking process as the surface of the food will just then taste salty.
Next time you are cooking, try some of our incredible salt, pulled from the Tyrrhenian Sea in Italy:
To further your knowledge about salt, we really loved the books: Salt: World History by Mark Kurlansky, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat, and The Noma Guide to Fermentation by Rene Redzepi and David Zillber.