What about thyme? In my experience chicken is often served woefully under-thymed.
Good point, but actually, once you get out of the cheap stuff in plastic bottles to a decent vodka like Smirnoff, even straight up there’s little difference between vodkas.
And, once you do get a true premium booze, like a good single malt, then adding a mixer is heresy.
I’ve never understood why I’m supposed to saute veggies before I throw them into a stew to boil for an hour or more.
Charring I get, but just sweating the veggies? Why?
I’m not a big vodka drinker. I like my alcohol to have flavor. But there is a difference at least between low- and medium-grade vodka that I can tell even in a mixed drink. My palate isn’t refined enough to separate medium- and high-grade, but a bloody mary made with, say, Luksusowa vodka vs. Seagrams vodka? Not even a question. I made a mistake of buying the Seagrams “extra smooth” vodka a number of weeks ago for some bloody marys. I could not cover up that weird buttery taste (or whatever it is, it’s just weird) no matter how much I tried.
For some veggies, e.g., onions, you’ll get some caramelization of the sugars, which is mighty tasty. If all you’re doing is sweating them, I’m not sure it’d make a difference; but if you saute until they start to brown (not char, just a bit brown), it makes a big difference.
Plus, “sauteing” and “sweating” are completely different things.
(I also didn’t know that an unlidded pot doesn’t boil over.)
My number one food rule: good is more important than authentic, assuming you’re making food intended to be eaten. Related, since many – and certainly stereotypical – home cooks are women, shaming people for using shortcuts per se is sexist, as well as in violation of the number one rule.
And so you can buy it without ID. New York doesn’t allow anything above 6%ABV to be sold in regular grocery stores, but cooking wine is perfectly legal. By attempting to make it unpalatable, they make it no longer an alcoholic beverage.
You’re not salting the food in order to taste the salt, you’re doing it in order to enhance everything else. (Confession: I don’t know if it makes a difference, and I’m not sure how I’d tell)
Also, one in nine people are at risk of hypertension from too little salt in the diet.
Depends on what you’re trying to detect.
The biggest factor of pasta not sticking is having enough water for the pasta to mover around in while cooking. Oil is pointless. Adding salt however will pre-salt the pasta and can also address surface tension issues if you are worried about that sort of thing.
Oh come on. Of course there is a “properly salted” level for food; if there wasn’t, then how do restaurants and prepared food places create food that the majority of people find palatable? Salt is in everything, as you point out; if there was no agreed-upon level that most people find tasteful, otherwise (like Doug K said) restaurants would be full of people complaining that the same dish was too salty or oversalted, depending on individual tastes. That’s not how it works; generally, a chef is able to gauge a level of salt that the majority of people find enhances the flavors of the food without it tasting salty. If I’m remembering right, that level is something around .75-1% of the food, by weight (there’s been studies done).
I’m not saying there’s not variations within the level, and some people prefer a bit more or less salt. I do believe that there should be a salt shaker on the table. But salt (and sugar, to some extent) is more than just a flavor on its own; it’s a flavor enhancer, and will affect the taste of all the different flavors in the food. That’s why no- or low-salt diets generally haven’t taken off. Salt makes things taste better, and not just because of the salt flavor itself.
And Black Pepper (and just about all other herbs/seasonings) is a whole thing altogether. It doesn’t react with the other flavors the way salt does, nor is any one herb or seasoning nearly as ubiquitous as salt.
Ok, between this post and your hot dogs and ketchup post, it seems like definitive proof that you’re not very sophisticated in a culinary sense.
Salt’s a flavor enhancer as well as a basic taste. In other words, salt does something to our tongues that brings out the flavors of other foods. Don’t believe me? Try this- fry up a patty of ground beef with no seasonings or salt. Eat a piece- pretty bland, right? Now salt it a little bit- it tastes beefier and more interesting, and a little bit salty. Definitely not just like the same meat as before, but saltier.
