You're (Probably) Not Salting Your Food Enough
By Katherine Sacks, Epicurious
Salt, and how you use it during cooking, greatly affects the taste of your food. Pepper and other spices also come into play, but salt is really the power player.
Here in the Epicurious test kitchen, we talk about recipes a lot. How to read them, write them, create them. And one thing that’s been coming up lately is salt. Do people instinctively season their food while they’re cooking? At which steps? Can we assume someone will salt pasta or blanching water? Will they salt sautéed onions? Or will they wait until they end before they season to taste?
Related: Our 12 Favorite No-Cook Pastas
SEASON AS YOU GO
In our Epi recipes, you’ll find seasoning mentioned throughout the process: boiling water is salted; sautéed vegetables are seasoned while cooking; meat is sprinkled with salt and pepper before cooking; and dishes are finished with a final seasoning to taste.
Each of these steps helps infuse flavor throughout the cooking process, so that the final dish is as delicious as possible. It’s not enough to simply sprinkle a little salt on your food at the end of cooking—imagine if you roasted Thanksgiving’s turkey and only sprinkled on salt at the end. The first bite might taste okay, but only the exterior is seasoned. Every other bite would be dry and bland.
Seasoning helps a dish become as delicious as possible. It’s not enough to simply sprinkle a little salt on your food at the end of cooking.
Vegetables, pasta, meats, they are all the same—in each step of cooking, you need to coax flavor out by adding a little salt, which helps draw out water and concentrate the food’s natural flavors, as well as spices, which infuses flavor throughout its structure. By seasoning throughout the cooking process, every bite is infused with flavor, not just the exterior.
And it’s key to remember that last “season to taste” instruction. Yes, we’ve written a recipe (and tested it several times, by the way), making sure to include the amount of salt, pepper, and spices that yield a flavorful end dish.
Related: 14 Main Course-Worthy Vegetarian Salads
But those amounts can vary depending on your ingredients—especially vegetables—which can vary dramatically in terms of flavor. So before you serve, always (always, always) make sure to taste and season. Even if you’ve followed a recipe to a T, in the end, you are the cook, and you’re responsible for making it taste delicious.
Want to infuse even more flavor into your recipes? Finish them off with a final sprinkling of an herbed salt, adding flavor and color to boot.
Ready to try it? Get the recipe for that juicy steak above here.
More from Epicurious:
14 No-Stress Ways to Cook Salmon
20 Must-Try Ways to Pair Items You Already Have In Your Pantry
12 Lightning-Fast Chicken Dinners to Make Now
PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER TESTANI
