Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Salt - A Sprinkling of Thoughts

Preserving balance where salt is concerned is increasingly hard. It is best to take with a pinch of salt all media reports on how much is too much. Whatever the personal stand, salt is a spicy topic with tons of health conditions where salt is reported culprit.

Before throwing the salt out with the bathwater, it is wiser to see what authoritative sites have to say about it. But that can be hard as popular science articles often do more harm than good, festering as they are with the fads they foster.


The (Political) Science of Salt says:
Three decades of controversy over the putative blood pressure benefits from salt reduction are demonstrating how the demands of good science clash with the pressures of public health policy.
Yet what's food without salt? Here, again, there are many salty issues: which salt, for example. Rock, Himalayan, iodised? Pass me my smelling salts before I faint with all these thoughts simmering in my mind!

While 'smelling salts' are a remedy about which I have read but have never used, I find table salt helpful for a few medical conditions. Gargling with comfortably warm water to which some salt has been added soothes my sore throats and I find that it helps my voice. It makes my mouth and gums feel good as well. In fact, there is A taste for salt in the history of medicine.

While there's a lot science has to say about salt, superstition peppers salt use liberally. Salt is thrown over shoulders, tossed into the corners of rooms and even bought every Friday. It appears to chase away bad vibes and invite prosperity.

While those are all fairytales, the truth is that salt makes many foods taste good and helps preserve foods too.

The question that remains tormenting to each new cook and to many veterans is: How much salt does a dish require?

Recipe writers appear to take it for granted that the reader knows how much salt to add. So they write: Salt to taste. This can be a major puzzle to many and lead to dishes that are either undersalted or ones that are too salty.

There is a lot of information about what to do when a dish is too salty. However, when a dish is undersalted, adding salt somehow never brings to the dish the same flavour that adding salt during cooking does.

So here are some tips to try out:
For a meat marinade, try a couple of teaspoons per kilo. That sounds alright to me. Vegetables, it is said, would take about the same. Here I'm not too sure.

I look forwards to reading what you, my readers, think on this issue. Please share, as comments, your own thoughts on how much salt a dish needs.

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