A salty affair

This is a filler post with no recipe, just wanted to share my thoughts on the issues people face when they start cooking for the first time. I was just going through an informal Facebook survey and almost everyone said that the basic problem they had when they started cooking was how to put the right amount of salt. Like everyone else, I experienced the same thing too.

Salt can very sneaky. When we are new to the world of cooking and are more focused on the more complicated ingredients, the humble salt can create problems because it is so easy to forget about it and its powers! For eg, most recipes (including mine) say Salt to taste. Hai?? As a beginner, I am sure everyone thinks ‘So how much salt do I like?’ I mean it’s easier to think how spicy you want your food to be and you accordingly adjust the amount of chilli powder etc. But salt, which doesn’t have any taste of its own except that it is salty, tends to confuse cooks. All that goes through their minds is ‘I don’t want it to be too salty’ and in their apprehension that they will put more salt, they under season it. Less salt is safe but it makes the food bland and fails to do what salt is primarily supposed to do — bring out the flavours of the other ingredients — resulting in a meal where everything is cooked according to the recipe but that ‘salt to taste’ messes up the whole thing!

One of my recent favourite shows on the Food Network is Worst Cooks in America. It is different from the usual reality shows because here you can see the genuine panic and apprehension on the participants’ faces as they try to master the art of cutting a piece of fish correctly or something simple as boiling potatoes. You can almost see the wheels turning in their heads as they decide which herbs go well with what spices, how long to cook the meat, and after all that training and execution they all fail at one thing: Seasoning. They either put more salt or too less, resulting in cringing judges.

But I don’t blame the poor participants. I used to put more salt when I first started cooking and when it happened repeatedly, I became too careful and started putting less salt, thinking one can always add some table salt later. Later I started putting salt in stages, a little by little, checking every few minutes if it tasted okay. That was a very effective method of ensuring that you are not putting too much or too less. It kind of made me paranoid because I would keep having spoons full of gravy every five minutes, but it was worth it as I gradually got an idea of how much salt to put.

Another thing one needs to remember is that if you have a runny gravy or sauce, you can put more salt as the volume of the liquid is more. But as the water starts evaporating, your dish will become saltier. Hence if you are making a fairly dry dish to be served with rotis or breads, don’t keep adding salt because the same dish that tasted good when there was a lot of gravy, will taste too salty when it becomes drier.

With a little accident and experience, you will also get an idea of the right amount of seasoning and be able to add it without much thought later. Now I just sprinkle ‘salt to (my) taste’. Good luck in finding yours!