Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

Highlights

• salt, which enhances flavour;
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• fat, which amplifies flavour and makes appealing textures possible;
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• acid, which brightens and balances;
• heat, which ultimately determines the texture of food.
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• there is no better guide in the kitchen than thoughtful tasting, and that nothing is more important to taste thoughtfully for than salt.
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• Salt is a mineral: sodium chloride.
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• The human body can’t store much salt, so we need to consume it regularly in order to be able to carry out basic biological processes, such as maintaining proper blood pressure and water distribution in the body, delivering nutrients to and from cells, nerve transmission, and muscle movement. In fact, we’re hardwired to crave salt to ensure we get enough of it.
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• Salt that is left behind when seawater evaporates is sea salt, whereas rock salt is mined from ancient lakes and seas, some of which now lie far underground.
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• The primary role that salt plays in cooking is to amplify flavour.
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• It means use salt better. Add it in the right amount, at the right time, in the right form. A smaller amount of salt applied while cooking will often do more to improve flavour than a larger amount added at the table.
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• Salt has a greater impact on flavour than any other ingredient
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• Salt’s relationship to flavour is multidimensional: it has its own particular taste, and it enhances the flavour of other ingredients. Used properly, salt minimises bitterness, balances out sweetness, and enhances aromas, heightening our experience of eating.
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• Salt should taste clean, free of any unpleasant flavours.
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• Though all salt crystals are produced by evaporating water from saltwater brine, the pace of evaporation will determine the shape those crystals take.
• When formed as a result of rapid evaporation in a closed container, salt crystals become small, dense cubes—granular salt.
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• On the other hand, salt produced slowly through solar methods at the surface of an open container will crystallise into light, hollow flakes.
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• A tablespoon of fine salt will pack more tightly, and can be two or three times “saltier” than a tablespoon of coarser salt.
• Kosher salt is traditionally used in koshering, the traditional Jewish process by which blood is removed from meat. Since kosher salt contains no additives, it tastes very pure.
• The more quickly salt dissolves, the less likely you are to overseason a dish, thinking it needs more salt when actually the salt just needs more time to dissolve.
• Sea salt is what’s left behind when seawater evaporates. Natural sea salts such as fleur de sel, sel gris, and Maldon are the less-refined result of gradual, monitored evaporation that can take up to five years.
• Taking the shape of delicate, distinctly aromatic flakes, fleur de sel—literally, “flower of salt”—is harvested from the surface of special sea salt beds in western France.
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• When it falls below the surface of the water and attracts various sea minerals, including magnesium chloride and calcium sulphate, pure white fleur de sel takes on a greyish hue and becomes sel gris, or grey salt.
• Maldon salt crystals, formed much like fleur de sel, take on a hollow pyramid shape, and are often referred to as flaky salt
• Our taste buds can perceive five tastes: saltiness, sourness, bitterness, sweetness, and umami, or savouriness.
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• aroma involves our noses sensing any of thousands of various chemical compounds. The descriptive words often used to characterise the way a wine smells, such as earthy, fruity, and floral, refer to aroma compounds.
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• Flavour lies at the intersection of taste, aroma, and sensory elements including texture, sound, appearance, and temperature.
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• salt affects both taste and flavour. Our taste buds can discern whether or not salt is present, and in what amount. But salt also unlocks many aromatic compounds in foods, making them more readily available as we eat.
• Salt also reduces our perception of bitterness, with the secondary effect of emphasising other flavours present in bitter dishes. Salt enhances sweetness while reducing bitterness in foods that are both bitter and sweet, such as bittersweet chocolate, coffee ice cream, or burnt caramels.
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• Tasting and adjusting—over and over again as you add ingredients and they transform throughout the cooking process—will yield the most flavourful food. Getting the seasoning right is about getting it right at every level—bite, component, dish, and meal. This is seasoning food from within
• The distribution of salt throughout food can be explained by osmosis and diffusion
• In food, the movement of water across a cell wall from the less salty side to the saltier side is called osmosis
• Diffusion, on the other hand, is the often slower process of salt moving from a saltier environment to a less salty one until it’s evenly distributed throughout.
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• Given the chance, salt will always distribute itself evenly to season food from within, but it affects the textures of different foods in different ways.
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• Since diffusion is a slow process, seasoning in advance gives salt plenty of time to diffuse evenly throughout meat.
• Think of a protein strand as a loose coil with water molecules bound to its outside surface. When an unseasoned protein is heated, it denatures: the coil tightens, squeezing water molecules out of the protein matrix, leaving the meat dry and tough if overcooked. By disrupting protein structure, salt prevents the coil from densely coagulating, or clumping, when heated, so more of the water molecules remain bound. The piece of meat remains moister, and you have a greater margin of error for overcooking.
