Seasons, Spices, Herbs, Vinegars
Seasoning, spices, and herbs all add flavors and aroma to meals, they enhance the taste of the food you have prepared, and can change or enhance its colors as well. Here are some tips and tricks from experts in the trade.
Salt
Samin Nosrat: Salt. It’s fundamental to all good cooking. It enhances flavor and even makes food taste more like itself. In short, salt brings food to life. Learn to use it well and your food will taste great. So, do not be afraid of salt as it adds to our sense of flavor. It does not always have to be the actual mineral, it could come from fish sauce, an anchovy, some kelp, or some other source. (I have salt and DIY salt pages.)
- According to Chefs I work with, if your boiling water needs to be salty, that means it needs to taste like the ocean salty. So taste your water before you put food in. Their reasoning is that most of the salty water will boil away or get tossed, so the amount absorbed by the food is not high. I have never worried about oversalting cooking water. (Now I do not dump a bucket of salt into a gallon of water!! We are talking more like a 2-3.5% salt water mix.)
- If serving chilled food I tend to add a bit more seasoning, cold seems to dull the taste and aroma of some foods. Be sure to taste, season, and taste again just before serving.
- For meat the ratio is ~1t kosher salt for each pound, but do not salt too far in advance. Minimally season meat ~1h before you cook, but not over 24 hours.
- If your dish is too salty try adding an acid or sweetener (lemon juice, tomatoes, or honey)
Salt: Experiments
CookingLight: Did a series of experiments regarding salt.
First, they report on soaking three 12-pound turkeys in a brine containing 1/2C kosher salt (46,000 mg sodium) for 12, 18, and 24 hours. They also had one unbrined turkey for comparison. They found:
- No brine: white meat had 55mg sodium + dark meat 90mg
- 12-hour brine: white meat 151mg + dark meat 235mg
- 18-hour brine: white meat 186mg + dark meat 254mg
- 24-hour brine: white meat 223mg + dark meat 260mg
They also boiled 1# dry spaghetti (sodium-free) in 4 quarts water with varying amounts of salt and found 3% of the sodium was absorbed. Which, if you ate the whole pound of pasta, would exceed your daily suggested allowance. But 1# of spaghetti can serve up to 6 people.
CooksIllustrated did a similar experiment with salt and various shapes of pasta and found they all absorbed the same amount of sodium from the water; they cooked 1T in 4 quarts of water and found it absorbed ~1/4t salt per pound of pasta.
Can you really rinse salt off of canned beans? Again an experiment shows that a good rinsing can reduce the sodium by 40%.
Bottom line, cooking in salted water does not result in significant higher intake of sodium. If you are on a special salt-free diet however, every little bit may count so take care. In reality, I believe that most of the salt in our diet comes in hidden forms when we eat processed and fast/restaurant foods.
My Terrible Salt Story
Okay, okay just one salt story that is well known to my family. Before I knew how to brine turkey, I followed a recipe that stated to salt the turkey. I took that literally and massaged salt all over the turkey and let it stay in the fridge to “brine.” Then I took it out out of the fridge and put it immediately in the oven pan and cooked it without rinsing. When we sat down to eat it looked great and smelled okay too. But the first bite was HORRIBLE!!! I gave it a valiant try but could not eat it, so yes it is possible to over-salt. And yes, my family now always takes a little nibble of any turkey I cook before diving in, just in case.
Salt Caution: Plastic
Currently made sea salt contains plastic as a result of our contamination of the oceans. I prefer mined salt from oceans long ago, before we messed things up. Thus, none of my recipes call for sea salt any more.
Pink Salt
I asked two Chefs about pink salt and the comments were that they feel it has too much minerals in it and it leaves a grittiness to foods that they do not like. Scientifically, salt is salt and the amount of salt I cook with, combined with the amount of minerals in specialty salts, is not going to make a difference in my health. I prefer using mined, white kosher salt.
Pepper
I have updated my page on basic pepper choices. To my mind, pepper is a spice, not seasoning. And it is underused, a few swipes of a mill will not provide enough pepper to make a difference in a dish. When I use pepper for a dish I use enough so that you can taste it. Rarely should pepper be needed on the table while serving a dish. In fact, the Chefs I know do not place salt and pepper on their tables at all. The idea is if I have cooked the food well enough, you will not need added salt or pepper.
- Chefs always say use whole black peppercorns and grind just before using to release all the volatile compounds.
- For looks only, some Chefs will use white pepper because it can disappear into the dish and not look like little black bugs sitting in, for instance, a white sauce.
- For meat you pepper after searing if you want a pepper flavor or pepper before searing for a tame pepperish flavor.
- I use pepper in particular sauces, with cabbage, meats, mushrooms, and eggs. I try to only use it when the food calls out for that type of undercurrent of spicy heat.
