Measuring Salt
Abandoning precise measurements when using salt requires an initial leap of faith. When I was first learning how to cook, I always wondered how I’d know when I’d added enough. I wondered how I’d avoid using way too much. It was discombobulating. And the only way to know how much salt to use was to add it incrementally and taste with each addition. I had to get to know my salt. With time, I learned that a huge pot of pasta water required three handfuls to start. I figured out that when I seasoned chickens for the spit, it should look like a light snowstorm had fallen over the butchering table. It was only with repetition and practice that I found these landmarks. I also found a few exceptions: certain pastry, brine, and sausage recipes where all of the ingredients are precisely weighed out don’t need constant adjusting. But I still salt every other thing I cook to taste.
The next time you’re seasoning a pork loin for roasting, pay attention to how much you use, and then take a moment when you take your first bite to consider if you got the seasoning right. If so, commit to memory the way the salt looked on the surface of the meat. If not, make a mental note to increase or decrease the amount of salt next time. You already possess the very best tool for evaluating how much salt to use—a tongue. Conditions in the kitchen are rarely, if ever, identical twice. Since we don’t use the same pot every time, or the same amount of water, the same size chicken or number of carrots, measurements can be tricky. Instead, rely on your tongue, and taste at every point along the way. With time, you’ll learn to use other senses to gauge how much salt to use—touch, sight, and common sense can be just as important as taste. The late, great Marcella Hazan, who authored the indispensable Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, could tell when a dish needed more salt by simply smelling it!
My general ratios for measuring salt are simple: 1 percent salt by weight for meats, vegetables, and grains, and 2 percent salinity for water for blanching vegetables and pasta. To see what these numbers translate to by volume for various salts, take a look at the chart on the next page. If using the amounts of salt I prescribe terrifies you, try a little experiment: set up two pots of water, and season one as you normally would. Season the other to 2 percent salinity, and note what it feels and looks like to use that much salt. Cook half of your green beans, broccoli, asparagus, or pasta in each pot of water, and compare the flavour when you eat them. I suspect the taste test will be enough to convince you to trust me.
Consider these ratios a starting point. Soon—maybe just after one or two pots of pasta—you’ll be able to judge how much salt is enough by trusting the way the grains feel as they fall from your palm and whether or not, upon tasting, you’re transported to the sea.
How to Salt
Once you realise how much salt it takes to season something properly, you might start to believe there’s no such thing as too much. This happened to me. I remember when a chef I particularly admired walked into the downstairs butchery room where I’d been sent to season pork roasts for the following night’s dinner. Having recently come to appreciate the power of salt, I decided that in order to cover the roasts evenly, I’d roll them in a huge bowl of salt to ensure that every surface was adequately coated. As she came down the stairs, her eyebrows shot up. I’d been using enough salt to cure the roasts for three years! They’d be completely inedible the next night. I spent the next twenty minutes rinsing the salt off the meat. Later, the chef showed me the proper hand grasp for distributing salt evenly on large surfaces.
I didn’t understand the nuances of the act of salting until I began paying attention to the various ways cooks used salt in different situations. There was the way we salted pots of water for blanching vegetables or pasta with near abandon, adding palmful after palmful, only to await its dissolution, lightly skimming a finger across the rolling boil, tasting thoughtfully, and more often than not, adding even more.
There was the way we seasoned trays of vegetables, lined up duck legs butchered for confit, even larger cuts of meat, and pans of focaccia ready for the oven. This was done by lightly grasping the salt in your upturned palm, letting it shower down with a wag of the wrist. This grasp—not the hovering pinch I was used to—was the way to distribute salt, flour, or anything else granular, evenly and efficiently over a large surface.
Practise the wrist wag in your own kitchen over a piece of parchment paper or on a baking sheet. Get used to the way the salt falls from your hands; experience the illicit thrill of using so much of something we’ve all been taught to fear.
First, dry your hands so the salt won’t stick to your skin. Grab a palmful of salt and relax. Jerky or robotic hand motions make for uneven salting. See how the salt lands. If it lands unevenly, then it means you’re seasoning your food unevenly. Pour the salt back into the bowl, and try again. The more your wrist flows, the more evenly the salt will land.
This isn’t to say that you never want to use a pinch of salt, which can be used like a nail-polish-size bottle of touch-up car paint to fix a scratch on a fender. It might not have much potential to repair major damage, but applied precisely and judiciously, it will yield flawless results. Use a pinch when you want to make sure each bite is salted just so: slices of avocado atop a piece of grilled bread, halved hard-boiled eggs, or tiny, perfect caramels. But try to attack a chicken or a tray of butternut squash slices with the pinch, and your wrist will give out long before you’re done.
Salt and Pepper
While it’s true that where there’s pepper there should almost always be salt, the inverse isn’t necessarily so. Remember, salt is a mineral and an essential nutrient. When salted, food undergoes a number of chemical reactions that change the texture and flavour of meat from within.
Pepper, on the other hand, is a spice, and proper spice usage is primarily guided by geography and tradition. Consider whether pepper belongs in a dish before you add it. Though French and Italian cooks make abundant use of black pepper, not everyone does. In Morocco, shakers of cumin are commonly set on the table along with salt. In Turkey, it’s usually some form of ground chilli powder. In many Middle Eastern countries, including Lebanon and Syria, it’s the blend of dried thyme, oregano, and sesame seeds known as za’atar. In Thailand, sugar can be found alongside chilli paste, while in Laos, guests are often brought fresh chillies and limes. It doesn’t make any more sense to automatically season everything with pepper than it would to add cumin or za’atar to every dish you cook. (To learn more about spices used around the world, refer to The World of Flavour here.)
When you do use black pepper, look for Tellicherry peppercorns, which ripen on the vine longer than other varieties, and therefore develop more flavour. Grind them at the last moment onto a salad, a toast smeared with creamy burrata and drizzled with oil, sliced ripe tomatoes, Pasta Cacio e Pepe, or slices of perfectly cooked steak. Add a few whole peppercorns to a brine, braise, sauce, soup, stock, or pot of beans as you set it on the stove or slip it into the oven. 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.
Spices, like coffee, always taste better when ground just before use. Flavour is locked within