Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Samin Nosrat

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      Inexpensive and rather forgiving, kosher salt is fantastic for everyday cooking. I prefer Diamond Crystal—even when I’ve accidentally salted dishes twice with this salt while enjoying a little too much my conversation, the company, or a glass of wine, the food has emerged unscathed.

      Sea Salt

      Sea salt is what’s left behind when seawater evaporates. Natural sea salts such as fleur de sel, sel gris, and Maldon are the less-refined result of gradual, monitored evaporation that can take up to five years. Taking the shape of delicate, distinctly aromatic flakes, fleur de sel—literally, “flower of salt”—is harvested from the surface of special sea salt beds in western France. When it falls below the surface of the water and attracts various sea minerals, including magnesium chloride and calcium sulphate, pure white fleur de sel takes on a greyish hue and becomes sel gris, or grey salt. Maldon salt crystals, formed much like fleur de sel, take on a hollow pyramid shape, and are often referred to as flaky salt.

      Because natural salts are harvested using low-yield, labour-intensive methods, they tend to be more expensive than refined sea salts. Most of what you’re paying for when you buy these salts is their delightful texture, so use them in ways that allow them to stand out. It’s a waste to season pasta water with fleur de sel or make tomato sauce with Maldon salt. Instead, sprinkle these salts atop delicate garden lettuces, rich caramel sauces, and chocolate chip cookies as they go into the oven so you can enjoy the way they crunch in your mouth.

      The refined granular sea salt you might find at the grocery store is a bit different: it was produced by rapidly boiling down ocean water in a closed vacuum. Fine or medium-size crystals of this type are ideal for everyday cooking. Use this type of sea salt to season foods from within—in water for boiling vegetables or pasta, on roasts and stew meats, tossed with vegetables, and in doughs or batters.

      Keep two kinds of salt on hand: an inexpensive one such as sea salt or kosher salt for everyday cooking, and a special salt with a pleasant texture, such as Maldon salt or fleur de sel, for garnishing food at the last moment. Whichever salts you use, become familiar with them—with how salty they are, and how they taste, feel, and affect the flavour of the foods to which you add them.

      Salt’s Effect on Flavour

      To understand how salt affects flavour, we must first understand what flavour is. Our taste buds can perceive five tastes: saltiness, sourness, bitterness, sweetness, and umami, or savouriness. On the other hand, aroma involves our noses sensing any of thousands of various chemical compounds. The descriptive words often used to characterise the way a wine smells, such as earthy, fruity, and floral, refer to aroma compounds.

      Flavour lies at the intersection of taste, aroma, and sensory elements including texture, sound, appearance, and temperature. Since aroma is a crucial element of flavour, the more aromas you perceive, the more vibrant your eating experience will be. This is why you take less pleasure in eating while you’re congested or have a cold.

      Remarkably, salt affects both taste and flavour. Our taste buds can discern whether or not salt is present, and in what amount. But salt also unlocks many aromatic compounds in foods, making them more readily available as we eat. The simplest way to experience this is to taste an unsalted soup or broth. Try it next time you make Chicken Stock. The unseasoned broth will taste flat, but as you add salt, you’ll detect new aromas that were previously unavailable. Keep salting, and tasting, and you’ll start to sense the salt as well as more complex and delightful flavours: the savouriness of the chicken, the richness of the chicken fat, the earthiness of the celery and the thyme. Keep adding salt, and tasting, until you get that zing! This is how you’ll learn to salt “to taste.” When a recipe says “season to taste,” add enough salt until it tastes right to you.

      This flavour “unlocking” is also one reason why professional cooks like to season sliced tomatoes a few minutes before serving them—so that, as salt helps the flavour molecules that are bound up within the tomato proteins, each bite will taste more intensely of tomato.

      Salt also reduces our perception of bitterness, with the secondary effect of emphasising other flavours present in bitter dishes. Salt enhances sweetness while reducing bitterness in foods that are both bitter and sweet, such as bittersweet chocolate, coffee ice cream, or burnt caramels.

      Though we typically turn to sugar to balance out bitter flavours in a sauce or soup, it turns out that salt masks bitterness much more effectively than sugar. See for yourself with a little tonic water, Campari, or grapefruit juice, all of which are both bitter and sweet. Taste a spoonful, then add a pinch of salt and taste again. You’ll be surprised by how much bitterness subsides.

      Seasoning

      Anything that heightens flavour is a seasoning, but the term generally refers to salt since it’s the most powerful flavour enhancer and modifier. If food isn’t salted properly, no amount of fancy cooking techniques or garnishes will make up for it. Without salt, unpleasant tastes are more perceptible and pleasant ones less so. Though in general the absence of salt in food is deeply regrettable, its overt presence is equally unwelcome: food shouldn’t be salty, it should be salted.