My suggestion is that you actually take two pepper corns and taste them raw to get a sense of the undercurrents that can be added to a dish. Usually I will use black corns only, unless the dish calls for something else. I always grind the pepper so the oils are newly released and pungent. I also generally add more pepper than recipes call for as I want to taste and feel the pepper.
Spices (roots, bark, seeds of plants)
I try to always buy whole spices and grind when needed to maximize flavor and extend shelf life. Tools I use include a coffee grinder dedicated to spices, a pestle and mortar, and a zest-planer. Spices pack a lot of flavor and carry more of a punch than herbs (to my taste). Also, since the creator of the recipe does not know how old your spices are, they are basing it on theirs. So feel empowered to add more or less as your taste buds indicate.
- I have decades-old little spice jars. When I buy spices, I buy small amounts to get me through ~6 months and just keep a bit on hand. Old spices are dead spices. You can easily tell by crushing dried spice in your hand and smelling. If you smell nothing, compost it.
- At this point I do not buy any spice mixes (other than curry and garam masala). I make spice mixes myself, when needed. This saves me lots of money (over time) and means I know how fresh the spices are.
- Spices need to bloom. For some spices it means cooking them in oil (or butter or ghee) or toasting them in a dry skillet. Proper recipes should let you know when this is helpful to the dish.
- Always taste as you go so you know how things will taste in the end. Often a dish tastes bland until at the very end when I add the final ingredient and boom it is great. By tasting often, you will be able to go off recipe.
- If food is too spicy try adding a bit of fat or sweetener (butter, honey, olive oil) should tame it a bit.
Spice Caution: Gluten
Spices may not all be gluten free, especially spice blends. Read the labels carefully if you do not buy from a spice-only store. My experience is if the spice is a single item, say pepper corns, it only contains that item when I buy from a spice store. The amount of gluten in blends may vary, and it depends upon your sensitivity.
- A Canadian review tested single source commercial brands and found the contained up to 5 ppm of gluten.
- I have found some commercial brands of spice blends are combined with gluten-containing ingredients: wheat flour, wheat starch, wheat crumbs or wheat protein.
- This is a good enough reason to make your own spice blends from single sourced spices and herbs.
Herbs (leaves of plants)
I grow the herbs I most use for I like them fresh and I hate throwing out a bunch of herbs I bought. That means I grow parsley, rosemary, oregano, thyme, sage, mint and chive. I am trying to grow cilantro and basil but have a harder time with keeping them alive for a long time. (One of these days a plant will stick and grow, and I will be a very happy person!).
- Fresh herbs can be difficult. Basil for instance is a very tender leafed herb that I actually prefer using in a dried form. However, I prefer drying my own. But when I use it fresh it is not to cook with it, but to add as a topping so the full flavor is tasted.
- The key to purchasing fresh herbs is learning how to properly store them and meal planning so you use them all up before they go bad. For me, it is also important to not to loose sight of the bought herbs since they are so easy to forget. I tend to keep them in the fridge door which causes all sorts of home consternation. Of course they can be frozen as well.
- For dried leaves I crush, not just dump, into a dish to open up the remaining oils. If I do not smell anything I compost.
- Hearty herbs can be part of the cooking process (rosemary, oregano, sage) and softer herbs (parsley, cilantro, chives, basil) are added at the last minute.
Acids (Sour)
Acid in its various forms really pops a dish. If your dish is adequately salted, and still missing something, try adding some acid. If a dish is too acidic, add some fat. Not only does acidic juice add a pop to blander foods, it can also heighten sweetness. Acids help red veggies stay red. Turns green veggies an awful color. Orange and yellow veggies are on friendlier terms. Fruits and veggies stay firm in acid, but lettuce wilts. Helps jams and jellies set by encouraging the natural pectin in fruit to gel.
Here is a list of some common acids to use in cooking.
- Vinegars
- Citrus: Lemons, limes, oranges, Buddah hand, grapefruit, etc.
- Tomatoes
- Berries
- Beer or Wine
- Cultured dairy: buttermilk, sour cream, yogurt
- Pickled, brine, fermented food
- Condiments (vinegar based)
— Patty
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NEWS: Organic does not mean that fertilizers are not used, according to the USDA the chemicals have to be naturally derived, unlike synthetic pesticides. So organic food often uses organically-certified pesticides, which still have an impact on the food, and the health of the farm workers. The organic fertilizers are often not as productive as the artificial ones, which means labor for each organic field is higher. This focuses attention on the welfare of farm labor.
Recipes: A great Balsamic Peach Pork featuring grilled peaches and pomegranate balsamic vinegar.
Articles: I updated my Japanese Cuisine and Italian Cuisine pages.
Tip: I always put liquids first when I am using the blender. Solid items go in second. Why? To prolong the life of my blender (both the motor and blades), and to have a better blended sauce. As the blades spin in the liquid, it creates a vortex that pulls the solids on top down into the blades, and thus the blender does its job in combining the ingredients. If you start with solids all it does is chop the solids and nothing gets blended as it essentially just spins in place.
