How do you like your salt?
I am a total salt lover, always have been. I can eat salt flakes straight from the box, seriously. And I would rate salt as being The Most Essential ingredient you have in your house.
You might have noticed that I never give any actual measurements for seasoning, I think it’s important that you salt to your preference. But not everyone knows how to do this, which is entirely understandable.
One thing I find a lot is that people tend to under season. Is it from the fear of making something too salty? Mostly I would say yes, but it also comes down to knowledge in flavour. So the first step in improving the final taste of your cooking is to adopt the salt is my friend attitude. And not be shy.
The second step is one of the most important things (in my opinion) that you should always do when you’re cooking and that is taste everything the whole way through as you are making it - not just at the end when it’s all finished. Doing this will help you to understand your dish better. I know that sounds a bit arrogant and a bit toffee but seriously the more you taste as you go, the more you will learn your flavours and begin to understand better how salt can alter the taste at different stages in a cooking process.
Salting foods, in the beginning, helps to develop the taste and salt at the end finishes it with a more dramatic burst in flavour.
For example, we salt meat before we cook it to enhance it’s natural salt flavours, but what the salt is also doing is drying or sealing in the natural juices of that beautiful piece of protein and by doing so is also creating that lovely golden brown crust on the outside of the meat. Isn’t salt amazing!
Salt can also help to balance out flavours, an example of this would be in a tomato-based sauce. You may have cooked it out for a decent amount of time and the tomatoes are deepening into a lovely rich flavour, but there is still an acidic almost bitter flavour, well salt is your friend and will balance out that bitter taste and miraculously bring out the sweetness of the tomato……LOVE IT!
Seriously I could rant for hours about all the fantastic things this precious resource can do. However, back to what salt to use and when.
I have a few different salts in my pantry. However, the ones I find most important for everyday cooking are:
Table Salt
These days I’m using iodised (I was converted a few years back for its additional health benefits in preventing iodine deficiency).
I find table salt to be ideal for everything you want to salt at the beginning and throughout the cooking process. So use this for the pinch of salt in your water pot, or those raw veg that are getting tossed before going in the oven to roast and those wet dishes like a saucy stew. Table salt is also excellent for salting meat items such as mince before you brown it off.
Sea Salt Flakes
My preference is Maldon sea salt. Believe it or not some salts are in fact more salty in flavour than others. I find the Maldon flakes are the best for that epic burst of salty taste that you want in the finishing stages of cooking and presenting. Perfect for salads and dressings, sprinkling over your steamed veg or across your roasted vegetables at the end or over the top of your crumbed pork. It is also my preference when salting things like steak before you want to put it on the BBQ.
Himalayan Pink Sea Salt Flakes
I absolutely love the colour, but that's not why I use it. Pink salt flakes I find have a lovely soft, salty flavour which is ideal for more delicate foods like fresh fish; actually, that is the main thing I use it for. Otherwise, I quite like it as a condiment on the table simply because it’s beautiful looking.
So the next time you make something that you think tastes pretty good but just a bit dull think about whether it needed to be salted more in the beginning, did you taste it as you were going or could a sprinkling of sea salt over the top at the end, turn it from something dull into something delicious?