Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [95]
By comparison, a single tablespoon of a popular brand of salsa picante contains 250 milligrams of sodium. Refined salt is about 40 percent sodium and 60 percent chloride, so that equals 635 milligrams of salt. If you eat salsa like I do, you are in for at least four such “servings” (I call them “bites”) at a sitting, which is the equivalent of half a teaspoon of industrial table salt.
If the foods you are buying have either absurdly small serving sizes or very high sodium levels (over 200 milligrams per serving), there’s a good chance a food chemist has done some serious salting on your behalf. You don’t need other people salting your food for you. Leave those foods on the shelf. (To find sodium levels in most common foods, visit www.nutritiondata.com.)
Strategic Salting Rule #4
Make salting a deliberate act.
Challenge your salting habits. Think of salting as an opportunity rather than routine. You are enlisting the help of one of the most potent forces in cooking, and doing it thoughtfully establishes a new relationship between food and salt and enhances your skill and awareness as a cook. Never salt by rote. Aim to make whatever you are cooking better than the last time. Try something new once in a while.
Strategic Salting Rule #5
Use the right salt at the right time.
Salting is about two things: how salt chemically and physically modifies food, and how the interplay of salt and food affects the senses. The ionic properties of salt (see Baking) cause chemical changes to take place in food as it is prepared, whether you are roasting, curing, boiling, or baking. Finishing with salt is less about the chemical connections between salt and food and more about sensuous interplay between the salt and you. It allows the salt to project its crystalline character, which interacts with the textures and flavors of the food and the moisture and physiology of the mouth. The powers of salt in cooking and finishing are not discrete and exclusive. There is plenty of overlap: finishing with salt alters the surface of ingredients chemically; and salt added during cooking affects the flavor of food and stimulates taste buds.
SERVING AND STORING SALT
Salt should be served fresh. Obviously, this sounds funny. Many of us were brought up with salt stationed permanently at the table. If we were lucky, pepper was ground fresh. Salt never received such consideration. But many salts are moist. If the moisture dries up, they become hard and brittle and lose their charm. For the best results, salt should be thought of as a perishable food. If you are preparing a dish that will be finished with a moist salt such as sel gris or fleur de sel, put your salt out on the table just as you would a condiment. After you are done, put away the salt in an airtight container.
Fleur de sel, sel gris, and other moist salts especially should be stored in an airtight container, preferably glass. The amount of moisture in the salt is typically a matter of much consideration by the salt maker, so keeping the salt hydrated to near the level it had when it was made is vital to preserving it in its original, intended form. Yet over time, moist salts can dry out even in the best of containers. If you find your salt has grown hard, brittle, or crumbly, you can add about 1 teaspoon of water for every 8 ounces of salt in a glass jar, stir a few times with a nonreactant object like a wooden chopstick, and reseal for six hours. Then stir the salt again and inspect it by pinching some between the forefinger and thumb and rubbing