Hello everyone! I’m back today on the Cooking from scratch podcast to talk about … cooking!
Now, if you’ve been listening closely, you’ve heard that I’ve shifted focus a little bit in the last few episodes–I’ve been interviewing health coaches, doctors, mindful eating specialists, and others, diving more into the health and healing aspects of homemade meals.
Specifically I’ve been talking about high-protein eating for women over 40, because in the last couple of years I’ve started adding more animal-based protein to my meals, specifically aiming for 30 grams per meal, as this has been shown in studies to help women over 40 gain muscle (did you know we lost 1% of muscle mass every year after 40)?
Yea, and what I discovered is that I feel so much better eating more protein, I have more energy, specifically more sustained energy, and I’m hungry less often, leaving me more time for other things in my life.
Now that may sound funny coming from a trained chef, one who wants to cook LESS and not MORE, but for everyday cooking, I do value efficiency, I don’t think we need to kill ourselves spending hours on homemade meals, NOR do i think we need to give them up completely,
What I’m passionate about is helping people fit homemade meals that they love into their everyday lives, and discover new flavors that they love, because we ALL deserve to be nourished and healed by homemade meals.
So, I started eating high-protein meals, specifically animal-based protein, and
Today I want to talk to you about salt, because when properly used, salt plays an important part in enhancing the flavor of all our meals, and not necessarily to make foods taste salty.
I find that a lot of people are afraid of using salt, for fear of oversalting. The result? Bland tasting food with no flavor! Always be sure to taste the food you are cooking for salt.
A dish that has the proper amount of salt added to it should “pop” in flavor, and not taste “flat”.
Said another way, if you add more salt, it’s not necessarily going to make the food taste more salty, but rather bring out the flavor of the food itself.
If you taste a dish you’ve made, and are not sure if it needs more salt, try putting a small amount of the dish aside and salting that small portion. How does it change the flavor? Does it change the flavor? Compare it to the unsalted version. Use your tastebuds as your guide and salt accordingly.
Salt is essential for us to have in our diets, as our bodies don’t store much of it. However, it is important to use the right types of salt, both for flavor, and for health.
Everyone has their favorite types of salt. There is more than one option out there when it comes to choosing a quality salt, and I want to share MY favorites. The take-away lesson here is not that there’s only ONE salt to use, but rather to become familiar with the qualities of the salt you do choose to use in your cooking.
The salt I use everyday in my cooking is fine sea salt from a Salt Company harvested from ancient lakebeds in Utah, and it still contains some minerals from those ancient lakebeds, which you can see in the salt, and can be beneficial for our health.
Another good everyday salt option is kosher salt. I like Diamond crystal, it comes in a red box. Diamond crystal kosher salt has a much bigger granule than fine sea salt. Both are good options flavor wise. Kosher salt is inexpensive, and also a great salt for everyday cooking.
You may notice that the fine sea salt has a much finer granule than the kosher salt. For this reason, the sea salt is much saltier per teaspoon, because it is denser. When following a recipe, it’s always good to know what type of salt the author calls for. Often cookbooks will specify this in the recipe, or in the introduction.
Another great type of salt to have on hand is a finishing salt.
A finishing salt is a special salt, usually produced in smaller batches and by hand, often with bigger granules and pleasant textures. There are all different types of finishing salts, and depending on where they are from, and how they are harvested and dried, they will all be a bit different.
Here is a finishing salt from the northwest, here’s a smoked sea salt. Coarse flaked sea salt.
Part of my goal with this episode, and this podcast, is to help you understand what is going into your cooking, instead of blindly following recipes. For example, say you’re following a recipe that calls for kosher salt, but all you have on hand is a fine sea salt. Because you know that fine sea salt is denser, meaning it has smaller granules than kosher salt, you’ll want to use less sea salt than the amount of kosher salt the recipe calls for. Remember, you can always add salt, but it is very hard to take away.
You may be wondering, “what about table salt?”
Table salt is a fine grain salt that usually contains iodine. Iodine adds a metallic flavor to foods, and back when table salt was created, in the 1920s, there was a public health crisis with goiters, which are caused by an iodine deficiency in the diet. Iodine is something we can get from other foods in our diet, including seafood and dairy.
These days, It’s not necessary to have iodine in our salt, and because of the metallic flavor of the iodine, it’s preferable to use something like a fine sea salt or kosher salt. I’ve linked a video in this lesson too, to a video by the Redmond Real Salt company, that gives a little bit more detail about iodine in our salt, I urge you to watch it.
So more detail about the effect that salt has on the flavor of food. One of the ways that salt works is by diffusing into your food, slowly, over time. A great way to see this in action is when salting meat.
