In our house, we don’t have a salt shaker and we have to look hard to find our salt. I rarely use it in cooking – just a little in our bread maker and when I make potato latkes.
Outside our house, I have never had a meal that needed any additional salt. I prefer the flavor of the food to the flavor of salt.
Ah, but salt can make really bland boring food come alive and make you want to eat it!
I don’t salt my food - usually because I’m cooking and I taste as I go, but otherwise I find there’s generally too much salt put into other things I eat.
One exception - I salt oranges and sour apples as I eat them, but I don’t think that counts as “after they’re prepared”
I’ve noticed that as I get older, I seem to salt more things, but mostly it’s just certain foods that I really, really have to have salt on. Potatoes are one and I use a lot (for me) of salt on them. I have to remember to add salt when I’m cooking and I do think it does make things taste better.
I had a boyfriend years ago that heavily salted everything without tasting it. I watched his mom and sisters do the same thing at a family dinner once, so must have been a family thing. Yuck. I tried something off his plate once - totally inedible.
Yep. I don’t generally use it, but certain foods I eat are really just transport methods for salt. If you see me eating corn on the cob or french fries, they’ll probably be covered with visible saltdrifts.
My wife likes less salt into here food than I do, so I tend to undersalt my cooking. I do thoroughly salt starches though. I don’t understand their Filipino way off making rice - just rice and water. So flavorless.
I’m a salt before you taste it poster. I don’t use much though, but in my experience, everything (well, almost) tastes better with a little on it anyway, so no need to wait.
And unfortunately, I have high blood pressure, but mine is due to being overweight.
I don’t add salt when cooking because my spouse has to limit his intake. So we both season as we desire at the table.
I also like salt on my starches.
I like certain foods salty, like nuts, pretzels, soups, and stews. On the other hand, a lot of the frozen dinners and processed foods I encounter strike me as TOO salty. (I can also detect a lot of added sugar in them, too, as well as sugar in bread)
With a blood pressure of 100/70 it’s not like I have to worry about hypertension. If I didn’t eat salt and caffeine I probably wouldn’t have a blood pressure.
Based on others’ comments I thought I’d add that a number of years ago I went into a little hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint for “lunch” and ordered a BBQ sandwich and fries. The fries came already peppered (lots of it) with ketchup added. The best I had ever had, and I had never even thought of putting pepper on fries. I recommend tasting how much better they are with pepper than with all the salt.
Another condiment I got hooked on along the way is the pepper and vinegar concoction that’s on most tables around here (along with Tabasco or other “hot sauce”) in every meat-and-three I’ve been to. Pepper sauce is what I call it, but I bet there’s a more common (or correct) name for it. Anyway, I’d be more prone to put a few dashes of that on something than to salt it. Turnip greens especially.
In case my name for it is confusing, it’s the vinegar with banana peppers (or other non-lethal varieties) floating in it. More like flavored vinegar than “hot sauce” but not as bland as straight vinegar. What’s weird to me is to see others add salt to whatever they just poured some of this stuff on.
One more thing: I used to love adding salt to watermelon!
About the only thing I put salt on is cooked vegetables. Corn, green beans, peas, carrots, etc. Otherwise it never leaves the shelf.
I rarely salt my food if I’ve made it myself because I generally salt while cooking, so I’ve already salted it to taste.
If I’m at a friend’s house eating food they’ve cooked, I try not to salt even if I think it needs it. Yeah, it’s probably no big deal, but it seems somehow…rude, like the food doesn’t taste good so you have to fix it.
If I’m at a restaurant I usually don’t because restaurants use a metric assload of salt anyway. Even if I can’t taste it, I assume it’s there and unless the food is ridiculously bland will avoid it.
There is no such thing as the “proper amount” of salt. It’s individual taste. I’ve owned my mouth for a very long time. I know how much salt I like on my food, the cook doesn’t. If a cook did somehow manage to salt a dish to my taste it would be too salty for my wife to eat, but not enough for other people I know.
I salt as I cook, and leave the shaker off the table. I also salt my palm now and then…
I guess I infrequently salt my food given how few foods require any. The only foods I put salt on are rice and pasta, and I do that every time they’re served to me plain (and don’t if they’re served with cheese or meat sauces, obviously). And yeah, before I taste it. I know exactly what plain rice and spaghetti taste like pre-salted, and it’s not like they’re magically going to change into something less bland one of these days. If I’m sharing popcorn with someone else, I’ll add a bit of salt to that too, but that’s about the entirety of my post-cooking salt usage.
I don’t salt my food and skip it mostly in my cooking unless I’m cooking for others. I often get my gf to taste-test my cooking and “correct the seasonings” (aka add salt).
I try to avoid salt. But it’s needed with sauces and soups. Otherwise I never salt my food after it’s ready.
I’m another low blood pressure / moderate-to-high salt user. I like quite a bit of salt in soups and on meat and starches. I rarely use it when I’m cooking, though, because my kids don’t care either way and it’s probably just as well if they don’t have all the extra salt I do.
I’m on a lowfat diet. I miss my salty chips and fries!
I dislike salt, and it makes me thirsty. I don’t have any in my house, and never put it on my own food either while cooking or at the table.
Of course I can’t avoid it when I eat out, since I like food that restaurants like to salt. So I eat it and spend the whole afternoon drinking huge glasses of water.
I don’t add salt to food, and tend to prefer low-sodium versions of traditionally salty things (canned soups, crackers). I even prefer my fries and pretzels to be unsalted. I’ve got a canister of salt in the cupboard that I bought when I was 18… I’m now 37. (Just checked… it still pours, so Morton Salt’s slogan holds up after years of exposure to humidity.)
Infrequently. So infrequently that I wanted to add salt to something the other day and discovered that I didn’t have any.