• This same chemical process is the secret to brining, the method in which a piece of meat is submerged in a bath of water spiked with salt, sugar, and spices. The salt in this mixture, or brine, dissolves some of the proteins, while the sugar and spices offer plenty of aromatic molecules for the meat to absorb.
• Unlike meat, the delicate proteins of most fish and shellfish will degrade when salted too early, yielding a tough, dry, or chewy result. A brief salting—about fifteen minutes—is plenty to enhance flavour and maintain moisture in flaky fish.
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• Lean meat has a slightly higher water (and protein) content—and thus, greater capacity for salt absorption—than fattier cuts of meat, so cuts with a big fat cap, such as pork loin or rib eye, will not absorb salt evenly.
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• Most vegetables and fruit cells contain an undigestible carbohydrate called pectin. Soften the pectin through ripening or applying heat, and you will soften the fruit or vegetable, making it more tender, and often more delicious, to eat. Salt assists in weakening pectin.
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• In preparations where all of the cooking water will be absorbed, and hence all of the salt, be particularly careful not to overseason.
• Properly seasoned cooking water encourages food to retain its nutrients. Imagine that you’re cooking green beans in a pot of water. If the water is unseasoned or only lightly seasoned, then its concentration of salt—a mineral—will be lower than the innate mineral concentration in the green beans. In an attempt to establish equilibrium between the internal environment of the green beans and the external environment of the cooking water, the beans will relinquish some of their minerals and natural sugars during the cooking process.
• On the other hand, if the water is more highly seasoned—and more mineral rich— than the green beans, then the opposite will happen. In an attempt to reach equilibrium, the green beans will absorb some salt from the water as they cook, seasoning themselves from the inside out. They’ll also remain more vibrantly coloured because the salt balance will keep magnesium in the beans’ chlorophyll molecules from leaching out. The salt will also weaken the pectin and soften the beans’ cell walls, allowing them to cook more quickly. As an added bonus, there will be less of an opportunity for the green beans to lose nutrients because they’ll spend less total time in the pot.
• season your cooking water until it’s as salty as the sea
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• taste the water to make sure it’s highly seasoned before you add any food.
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• Salt is very slow to diffuse. If you are cooking something big or dense and want to get salt into it, season the ingredient as early as possible to give salt the time to travel to the centre.
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• Heat stimulates salt diffusion. Salt will always diffuse more quickly at room temperature than in the fridge.
• Water promotes salt diffusion. Use watery cooking methods to help salt penetrate dense, dry, and tough ingredients, especially if you don’t have time to season them in advance.
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• In liquid, an early addition of whole spices initiates a flavour exchange: as the spices absorb liquid, they relinquish some of their volatile aromatic compounds, gently flavouring the liquid in a way that a little sprinkle at the end of cooking could never achieve.
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• Spices, like coffee, always taste better when ground just before use. Flavour is locked within them in the form of aromatic oils, which are released upon grinding, and again upon heating.
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• Even when following a recipe, if you realise that a dish needs more salt, take a moment to think about where that salt should come from.
• Some foods forgive undersalting more readily than others.
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• The three basic decisions involving salt are: When? How much? In what form? Ask yourself these three questions every time you set out to cook.
• food can only ever be as delicious as the fat with which it’s cooked.
• I learned that where olive oil comes from has a huge effect on how it tastes—oil from hot, dry hilly areas is spicy, while oil from coastal climates with milder weather is correspondingly milder in flavour.
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• fat plays three distinct roles in the kitchen: as a main ingredient, as a cooking medium, and, like salt, as seasoning.
• The role fat plays as a cooking medium is perhaps its most impressive and unique. Cooking fats can be heated to extreme temperatures, allowing the surface temperature of foods cooked in them to climb to astonishing heights as well. In the process, these foods become golden brown and develop the crisp crusts that so please our palates.
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• Put simply, fat carries flavour. While certain fats have their own distinct flavours, any fat can convey aromas—and enhance flavours—to our palates that would otherwise go unnoticed.
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• Because cooking fats can withstand temperatures well beyond the boiling point of water (100°C at sea level), they perform a crucial task that water cannot—the facilitation of surface browning, which typically does not begin at temperatures below 110°C. In some foods, browning will introduce entirely new flavours, including nuttiness, sweetness, meatiness, earthiness, and savouriness (umami).
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• Colour has little to do with the quality of olive oil, and it offers no clues to whether an olive oil is rancid. Instead, use your nose and palate: does the olive oil smell like a box of crayons, candle wax, or the oil floating on top of an old jar of peanut butter? If so, it’s rancid.