If you’re going to cook a piece of meat, it’s a good idea to salt it in advance. Depending on the size and cut of meat, it can be anywhere from 24 hours to 3 days before for getting maximum flavor into the food. This gives time for the salt to diffuse itself into the food.
Unfortunately you can’t make up for that by just piling extra salt on said piece of meat right before cooking it, and hoping it will quickly absorb salt, it won’t!
If you want to test this, the next time you plan to cook meat for dinner, \
say chicken. Salt one of the pieces of chicken in advance, 24, 12, 6, even 1-2 hours in advance, if that’s all the time you have.
So salt one of those pieces of chicken in advance, and don’t salt the other one until right before you cook it, and I want you to see the difference in flavor. Salting meat ahead of time gives time for the salt to diffuse into that food.
It’s really a startling difference, and you won’t forget to salt your meat in advance after tasting the difference.
Another thing that salt does is help break down foods, specifically proteins. Next time you cook scrambled eggs, scramble them up in the bowl before cooking, and I want you to make 2 different batches, in 2 different bowls.
In one bowl, salt the eggs, in the other bowl, don’t add any salt. Proceed to cook as you would.
What’s going to happen is that the eggs with salt are going to cook faster, because the proteins are starting to be broken down by the salt, prior to cooking. And when those eggs are cooking faster, it means there’s less time in the pan, you’re going to end up with fluffier eggs, instead of rubbery overcooked eggs.
So you want to add the salt to your eggs before cooking, so that they cook faster, and also for more flavor, they’re going to taste better, more like an egg, less flat.
Another way that salt works is by breaking down plant structure. This is apparent with cooking both beans and vegetables. When you cook beans from scratch, you always want to start the salting process early on, either when soaking them, or right at the beginning of cooking.
There is a myth out there that says salt makes beans tough, which is just not true. It’s acid that makes beans tough, but salt helps break down the beans, so that they will cook faster, yielding a softer, more buttery, end result. So try that one out too!
Same as with vegetables.
When I make soups and stews, I always add the salt in the beginning, when I’m sweating or sauteing the vegetables. This is going to help the vegetables break down faster, and it’s going to get salt into the inside of your food from the beginning. You’re basically adding flavor in layers, and the end result is your food being rich in depth of flavor, from the inside out.
Let me know if you have any questions about salt! To recap, great everyday salts is fine sea salt or kosher salt.
FAT
Now, let’s move on to fat. Fat is both an element of good cooking AND a building block of all foods, along with protein, carbohydrates, and water. Fat enhances the flavor of foods, both by the flavor of the fat itself that is used (like olive oil, butter, etc) but also any fat coats the tongue and allows our tastebuds to have a more prolonged experience with the aromatic compounds of foods. So the basic thing to remember is that fat = flavor.
I am picky about the fats that i keep in my kitchen, both for flavor and health properties. The fats I always have on hand are extra virgin olive oil, butter, avocado oil, and coconut oil which I use on rare occasions.
The important things to know about fats are their smoke points, that is the temperature at which they start to break down.
I use olive oil for raw applications like salad, for a finishing oil, and for up to medium-high heat applications. I don’t usually use it for grilling.
If I want a higher smoke point like for grilling, I use avocado oil. I use butter for lower heat applications, baking, and for finishing as well. About butter, I used to only buy unsalted because salt can always be added, but my family prefers salted, and I don’t love buying 2 different types of butter, so I’ve been sticking with salted butter (usually kerrygold or the new zealand grass fed one from costco) for some time now, and If I’m baking, I’m just mindful of the other salty elements I’m adding to the dish.
On the note of Costco, they also have terrific olive oils, that have scored high on many flavor ratings for years, so that’s my go-to for where to get extra virgin olive oil at a good price.
I also love keeping some flavoring oils on hand, such as toasted sesame oil, or a cold-pressed walnut oil
I also use animal fats, but don’t usually buy them separately from the meat itself. While duck fat and lard are absolutely delicious in particular applications, I like to keep my pantry at home relatively simple, and find the olive oil, avocado oil, and butter cover most of what I need for cooking.
I think that’s it for now–from a flavor perspective, don’t be afraid of fat, and from a nutrition perspective, fat is more calorie dense, so how much you’re using usually depends on your health goals.
How much fat is in a dish also affects how food feels in your mouth. If something feels dry, sometimes fat can help with this.
For example, when I’m buying animal based proteins, one thing I pay particular attention to is fat content. I rarely buy meat (breast meat ground chicken for example, that has very little fat in it, because it is very easy to dry out. If I do have low fat meat, I am sure to add fat for flavor and mouthfeel in another format–for example adding some olive oil to a dish that calls for ground chicken.
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