This is why they add salt to things like desserts and candies- it enhances the flavors.
A certain salt profile is necessary to a lot of dishes even if it’s not perceived as being salty. If you’ve ever been to Tuscany, you’ll remember the utterly saltless bread and how ODD it tastes to those of used to a little bit of salt in the bread. American bread isn’t overtly salty tasting to most anyone, but Tuscan bread is very different for the lack of salt.
The only place I can think of where you don’t really want to try and salt it while you’re cooking are dishes where you cook them down like sauces and gravies. If you salt those too early, you can concentrate the salt flavor too much. It’s better to salt those to taste after they’re cooked down.
Oh, and the oil in the pasta water is primarily to stifle boilovers. It may keep them from sticking a bit as well, once it’s been strained, but that’s not the main reason you do it.
As for the vodkas; I know that the grade of vodka (or any booze) matters for cocktails- I wasn’t trying to imply that all booze of a style is interchangeable, but that sometimes people do things that don’t make sense. Specifying something like Grey Goose in a bloody mary doesn’t make much sense to me- Smirnoff or some other middle-of-the-road vodka (say… Tito’s) would do just fine. Same thing goes for things like Mojitos- you don’t have to get 10 Cane- Bacardi or Cruzan will do the job admirably. I wouldn’t get “Landfill Cay Carribbean White Rum” though.
You might consider trying America’s Test Kitchen method. For both thick burgers and thick steaks. Before grilling cook them on low (250) in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes and then finish on the grill. The oven will warm the beef completely through, and then the grill finishes off the exterior with a nice grilled finish.
This method works really well for thick steaks as it prevents the outer layer from becoming tough from overcooking
I typically do not salt food when I am cooking but there is one very important exception, mashed potatoes.
Mashed potatoes simply require salt, quite a bit too. It makes the difference between bland paste and something people go back for seconds for.
The first time my sister-in-law had the family over for Thanksgiving dinner I saw her salting the potatoes as she mashed them and knew she was a good cook and the meal would be great.
Other things I leave salting up to the individual and do not add any during cooking if I am cooking for others. Mashed potatoes are the exception. If you insist upon un-salted mashed potatoes at my house I will offer you a baked potato and a mallet, and you make your own.
Have you ever put a bay leaf in your mouth? They are potent suckers. It gave me a new appreciation for why a lot of chefs use those things sparingly.
If you use Yukon Gold you can use a lot less salt & butter. And, you don’t have to peel them. Not to mention the extra nutrients.
I’m not a serious foodie, I’m really not- but the following statement will surely make me sound like one.
Dried bay leaves ARE pretty worthless- but if you can get some fresh ones, they’re wonderful.
I know because my in-laws’ neighbor has a laurel tree in his yard, and when he was trimming it, he gave away some fresh laurel (bay) leaves. When I used them, the aroma was amazing and they gave a flavor that McCormick dry bay leaves just don’t.
If you can get some fresh laurel leaves and freeze them in a plastic bag, they’re WAY better than dried.
That’s exactly what I said. Well, not ‘exactly’, as such. I did use different words.
[QUOTE=Shakes]
I’ve never understood why I’m supposed to saute veggies before I throw them into a stew to boil for an hour or more.
Charring I get, but just sweating the veggies? Why?
[/QUOTE]
To make the house smell really nice? 
Boil-over has far more to do with whether a pot is too full than whether it’s lidded.
Indeed I have, at various times in my life. Maybe I just always have really old bay leaves lying around, but they don’t really register to me.
That’s what I thought, which was why I was questioning the poster I was responding to, who said that (s)he simply left the lid off to prevent boilovers.
There is a very easy way to tell Find something like bread where no individual ingredient has any salt then bake two identical loaves one as a control with recipe required salt, and one with no salt.
The take the loaf with salt and eat it with dinner and be happy. Then take the one without salt, and a styrofoam block and see if you can tell the difference blindfolded.