Books : The Elements of Cooking : Excerpts

3. Salt

I remember clearly the moment I heard it -- a bright Saturday afternoon, on the phone, seated at my desk in our old house. The truth of the news struck me like a spike. I was working with Thomas Keller on the proposal for what would become The French Laundry Cookbook. Relatively new to the world of professional cooking, I asked, "What's the most important thing for a cook to know in your kitchen?"

He paused, then said, "Seasoning."

"What do you mean, seasoning?"

"Salt and pepper." He paused again. "Salt, really."

"The most important thing for a cook to know is how to salt food?"

"That's right," he said.

The truth of it would only deepen as I continued to explore the craft of cooking. It is true not just for cooks in professional kitchens, but for all cooks in all kitchens, everywhere: learning to salt food properly is the most important skill you can possess.

No surprise, then, that salting food is one of the first things taught in culinary school. When my instructor judged my soup to be flat he told me to take out a ladleful and salt it, then compare the two. This would help me to understand what he called "the effect of salt," he said. You don't want to taste salt in the food -- that means it's been oversalted. You want it to taste seasoned -- meaning that it has an appropriate depth of flavor and balance, is not pale or insipid. Same with the water you boil pasta in. Before culinary school, I'd salted pasta water by putting a pinch into a giant pot of water. I don't know what I thought that was going to do -- if I'd given it even two seconds of consideration, I'd have had to conclude that the salt had absolutely no effect. My instructor explained that our pasta water should taste like properly seasoned soup. This would ensure perfectly seasoned pasta. Or rice, for that matter.

We learned to "season as you go" -- that is, salt your food throughout the cooking process because food salted at the beginning of or during the cooking tasted different from food salted just before it was served. The former tasted seasoned; the latter tasted salted.

So even from the outset of learning to cook properly I had discovered that I wasn't doing one of the most routine kitchen acts, salting food correctly. Keller said it was one of the first things they taught new cooks at The French Laundry. I scarcely thought about it -- salt had been an afterthought. That's what the salt shaker on the table's for, right?

Wrong. How to salt food. It's the most important skill you can have.

After my conversation with Keller nearly ten years ago, I paid a lot of attention to salt and how people used it. I also listened to the ubiquitous health warnings about the overconsumption of salt. I even wound up writing a book largely about salting food, Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing.

Judy Rodgers was the first chef I knew to address this matter head-on in her Zuni Cafe Cookbook. Common wisdom had always been that if you salted food early, it dried the food out. Looks that way. Salt a steak and a few hours later it's sitting in a puddle of red juices. But in fact the perpetual osmotic effect of salt enhances juiciness by changing the cell structure so that it holds more moisture. Salt also enhances the flavor of the meat by thoroughly penetrating it. And it dissolves the sticky protein myosin, so that in ground preparations -- hamburger, sausage -- the meat holds together.

Rodgers urges cooks to salt food early. The bigger the food is, the more salt it needs, and the more time with the salt that it needs. This is uniformly important with meat, but less so with fish; some fish is delicious after it's been packed in salt (salmon or cod) but some flesh is so delicate the salt can damage it if used too early. And it can even be true of vegetables. Vegetables with large watery cells are enhanced by early salting, such as onions, eggplant, peppers.

Rodgers learned about salt from French mentors for whom salt was not simply a seasoning. To them salt was, she writes, "the thing that keeps you from starving." Indeed, salt's role as humankind's all-purpose preserver of food -- allowing for a surplus of food, food that could serve as a basis for an economy, food that could feed crews on ships during extended explorations -- makes it one of the most influential substances on earth.

Salt should never be an afterthought.

Salt and your health:

Salt is so critical to our health that we have developed an extraordinary capacity for tasting it -- in order to regulate it. When we eat natural foods, that is unprocessed foods or processed foods containing only a few ingredients, we can use as much or as little salt as tastes good to us and do so without health concerns. Salt has become a problem in this country because we rely on heavily processed food (food that comes in boxes and plastic bags), which is infused with salt we don't necessarily detect, and we can easily consume far more than our body needs.

Some people have problems with high blood pressure and hypertension and must restrict salt intake. But generally speaking, salt is not bad for you. If you eat a lot of processed food, salt might be a problem, along with other health concerns. If you are healthy and eat good food, you should feel free to salt food to levels that taste good.

How to salt food:

There are only a few dictates when using salt. Use kosher salt, which is both economical and available everywhere, or sea salt, or another specialty salt if you wish. Never use iodized salt (iodide deficiency is no longer a problem in this country). Salt early in the cooking process, whether seasoning meat or seasoning a soup. Taste your food continually throughout the cooking and season it appropriately as you go.

Salting meat:

Most meat can be salted as soon as you get it, regardless of when you intend to cook it. Salting meat as early as possible not only allows the salt to distribute itself throughout the meat, it keeps the meat fresher. Salt prohibits the growth of microbes responsible for food's going bad.

Ironically, you need to be careful about salting creatures that lived in saltwater. Some fish is so delicate salt crystals will "burn" the flesh rather than distribute itself through it (scallops are a good example; they should be seasoned shortly before cooking).

Salting water:

There are two levels of salted water. Heavily salted water is used for boiling green vegetables and anything else that is not going to absorb a lot of the water. Moderately salted water, water that simply tastes seasoned, is used for rehydrating foods, such as pasta, rice, and legumes. See salted water in the glossary for recommended quantities.

Brines:

Brine -- salt dispersed throughout a very dense medium -- is an extremely effective salt delivery system, infusing food uniformly, predictably, and quickly. A good ratio for a brine is between six and eight ounces of salt per gallon of water; the stronger it is, the faster it works. The water can also be infused with aromatic vegetables, herbs, and spices; the salt helps to carry this flavor into the meat. Food that has been brined benefits from resting outside the brine before it's cooked so that the salt concentration, heavier at the exterior, equalizes throughout the meat (not dissimilar from allowing meat to rest after it comes out of the oven).

Preserving with salt:

Just about anything can be preserved with salt -- meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit -- with varying results in terms of quality and culinary uses. Pork is the meat most often preserved because it tastes so good. You can preserve beef tenderloin but why would you? Better to preserve a beef brisket (called corned beef, or, if smoked and spiced, pastrami).

Food can be preserved in dry salt. Bacon, salt cod, and duck breast are items typically cured this way. And it can be cured in a brine -- Canadian bacon (pork loin), beef brisket, and vegetables. And some food starts out in a dry cure but releases so much liquid, a brine is created -- salmon, cabbage (sauerkraut).

Even a sprinkling of salt, as if you were simply seasoning the food, has curing effects. Meat can be dredged in salt and left to cure. As much as a cup of salt per gallon will make a good curing brine. For natural pickles, that is a pickle that creates its own acid through fermentation, a precise 50 grams of salt per liter of water is perfect (a little less than 2 ounces, about a quarter cup of Morton's kosher salt, per quart).

All food behaves a little differently in salt. Ultimately you have to pay attention. Taste. Remember. Salt, taste, remember. Learn your own salt levels in cooking. Put a little soup or stock in a bowl and salt it, then compare the salted against the unsalted. Taste an unsalted tomato, then taste it with salt. Teach yourself about the effects of salt.