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Perfect seasoning is the key to great food and it helps to think of salt as a tool to help you bring the natural flavors of your ingredients to the foreground. Give the process a bit of thought and with a little practice, seasoning like a pro should become second nature. And, for an extra layer of flavor, consider giving our homemade all-purpose seasoning blend a try.
How to Salt Your Food
Salting food intensifies, develops, blends, and balances flavors, so it should be added in small quantities throughout the cooking process. Salt is a powerful flavor enhancer, but it takes a little time to work its magic, so salting your food during the various stages of preparation is the key to great taste.
As mentioned above, kosher salt is the best choice for use during cooking because it’s easy to control the quantity, it adheres to food well, and it dissolves fairly easily. You should keep your salt handy while cooking so you can easily add a pinch here and there. You can get yourself a special container like a salt pig or wooden saltbox, or just dish some up in a small prep bowl and store it near the stove.
If you have artisanal salts on hand, reserve them for use as a finishing element so that their individual flavor profiles are not lost in the cooking process.
Types of Salt
Learning to salt your food correctly as you are preparing it is probably one of the most important cooking skills you can develop and understanding the differences between the various types of salt can be a big help. Here’s a brief guide to the most common varieties.
Table Salt and Kosher Salt
Table salt and kosher salt are the two most common varieties of salt.
- TABLE SALT: Table salt is the most common salt variety, and since it is a practical choice for baking and cooking, you’ll find it in just about every household. Table salt comes from salt mines, has very fine crystals, and commonly has iodine added for nutritional value (iodized).
- KOSHER SALT: Kosher salt is the top choice of professional chefs because of its coarse grain. It is easy to grab a “pinch” and control the quantity when adjusting the seasoning in a dish. Like table salt, it comes from mines and is called kosher, not because it conforms to the dietary laws of the Jewish religion (just about all salt is kosher), but because its texture is optimal for the “koshering” of meat.
Both table and kosher salt are composed of pure sodium chloride with the controlled addition of an anti-caking substance and possibly iodine as mentioned earlier.
Sea Salt
Sea salts differ from table and kosher salt in that they are obtained from evaporated seawater. In addition to sodium chloride, sea salts contain various trace elements that are inherent to the seawater in the area they come from.
Sea salts are often used as finishing salts because they are flaky, dissolve easily, and adhere well to most foods. Different varieties have subtle differences in flavor. Once you taste a few varieties, you may decide to keep several on hand for different applications.
The best-known sea salts are sel gris and fleur de sel, both from the Brittany region of France. Sel Gris is composed of heavier crystals that have acquired the gray hue of the earth at the bottom of the salt ponds where the evaporation process takes place. The lighter crystals that float to the surface of the salt ponds are skimmed off and dubbed Fleur de Sel.
Other common varieties of sea salt are Maldon, Hawaiian “Red,” and Trapani. Maldon, produced on the east coast of England, is a mild salt with a distinctive texture. Hawaiian “Red” salt is a mellow-tasting salt that contains natural trace minerals and electrolytes from a type of Hawaiian clay called Alaea. Trapani salt, harvested from the Mediterranean on the northwest coast of Sicily, is a balanced variety with a relatively low percentage of sodium chloride.
Himalayan Pink Salt
Himalayan pink salt is in a class by itself. Painstakingly mined from deep within the Himalayan Mountains, these salt deposits were created hundreds of millions of years ago during the mountain range’s formation.
Himalayan Pink Salt is among the purest and healthiest of salts, containing dozens of trace elements and minerals including magnesium, calcium, potassium, copper, and the iron that passes on its delicate pink hue. In addition to its beautiful appearance and notable health benefits, Himalayan salt has a distinctive subtle flavor that makes it a winning choice as a finishing salt.
When to Add Salt to Your Foods During Cooking
Here are a few guidelines for salting common foods:
- Add salt to meat, fish, and poultry just before you are ready to cook it for maximum flavor enhancement. Some believe that salting meats prior to cooking draws out the juices and produces a dry end result, but this is simply not true. What salting meats too far in advance of cooking can do, however, is inhibit browning.
