You might be using salt wrong. Here are two crucial lessons

Dear friends,

Does your food not taste so good? Well, you might be using salt wrong. Allow me to share with you two crucial lessons:

#1: What salt does

Salt does a lot of things, but the thing I want you to remember right now is, when used thoughtfully:

Salt makes food taste good.

You don’t want your food to taste salty. My friend Bryan describes salt as a flavor “volume knob” that makes things taste more like themselves. Take a tomato. Eaten raw, it tastes pretty good — but it’s a bit muted, the flavor’s out of focus. As you add salt, the tomato starts to blossom into its full self — rich, sweet, bright and just aching to be put in a BLT. Put another way, salt sharpens the tomato-y-ness of a tomato. Try it at home this summer!

#2: How to use salt

Do not trust a recipe blindly, because there are so many different types of salt out there, and each has its own grain size, saltiness and uses. Let’s go over a few:

• Fine salt: Often found in the shakers on the table at diners. I don’t use it much, as I find it difficult to “eyeball” the correct amount, but the small, uniform size of the grains makes it good for baking.
• Kosher salt: The workhorse, this is the main salt I use in cooking. For many, Diamond Crystal is a go-to brand — though I recently found out that it is owned by Cargill, a massive agricultural company controversial for its connection to deforestation and other ecological destruction — but you might also be interested in smaller, local producers like Jacobsen.
• Flaky or finishing salt: Used on the plate (rather than during cooking), finishing salt adds crunch, elegance and a burst of salinity. Put it on your avocado, your summer tomatoes or your chocolate chip cookies!

It does not matter what salt you use! The most important thing is to familiarize yourself with whatever salt you use by learning to salt, or “season,” to taste. Seasoning to taste means: Salt food until it tastes good to you.

Taste your food often, and think about what you tasted. Does it taste delicious? If not, add (or “adjust”) salt until it does. (It might also need fat or acidity, but we’ll talk about that another time.) You’ll become more intuitive about what effect different amounts of salt have on your food.

To sharpen your seasoning skills, get rid of your salt grinders and shakers, and get yourself a salt “pig,” or cellar. Put your salt in a container and start using your fingers and your hands to add salt to your food. A small bowl or a plastic deli container work great — I use a small ceramic cup my brother made me. No matter what container you use, remember: Cooking is tactile, and the best way to get to know salt is by touching it with your hands.

Different ingredients and tasks need different amounts of salt: You might need a small pinch, a big pinch or a palmful. Notice the way the salt feels in your hand, how it looks on your food and how it affects the way your food tastes. The goal is for salting to become muscle memory, your fingers an extension of your brain and your palate.

When cooking something with multiple components, each individual part should taste good, so it’s important to salt throughout the cooking process. If you make a big pot of soup but only add salt at the end, you’ll end up with a tasty broth with a bunch of not-so-tasty stuff floating in it. Not so good.

Instead, season a little at each step: before you sear your meat, when you sauté your vegetables and when you add the broth. It’s better to add a little salt throughout than a lot of salt at the end.

In sum:

• Salt makes food taste more like itself
• Don’t trust a recipe blindly
• Taste often
• Season, by hand, throughout the cooking process
  

Salt, taste, think, adjust. Do that, and your cooking will improve. I promise. I’m pretty sure.

If you want to learn more about salt, I highly recommend Samin Nosrat’s book, “Salt Fat Acid Heat,” and if you like a more scientific approach, Harold McGee’s “On Food and Cooking” is a classic. Let me know what you want to learn about next, or if you are at this point wondering who I am, perhaps you could watch my “hello” video!

That’s all for now. Happy summer, and talk to you all again next week.

Yours,
Cody

P.S. No recipes yet — soon! For now, remember to be mindful of how you use salt in your everyday cooking, to taste your food before and after salting. My homework for you is to go get yourself a tomato and try an unsalted and salted slice side by side.

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