Setting the table without fish forks, fowl forks, meat forks, and the soup, tea, sugar spoons…does it for me!
Lay some slices of mozarella over any fillet you’re baking, give it a short broil burst at the end to get a nice brown bubbly crust on top. Heaven.
The real reason I don’t use drinkin’ wine in my recipes: fear of sobriety before I can go to the store again.
I strenuously disagree with the salters. There’s nothing wrong with it (I’m pretty indifferent myself), but I find nothing particularly special about salt in any dish. It’s “a” flavor, but it doesn’t enhance my enjoyment of other flavors and often gets in the way. I absolutely despise any salt in sweet dishes and don’t particularly want in pasta or the like, where it adds nothing. It many breads it’s good, but that’s largely when the bread itself doesn’t have much flavor.
I don’t particularly mind . In my experience, salters also have a huge superiority complex and look down on anyone who disagrees for some ungodly reason… as this very thread seems to show. Adding salt to your cooking it pointless for many eaters; I don’t mind it, but like a lot of people it doesn’t actually improve things for me.
Well, there’s two things going on.
First, you might not like salt. And that’s an opinion, and that’s fine.
Second, you say it adds nothing. As people have pointed out, salt has chemical properties that change food, allowing taste buds to sense flavors more effectively. That’s a fact, and if you deny it, you’re simply wrong.
You say you despise it in sweet things, and that it only improves mediocre bread. This makes me think you’re not a baker. Have you ever tasted unsalted bread? Have you ever baked a cake or a cookie or any other sweet? I’ve seen very, very few recipes for bread or cookies or cakes or brownies or scones or pie crusts or custards that don’t have at least a quarter-teaspoon of salt in them. You might despise salt in sweet things when there’s a lot of it, like in salted caramels, but unless you hate pretty much every packaged baked good out there, you don’t despise salt in sweet things.
I do like salt on same things. And not others. Mostly, I’m quite indifferent and see no reason to add it.
I’ve heard this claim before. I’ve seen (and tasted) little evidence of it. If I notice any difference due to added salt in most dishes, then it’s usually too much. Like any ingrediant, it has some value in some meals, but none in many, many others. In other words, it could vanish overnight and I do neither notice, nor care. Salt has much more value for texturizing foods than as an additive for any reason; there’s usually plenty from the normal ingrediants.
Bolding mine.
I did not say that. Bread and related foods like crackers areoften more about texture than strong flavor. In that case, salt is often a good element, as it plays well off what you have with the bread. I would much rather have a bread with the right solidity and moistness to work with the food in question (be it bruschetta, PB&J, or simply butter) than one with a rich taste on its own, because I don’t eat bread on its own. The bread is the complement, not the meal.
Bolding mine.
Yeah, pretty much. I find most prepackaged baked goods quite unpleasant. If it’s pretty good otherwise I don’t mind. But if I’m making something I don’t use salt and it makes no difference to me. My family usually bakes without salt. I also eat my vegetables mostly raw with no seasoning, my pasta unsalted, and my meat plain. If it’s a good ingredient, it doesn’t need anything special for the flavor to shine through.
Most spices have a taste proportional to how much is used. For example, you taste basil no matter how much is in it. If there’s a little bit, you taste a little bit of basil. If there’s a lot, you taste it a lot.
Salt is not like that. A small amount of salt will make the other flavors taste brighter and more powerful. For example, a tomato sauce with a bit of salt will make the tomato flavor stronger. You won’t taste the salt unless a lot of salt is added.
If salt vanished overnight, you would notice it. Many foods would lose a lot of their flavor. Check the ingredients of the foods you eat and notice how many have salt. Most of those foods don’t taste salty. The salt is added to enhance the other flavors.
Although, it could be that your tastebuds work differently. I certainly notice the difference when salt is left out. My delicious, nutty steel cut oatmeal is tasteless paste without salt. Perhaps your tastebuds don’t need salt to recognize all the flavors.
But only for a little while, after which you’d die.
Huh? People are saying what the reason is.
Are you talking about when you cook? If not, I suspect you react to salt that way other people react to makeup or CGI.
Do you use salted or unsalted butter in baking? Even the small amount of salt in salted butter generally means that you don’t have to add salt to sweet baked goods made with it.
I suspect he’s just talking out of his ass, or his and his family’s food and baked goods are ghastly bad due to the lack of salt, and he just doesn’t know any better.
Yeah, there have been a few times in my life where I’ve made biscuits or bread without salt, and it’s terrible. The only way to eat them is with very salty fillings like ham or smoked salmon; even biscuits with honey are just sad if I forgot the salt.
I don’t know if he’s talking out of his ass, but I do know people who have decided to go salt-free (including one guy who decided he was “allergic to salt” :rolleyes:) and, though they do seem not to miss it, the food I’ve had at their house was incredibly bland.
I just see it as another diet choice; if you don’t want to eat salt, or meat, or eggs, or whatever, fine by me, I don’t care. It’s only when you start to tell me that your way is the BETTER way and everyone should do it and people who actually LIKE salt/meat/eggs/whatever are just wrong, or not thinking through their food choices, or eating an unhealthy diet that it gets annoying.
As others have pointed out and years of food science have proven, salt goes beyond just a seasoning. It enhances flavors in a lot of ways, and has other properties as well. It’s also a necessary part of our diet. The vast majority of people enjoy the taste. Eating too much of it may have health impacts (though I read a lot lately that are disproving that), but unless you have an incredibly heavy hand in the kitchen, anything you make from scratch is fine. It’s prepared foods where they use salt as a preservative and to make up for sub-standard other ingredients where it gets really over the top.
Technically, it may not matter if there is something better out there — if baked goods without salt is all he knows, it wouldn’t be “ghastly bad” to him…
I have an issue with chefs insisting you only use virgin or extra virgin olive oil in cooking. Regular olive oil is just fine, and you can use the virgin stuff for dressings.
Or, get this, he has different tastes than you. Claiming you can tell someone else what tastes good to them is the height of hubris, and is the main reason I decided to never become a foodie even though I love all sorts of food.
If he can eat food without salting it and think it tastes just as good as if he put in a little salt, then that’s how it works for him. The idea that we all taste the same things was debunked a long time ago. There are certain general commonalities, and that is it.
Likely the guy happens to be hypersensitive to salt. It happens.
Mild salsa, chili, and Mexican food. Why bother? I want all these foods so spicy it’s almost painful. What’s the point in eating bland salsa and Mexican food?
Wait–is mild salsa a foodie do?
I have a bit of a problem with the continual use of olive oil in foodie recipes overall.
Olive oil has a taste, and I don’t particularly care for that taste. Whenever I see a celebrity chef saying “and we’ll just finish it off with a drizzle of olive oil” I cringe.
Olive oil just tastes like nasty chemicals to me, and I honestly don’t understand why anyone with taste buds would include it in every goddamned recipe.
As with most food threads, there comes a point where posts start veering into “I don’t get why people don’t like the same foods as I do” territory.