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.