Epicrious: Salt Water for Boiling, Reviews

Hilarious read. On the tech side of things, if you are not using salt in your cooking try a few things:

1. Next time you make a batch of soup [note: make means the action involves more than opening the can.] try adding some salt to the mix. Taste it when you think it is done. Remove a portion of it and add a bit of salt. Taste it again and note how it tastes more like the food that is in it. You don't have to do this with soup either. Try it with boiled veggies. Get a pot of boiling water, sans salt. Put in your favorite greens and cook them to your liking. Remove and taste. Now add a touch of salt to them and taste again. Better, huh? More like a cooked veg. and not a raw veg.
2. Wanna keep those greens green? Add salt. Don't believe me? Boil two pots of water. Add salt to one, enough to make it salty like soup. Leave the other unsalted. Par boil your favorite greens in both. Compare the difference in color.

Salt opens your taste buds making them more receptive to the food. The trick is to find the point at which you taste more of the food, without thinking it's salty. If you are preparing dishes at home and wondering why they taste kinda flat. It might be your salt content.

Here's another tip: season food at the temperature it are going to be consumed. The temperature of the food will impact the perceived salt content. So, season your soup when it's hot. Common sense, right? Well, it works the same on the cold side. Say your making a nice compound butter with herbs. You get the mixture right where you want it in terms of taste. But the butter is cold. When it gets put on a hot piece of bread, or steak, etc. its profile is going to change with the temperature. If you know this you will be able to get more predictable results.

One last tip: Coarse kosher/sea salt takes a bit of time to dissolve and distribute. As you are bringing the seasoning up, give the soup or whatever time to even out. Otherwise, you might come back to a dish that was spot-on and find that it is now ready for the trash.