In my kitchen, I don’t give any special priority to salt and pepper, they’re just two seasonings among many. My most-used seasoning is probably garlic powder.
How come no special priority to salt? From what I understand getting the salt level right is essential (“salt to taste”). Doing so makes a dish taste “right” and it brings out the flavors of the other ingredients, making them taste more like themself, and not necessarily making the dish taste saltier in too noticeable a way.
I don’t salt most food because excess sodium is unhealthy and it’s pretty easy to exceed the recommended dose. IIRC the healthiest dose is 1500–2000 mg and most people eat more like twice that much.
To my knowledge, sodium is the only seasoning that commonly causes health problems. All other seasonings are nutritious or at worst neutral. In fact I think this distinction justifies use of the phrase “salt and spices” as meaning “[the unhealthy seasoning] and [the healthy seasonings]”.
I often add soy sauce to food (which has a lot of sodium) and eat foods that already contain salt (like imitation meat or tortilla chips or salted nuts). I rarely add salt to foods.
I don’t think I lose much by not salting food. Many people way over-salt their food to my taste. (I remember when I used to eat at my university’s dining hall, about 1 in 5 dishes were borderline inedible due to too much salt.)
I took a cooking class once. The instructor’s take on this was that yes, people do have too much sodium. But that is largely because processed food and food at restaurants has crazy amounts of sodium. Salting food that you cook at home is totally fine and is really hard to overdo in terms of health impact.
In fact, she called it out as a common failure mode where home cooks are afraid to use too much salt in their food. Not only is doing so ok, but even if it wasn’t, by making your food taste better, it might motivate you to eat at home more and on balance lower your total sodium intake.
Related to that, I’ve noticed that “external” salt tastes way saltier per mg of sodium than “internal” salt. Taking a sample of two items from my kitchen:
Gardein crispy chick’n has 2.0 mg sodium per calorie, and doesn’t taste salty at all to me
Mission tortilla chips have 0.7 mg sodium per calorie, and taste significantly salty
In my kitchen, I don’t give any special priority to salt and pepper, they’re just two seasonings among many. My most-used seasoning is probably garlic powder.
How come no special priority to salt? From what I understand getting the salt level right is essential (“salt to taste”). Doing so makes a dish taste “right” and it brings out the flavors of the other ingredients, making them taste more like themself, and not necessarily making the dish taste saltier in too noticeable a way.
I don’t salt most food because excess sodium is unhealthy and it’s pretty easy to exceed the recommended dose. IIRC the healthiest dose is 1500–2000 mg and most people eat more like twice that much.
To my knowledge, sodium is the only seasoning that commonly causes health problems. All other seasonings are nutritious or at worst neutral. In fact I think this distinction justifies use of the phrase “salt and spices” as meaning “[the unhealthy seasoning] and [the healthy seasonings]”.
I often add soy sauce to food (which has a lot of sodium) and eat foods that already contain salt (like imitation meat or tortilla chips or salted nuts). I rarely add salt to foods.
I don’t think I lose much by not salting food. Many people way over-salt their food to my taste. (I remember when I used to eat at my university’s dining hall, about 1 in 5 dishes were borderline inedible due to too much salt.)
I took a cooking class once. The instructor’s take on this was that yes, people do have too much sodium. But that is largely because processed food and food at restaurants has crazy amounts of sodium. Salting food that you cook at home is totally fine and is really hard to overdo in terms of health impact.
In fact, she called it out as a common failure mode where home cooks are afraid to use too much salt in their food. Not only is doing so ok, but even if it wasn’t, by making your food taste better, it might motivate you to eat at home more and on balance lower your total sodium intake.
Related to that, I’ve noticed that “external” salt tastes way saltier per mg of sodium than “internal” salt. Taking a sample of two items from my kitchen:
Gardein crispy chick’n has 2.0 mg sodium per calorie, and doesn’t taste salty at all to me
Mission tortilla chips have 0.7 mg sodium per calorie, and taste significantly salty
I generally prefer external salt for that reason.