We are always looking for ways to improve the food we serve to our friends and family, that is part of the lesson of this site by tracking those things we get better.  Today we are looking at a simple oft-villainized ingredient: Salt.  As I have worked on my cooking over the years I have come to learn through both testing and reading how important salt is to building flavor. It is one of the essential building blocks of life but in the kitchen it gets a bad wrap.

Walking past the warnings on sodium etc that are so often yelled at us we will look instead at: cooking implications and types of varieties you should have on hand in a good kitchen. Let’s start first with the types, at a minimum you should have:

– Iodized: Fine grained, salty, ideal for baking and measured dishes.
– Flake/Finishing: Sea Salt is ideal, one of my favorites is Maldon. Primarily used for finishing dishes, it is for  that high sprinkle on a completed dish right before you serve.

– Kosher: This splits the difference in grain between the two above and is the workhorse of my kitchen.  I use it to build flavor, for layering, and seasoning items ahead of time.

Now on to the how of salting. This is just as important in producing tasting food and becoming a better cook. There are two main techniques that don’t seem to get enough airplay when it comes to the use of salt. I learned both from the forwards of cook books by two of the greats: Thomas Keller & Alice Watters.

I credit Keller with teaching me what my wife refers to as the “high salt.” Sprinkling salt on dishes from a shoulder height or higher level ensures more even distribution over the dish and doesn’t leave over/under seasoned bites.

To Alice Waters goes the credit of improving the process of salting dishes by seasoning individual ingredients before combining them in a dish. Say you are making tomato sauce: chop each ingredient individually and salt them as such before combining. The try just adding salt to the already combined ingredients in a second batch. The first batch comes out brighter, more nuanced and much more flavorful.

So there you have it the Chief Food Officers on Salt.