The Salt Guide
How to Master the Most Important Ingredient in Cooking
Hey, everyone! Today I’m going to talk about the single most important ingredient in all of cooking— salt. Learning how to utilize salt is perhaps the foundational skill in learning how to cook.
To understand salt, you have to grasp one simple concept: salt enhances existing flavors in food.
The vast majority of the time, salt does not add flavors to food. That's what things like spices and sauces do. Salt really just enables us to taste existing flavors more acutely. It does other things (draws out moisture, changes the texture of certain foods, aids in preserving foods, etc), but it primarily serves as a flavor enhancer.
You can easily experience this yourself next time you eat an avocado. First, try a bite of avocado without salt. Notice the flavors. Then try an identical piece with a small sprinkling of salt on top. You'll notice that the flavors are far more prominent, and the un-salted avocado tastes dull by comparison. The salt, in a weird way, makes the avocado taste more like an avocado.
One of the secrets of the restaurant industry is just how much salt is used in professional kitchens. Many people wonder why the food they cook at home doesn't taste as good as the food they eat in restaurants. Proper (and generous) use of salt is a huge factor there.
If you want to make food at home that tastes delicious, you have to learn how to properly use salt. And to use enough of it. Many people are afraid of over-salting their food, but you can easily prevent this by salting in stages and tasting as you go. You can always add more salt to a dish, but you can’t draw salt out from one.
With that in mind, let’s dive into how to approach salt.
Buying Salt
There are a ton of different salts on the market today. This means you have a lot of options, but it can also be confusing.
Generally, I recommend that everyone keep two types of salt at home— one salt for everyday cooking (with a finer grind) and one salt for finishing (with a flaky or coarse grind). Once you feel comfortable using those two, you can branch out into other types like smoked salts, flavored salts, and Japanese deep-sea salts.
My biggest recommendation for everyday salt is to pick one brand and use it consistently. A pinch of salt from one brand can be significantly saltier that that of another brand, so it helps to familiarize yourself with one so that you can estimate exactly how much salt you’re adding.
The final factor to consider in buying salt is whether you want sea salt or spring salt (also called mineral salt).
A quick bit of background: All salt comes from the ocean, if you go back far enough. Most large salt brands source sea salt from modern oceans— which are unfortunately highly polluted. There’s not a ton of great data on this, but many people do think that these salts could carry contaminants, microplastics, and other unwanted materials. For that reason, some people (myself included) prefer to source salt that comes from salt deposits from ancient oceans. There are salt mines in Utah, West Virginia, Peru, the Himalayas, and elsewhere that contain salt from since-evaporated ancient oceans. These salts have a higher mineral content, are more pure, and often have a “cleaner” taste than industrial alternatives, many of which are bleached and stripped of their minerals.
My Recommendations
Most chefs I know prefer Diamond Crystal for their everyday salt. I’ve used Diamond Crystal for years and I like it a lot, but I recently switched to Redmond, which is sourced from ancient mines in Utah, for my everyday salt.
There are a lot more options when it comes to finishing salt, so I have quite a few recs:
Only Salt (beautiful coarse salt sourced from ancient mines in Peru)
JQ Dickinson (a variety of salts sourced from an ancient mine in West Virginia)
Jacobsen Salt Co (my favorite flavored salts)
Maldon (beautiful flakey and flavored salts)
How to Master Salt
Salt in Stages
Salt needs time to permeate food. Salting your food right before you eat it will result in food that's super salty on the outside and salt-free on the inside. Not ideal. Furthermore, the salinity profile of foods will change as they cook (and as the salt permeates). If you salt in stages, you'll allow your food the opportunity to absorb salt at various layers, and you'll be able to slowly build towards the salt profile that you want, while still maintaining good balance.
Taste as You Go
There's no point in salting in stages if you're not tasting your food at each stage. This is absolutely critical, as you'll never master salt unless you do this.
If you're cooking something like a big piece of meat, you'll want to salt generously, then wait a bit for the salt to settle before cooking it. If you're roasting vegetables, you'll want to salt them beforehand, and possibly add more as the cooking process continues. Same goes for anything that's sautéed. For things that are boiled, you'll want to salt the water itself. You can taste these things throughout the cooking process and add more salt as necessary. Not only will the salt permeate and distribute more evenly, but you'll ultimately get a better flavor profile. Salting everything at once is a crapshoot. If you taste as you go, you're in full control.
Know Which Ingredients Add Salt
There are quite a few ingredients that you might use in your cooking that are sources of salt– these include soy sauce, fish sauce, miso, anchovies, various hot sauces, certain types of cheese, certain types of broth/stock, and more. If you're cooking with these ingredients, you're not going to need as much direct salt. If you taste as you go, you'll know when you need to add more.
Learn Your Salt Types
For the vast majority of people, there exists just one type of salt– table salt. For salt nerds, there are literally hundreds of different types with various nuances. I personally keep a few different types of salt on deck, but most home cooks only need an everyday salt and a finishing salt, as I mentioned before.
Your everyday salt is the salt that you should keep easily accessible in large quantities. It’s what you’ll use in the vast majority of your cooking. Your finishing (flaky) salt can be used for finishing dishes— think of what you might sprinkle on a sliced steak or avocado.
If you're feeling fancy, pick up some black lava salt, red salt, pink salt, green salt, or French sel gris. There are a lot of cool salts out there. Smoked salt is a fun option, as are various flavored salts. This Jacobsen/Masienda collaboration is one of my favorites.
Get a Salt Cellar
When I worked in professional kitchens, the first thing I would do each day was fill up a pint-sized plastic container with salt. That thing came with me everywhere, all day long. At home, I like something a little bit more aesthetically pleasing– I got this one as a gift.
Because salt is the most important ingredient, you want to have easy access to it whenever you're cooking. The best way to do that is with a salt cellar that sits in a convenient spot on your counter.
You can use anything for this– a small bowl, a wide cup, a squat mason jar, etc. The important thing is that it stays on your counter where it's easy to access and that it's always full. Just don't use anything with a lid, as that just adds another step and inconvenience.
Finally, I beg you not to use a salt shaker or a grinder. You'll never have proper control over the amount that you use, and it will take far too long to do. You need to have easy access to grab big pinches of salt in order to season properly.
You can keep your flaky sea salt in a special container, since you'll use it less often. For your everyday cooking salt, having a salt cellar is an absolute necessity.
Salt from Up High
When you are sprinkling salt on your food (especially for meat), you want to salt from up high, rather than from just above your food. The salt will distribute more evenly, coating the entire surface area of the food. If you hold your fingers just an inch above your food when you salt it, the salt will land in large clumps in certain places, and not at all in others. If you hold your fingers 6-10 inches above your food, it will layer far more evenly, and the food will taste better. This point was drilled into me so intensely when I cooked professionally that it's become instinct, and it’s worth developing as a habit.
Hopefully this info is helpful! Got questions? Feel free to shoot me an email!