- When making a sauce, add a pinch of salt to ingredients like garlic and onions while sautéing, add your liquids and salt again. Finish cooking, taste, and adjust the salt once more if necessary. It may sound like you’d be using too much salt this way, but surprisingly, if you work in stages you will most likely end up using less salt because the flavors of your ingredients will develop more fully.
- When blanching or boiling vegetables, salt the water prior to cooking. If you are steaming your veggies, salt immediately after cooking. Roasted and grilled vegetables should be salted prior to cooking. Raw vegetables should be salted just before serving.
- For a simple vinaigrette, add the salt to the vinegar and dissolve before adding the oil. Then, add a pinch more salt to your greens and toss before dressing.
- For homemade stock, add salt to your flavoring ingredients during the sautéing or roasting stages – not to the liquid. Once the stock is finished, taste and adjust the salt accordingly.
- When cooking pasta or boiling potatoes, always salt your water before adding the food.
Proper Salting Proportions
- FOR SOUPS, STOCKS, SAUCES, AND GRAVIES: Use 1-1/2 teaspoons Kosher salt per quart. If using table salt, reduce to 1-1/8 teaspoons per quart.
- FOR RAW MEATS, POULTRY, FISH, AND SEAFOOD: 3/4 to 1 teaspoon Kosher salt per pound. If using table salt, cut back to 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoons per pound.
- FOR SALTING PASTA WATER: Add 1 teaspoon of Kosher salt (or 3/4 teaspoon table salt) for each quart of water. The general rule of thumb for water quantity is 4 quarts per pound of pasta (4 teaspoons of Kosher salt).
Important note: These proportions don’t apply when using pre-prepared ingredients like store-bought broth, sauces, or seasoned meats.
What about a pound of lentils, kidney beans, or garbanzos? 1 and 1/8 teaspoon salt for quart of water? What if vegetables are added (e.g. tomatoes spinach onions), should more salt (1/2 tsp salt per onion) be added? Thanks in advance.
Hi Alexandra – Here’s some info about salting lentils and beans:
Lentils:One cup of dry lentils should be cooked in about 4 cups of water. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and add 1 teaspoon of salt. Once the lentils are cooked you can adjust the seasoning in the finished dish with additions like meat or veggies.
Kidney and garbanzo beans: One cup of beans (rinsed and soaked) should be cooked in about 2 quarts of water. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, reduce to a gentle simmer and wait until the beans are about halfway through their cooking time before adding 1 to 1-1/2 teaspoons of salt. Kidney beans take 1-1/2 to 2 hours to cook, garbanzos take a little longer.
Waiting until beans are somewhat tender before salting allows them to absorb the flavor and still maintain good texture. Once the beans are cooked, you can add them to your dish – soup, chili, etc. and adjust the seasoning as you see fit.
Hope this information helps.
Great article! I always wondered which or how much salt is added when cooking. Great reference for me at home.
Thank you for sharing this information. However, I happen to over salt as I do each layer. Ugh.
Do you have a general rule of thumb for salting say a 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes or plum or puree tomatoes?
Hi Karen,
If you find you are over-salting when you season in layers it may be because the cook time between those saltings is not long enough for your flavors to develop fully. That’s just the nature of some recipes, not a failing on your part. The trick is to know when that possibility exists. Sometimes, when you taste food immediately after seasoning you won’t be able to detect the full effect. Be a little more conservative because as I’m sure you’ve learned, you can always add more seasoning, but you can’t take it away once it’s there. When it comes to seasoning crushed tomatoes or puree, it really depends on what you’re going to be cooking with it because tomato products (unless you buy salt-free) already have a fair amount of salt in them. Here’s an example: I often make a quick marinara sauce by first sautéing onion and garlic in olive oil, then adding chopped tomatoes. I lightly season my onion with a scant 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt and few grinds of black pepper. Then I add the garlic, sauté until fragrant, and add a 28-ounce can of chopped tomatoes. I reduce the heat and simmer on low for about 15 minutes before tasting for additional seasoning. If however, I plan to cook Italian sausage in that sauce, I add no salt at all until I see what it tastes like after the sausage is fully cooked. Of course this is just one example. If you get back to me with something more specific, I’ll be happy to weigh in further. Hope this helps a little.