As fresh meat loves...

[jacey]

Salt.

I've just been talking to mevennen  about cooking a roast chicken (yum!). I'm a plain cook. That's not to say I can't cook more complicated dishes, but mostly I don't have time. My basic cooking method is: take meat (and vegetables), apply heat. That may be roasting, boiling, casseroling or braising, but it's the same basic principle. If I can do the vegetables in the same pot, so much the better. I love one-pot cooking. I've never been able to fathom out why they make casseroles in those tiddly tiny sizes, Even for two of us I use the biggest baddest casserole dish available,

And (raises hand proudly) I USE SALT IN MY COOKING!
With all the health gurus yelling about salt it's almost a sin these days. Well, buggrit! I like salt.

When it comes to roasting meat, I do excellent roast potatoes to go with it - always peeling and boiling the potatoes in salted water before roasting. It gives great flavour with beautifully crunchy outers and soft inners. Yum.

Daughter G and her new husband, I, are polar opposites when it comes to salt. She never puts in in cooking and (possibly because of this) he ladles it on at the table. When they taste my roasties both of them scarf them down with much lipsmacking. Last time they came up to visit she finally asked how I get such a nice flavour. Easy. It's the salt.

No amount of salt added at the table makes up for salt not used in the cooking. It's Just Not The Same.

The health fiends have completely spoiled a whole generaton's attitude towards salt. Unless salt is against doctor's orders there's really no need to treat it like it's poison and a little added in cooking saves a lot added at the table.

Rant over.

Comments

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

Well the thing about salt is not so much about health gurus as well-established medical authorities. See for example here for the Cochracne Collaboration: http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab004937.html

In short, it seems that no specific link to any specific individual and salt intake vs any specific condition can be proved, BUT in the population, reduction in salt consumption correspond to reductions in blood pressure, stroke, etc.

Anyway - and I say this as the weary daughter of two parents who used to smoke - it's easier to add salt than to take it off. And it can easily ruin a dish.

I started scaling back on salt a long time ago, not because of any health concern but because I didn't like my stuff to taste of salt. As it did when my mom cooked it. I realized then that salt actually covers a lot of taste, and it's largely a question of habit - if you are used to it, anything that isn't salted tastes, well, insipid, but if you get used to it, you realize that taking away the salt lets you better enjoy the flavours.

Hence my ex boyfriend's constant complaint that I didn't put enough salt in my cooking, to which I told him that he could put as much salt as he wanted on HIS stuff when it was in HIS plate.

The only case in which I put salt in during cooking is when I cook pasta, because it changes the boiling point of water and is better incorporated in the pasta itself.

This is a great layout, btw!

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

That's my point. If you like more salt and it's not in the cooking, you'll actually add a heck of a lot more at the table to make up for it and it still doesn't tase as good. You lose the blend of flavours that you get from adding it and it just becomes a salty mask over the top of evereything else.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I'm not using salt in my cooking (other than for baking bread) because I really dislike the taste.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with people not liking something, but as a person who does like salt, I'd be miserable eating your food.

Just as a matter of interest have you ever had bread baked without salt. My granny did it accidentally once. Yech!

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

have you ever had bread baked without salt

This is why I said I am making an exception for bread ;-)

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I actually make a low salt bread and I like it. It's not no-salt, but has a lot less than the recipe that came with the bread machine. Also far less sugar.

I don't put any salt in vegetables and only a tiny bit in pasta and rice. It's a case of what you get used to and G and I prefer things less salty.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Edited for silly typo/braino...
As far as salt (and sugar) in bread goes they are both essential for the chemical action of the yeast to raise the dough. The sugar to feed the yeast and the salt to stop it rising too much. Maybe if you cut down on both there's still a balance. Does your bread tend to be more cakey and less spongy, i.e. not rise to the full potential of the yeast? My white bread tends to be fluffy and my wholemeal more cakey. I like both textures. I just use whatever it says in the recipe.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I don't make white bread and the wholemeal is fairly solid rather than spongy, but I like it that way.

Actually, compared to Mrs Beeton's traditional bread recipe I use the same amount of sugar and only a little less salt. It's the bread machine recipes that seem to have increased both significantly, with half as much salt again and five times (!) as much sugar.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I use very little salt, and good stuff (if you buy a packet every couple of years, you might as well make it quality stuff).

But sugar? Who puts sugar in their bread?

(I'm not even feeding my yeast. So far it hasn't complained.)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Every bread recipe I've ever seen (for British style bread) has sugar (or possibly honey) to feed the yeast. There's not enough to make the bread sweet.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I learnt to bake bread in Germany, and the German recipe demands that you give your yeast a little sugar water (and maybe some flour) to start before adding it to the main dough. This is for live yeast; dry yeast doesn't really need it - it just feeds off the starches in flour.

At least, I get a perfectly good yeast process going by simply adding warm water and letting things stand in a warm place.

(The addition of sugars explains why British bread can taste sweet, which is just wrong for bread IMHO.)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I agree bread shouldn't taste sweet. Ideally you just add enough sugar so that it's all 'used up; by the yeast. There is certainly a difference between German bread and British bread, but I've never seen a recipe for German bread so I'm not sure how or why. American bread always tastes different to me, too, even the commercially packaged white stuff which you would expect to be lowest common denominator and pretty much the same.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

I love salt (T rubbed sea salt into the chicken's skin and it was fantastic - in the end I stuffed a couple of lemon halves into it as well). I don't tend to add salt because of having parents with high blood pressure and I just got out of the habit. In fact, I don't have personal worries about it and must remember to put it back in. I'll definitely try the roasties in salted boiling water. I usually par boil them but don't add salt.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I;m lucky with blood pressure. I may look as though I'm the type to have BP problems, but it's very little changed from when I was in my twenties. I'm not supposed to eat sugar so if i had to give up salt as well I'd feel as though I was eating boiled cardboard all the time.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I used to parboil mine - having absorbed the Gospell According to Saint Delia in my formative cooking years - and then one day I overdid it and not only boiled them. but seriously overboiled them... the resulting roasties were delicious, even the ones that were falling apart... in fact especially those. That was it. Instantly converted.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I love salt. Partly that's because I have low blood pressure, and partly it because of the amount of water I drink, but salt is my big craving, rather than sweet things.

[ferlonda.livejournal.com]

Salt is no more evil than pepper- it's just usually processed a great deal more. Unprocessed (not bleached three times as regular table salt is) is full of minerals and good stuff. Also, recent studies have disproved the link thought to be between high blood pressure and salt intake. Tastes vary as to how much salt to use but your roasties are the best!

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Mmm, thanks for the compliment on my roasies. They are good, thiugh, aren't they.
:-)

[ferlonda.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. Yummy!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Mmm, salt. I have ... oh, I don't know. Half a dozen kinds of salt in the house? At least.

And of course, salt in the water for par-boiling roasties. And for most other boilings too: I have actively to remember not to add salt if I'm boiling veggies for a soup, where I'm going to use the boiling-water as a liquid in the soup.

Only, meat casseroles and chillis and such: I don't add salt until late in the process, until the meat and/or pulses are tender. Salt draws juice out of meat-fibres, which is generically bad; and it makes the skins of pulses tough, ditto ditto.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Good to know about the salt drawing juices aout of the meat, thanks. I tend to put it in early, but could add it later. About the only things that never see salt in my house are curries.