Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

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!