Name: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
Rating: 4.4 (49 reviews)
Author: Samin Nosrat

Introduction

What’s in it for me? Learn the fundamental secrets behind good cooking.

For many people, cooking is about following a recipe – a series of instructions written by an expert on how to make your desired dish. The expert tells you, “Use these ingredients, these tools and these procedures to produce this food.” Why these ingredients, these tools and these procedures? The expert never tells you. You just have to trust her!

Unfortunately, the more complicated the instructions are, the more difficult it is to follow them. And the more mysterious they seem, the more you feel unable to deviate from them and the more pressure you feel to follow them to a T. This, in turn, makes you feel less able to be creative, which can take the pleasure out of cooking.

Fortunately, there are some simple culinary tricks and principles that will not only make cooking easier, but will enable you to understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, thus freeing you up to be creative and take your cooking to the next level.

Learning these tricks and principles boils down to understanding the functions of the four basic elements of cooking: salt, fat, acid and heat.

In these blinks, you will learn

the unexpected source of a great cookie’s flavor;
how remembering the story of Goldilocks can help you master the art of crispiness; and
the secrets to making a superb tomato sauce – and bringing it back from the brink of disaster.

Key idea 1 of 8

Use plenty of salt in your cooking water and pick the right method of salting.

James Beard, the famous American cook, once asked, “Where would cooks be without salt?” Well, if you know how crucial salt is to enhancing flavor, you’ll know the answer: a very bland place. This is why you should learn how to harness the culinary power of salt.

To see why, imagine you spare the salt when boiling green beans. What would happen? Well, if the salt level of the water is low, then the mineral level of the water will be lower than the mineral level of the beans. To restore equilibrium, the minerals will drain out of the beans into the water, making the beans bland and limp.

In contrast, if the cooking water is amply salted, the beans will absorb some of the minerals from the water, thereby seasoning them from the inside. As an added bonus, the absorbed salt will help soften the beans, enabling them to cook faster. It will also help them hold onto the magnesium in their color-giving chlorophyll cells, allowing them to stay green.

This isn’t to say you should just always go hog wild with salt; different dishes call for different amounts of salt – and depending on how much salt you want to use, you’ll want to apply one of three different salting methods.

The first method is salting by the palmful. Here, you’re grabbing salt and adding large amounts of it with each release of your fist. This is the method to use when salting water to boil pasta and vegetables. The aim is to add enough salt to make the water taste like saltwater, so you want to be open-handed with the salt, both literally and figuratively.

For trays of roasted vegetables or meat, the aim is more of an even distribution of salt than a large quantity of it. To achieve this evenness, use the second method: the wrist wag. To do it, turn your salt-filled palm upward and gently shake it, allowing the salt to fall evenly over the tray. Repeat this process until the whole tray is evenly salted.

If you’re salting small appetizers, such as sliced hard-boiled eggs, you’ll want to use just a pinch of salt – and the third method is precisely that: simply pinch the salt between your fingers!

Key idea 2 of 8

While salt even has a place in sweet dishes, pepper is less universal.

You might think of salt and sugar as polar opposites. But despite their differences, they can actually complement each other in a delicious way. Indeed, salt is such a superhero of the culinary world that it can even improve sweet dishes.

It can do this because of its main superpower: its ability to enhance flavors – including sweet ones. But you don’t have to take someone else’s word for it; you can prove it to yourself the next time you’re baking cookies.

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Key idea 3 of 8

Fat enhances flavor, too, and it’s good to choose your cooking fats carefully.

Fat might have a bad reputation, but imagine cooking without it. Picture a salad dressing without olive oil, a sausage without fat content or a croissant without butter. Why do these items seem unappetizing?

The reason is simple: like salt, fat is a flavor enhancer. However, salt and fat enhance flavors in different ways. Whereas salt reinforces flavors, fat enables you to fully taste them.

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Key idea 4 of 8

Fat is the key to crispiness, but mastering it takes practice.

According to the American chef Mario Batali, the most effective adjective to use when advertising food is “crispy.” Why? It’s simple: people love eating crispy foods. But how do you make them crispy? That’s a bit more complicated.

The short answer is another single word: fat. To understand how fat helps to make food crispy, you need to know the basic science behind crispiness.

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Key idea 5 of 8

Acid can be delicious, but it needs to be balanced with other flavors and used wisely.

“Mouthwatering” may be a word that’s overused by food writers, but it still conveys an important truth: we enjoy foods that make our mouths water – that is, produce saliva. And no ingredient makes our mouths produce more saliva than acid.

To harness the mouthwatering power of acid, you’ve got to balance it with other flavors. That’s because, like salt, acid is more of a team player than a solo star. After all, both of them would taste pretty bad by themselves. Rather than tasting good on their own, they make other ingredients taste better; that’s their power.

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Key idea 6 of 8

When making dishes containing acid, start with “cooking acids,” and then add “garnishing acids.”

As with salt, the key to harnessing the power of acid lies in using it the right way. To do so you need to keep in mind the two basic types and functions of acid: cooking acids and garnishing acids. These are also the two stages of using acids, so let’s start with the first.

As their name suggests, cooking acids are the acidic ingredients you use while you are cooking a dish. These ingredients serve a seasoning role throughout the cooking process, and there are many common examples of them: the tomatoes in spaghetti sauce, the vinegar or rice wine in a marinade, the white wine in a risotto.

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Key idea 7 of 8

Heat is important for cooking protein, and you should consider it before you even turn on the stove.

Heat is to cooking what light is to photosynthesis: it’s the transformative element – the one that turns raw into cooked, runny into sticky and pale into golden brown. As such, heat is crucial to nearly every aspect of cooking – but there are some places where it is particularly important.

One of those places is cooking protein-rich foods. Here’s one way to think about proteins: imagine them as a ball of thread floating in water. Now, if you heat the water, the threads will start to loosen – but if you continue to heat it, the threads will start to clump together, which will squeeze out the water between them.

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Key idea 8 of 8

Making a great tomato sauce involves knowing how to stop it from burning and adding a final flourish.

One place where you can see how salt, fat, acid and heat all come together is that staple of Italian cooking: tomato sauce.

The secret lies in getting these details just right. Here’s one approach. Begin by pouring a thin layer of olive oil into a pot set on medium-high heat. When the oil reaches a gentle sizzle, add two sliced onions and salt.

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Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat summary