Salt

After learning so much about seasoning and flavoring last week, I had to check what Harold McGee said about salt.  Jennifer and I have a copy of On Food And Cooking, and anymore we like to check it whenever we hear of something interesting, when something doesn't go as planned in the kitchen, when we buy a new veggie from the farmer's market and have no idea how to optimally prepare it.  Given how much Chef Porter hyped up salt, and how I realized I'd completely taken salt for granted, I knew McGee would have something interesting to say.

Turns out he has a lot to say, with about a half dozen pages dedicated to salt.  I don't know if beef gets a half dozen pages.

My favorite passage on salt from On Food And Cooking:

Salt is like no other substance we eat.  Sodium chloride is a simple, inorganic material: it comes not from plants or animals or microbes, but from the oceans, and ultimately from the rocks that erode into them.  It's an essential nutrient, a chemical that our bodies can't do without.  It's the only natural source of one of our handful of basic tastes, and we therefore add it to most of our foods to fill out their flavor.  Salt is also a taste enhancer and taste modifier: it strengthens the impression of aromas that accompany it, and it suppresses the sensation of bitterness.  It's one of the very few ingredients that we keep in pure form at the table, to be added to individual taste as we eat.