right, a million years before huge barges would dump their crap into the oceans … and about 2 billion people having their feces flushed into it … let alone the microplastics …
but hey … that (clean) traditional mining salt is not good enough for many recipes today, that call for fine sea salt…
facepalm
I was just at the butcher today (Peoria Packing if you live in Chicago…great place). They had a big tray of beef bones out for (IIRC) $0.89/lb. Dreams of demiglace were jumping into my head but I’ll have to wait for another time.
I’m still unsure if I should remove the marrow…again…a problem for another time.
I use large crystal kosher salt for most things. It’s physically easier to handle, and for things like seasoning steak and whatnot is easier to see coverage. I still keep a canister of iodized table salt for baking, salting water for pasta etc, and for occasional use at the table. The only “sea salt” I bother with is flavored (wood smoked or spicy pepper infused) and some red Hawaiian for select recipes where you can see the salt crystals on the final product (it also has a distinct flavor).
I absolutely buy and use pre-shredded cheese, but I can’t use it for melting, like into a mac and cheese. I used to make a nacho cheese sauce from scratch for a southwest burger recipe from Bobby Flay, but now I just thicken up some Tostito’s dipping cheese sauce.
I used to make glace de viande all the time, which is thicker and more concentrated than demiglace. Freezes great and basically you have homemade Better Than Bouillon. I never used veal, which is what I was taught when working in a kitchen to make demihlace from, but apparently you can just use plain beef bones as well. It’s not hard. It can be a little fussy, but if you have a Saturday at home, it’s mostly waiting around.
Do you leave the marrow in or remove it? (Something I have long wondered and have not been able to find an answer to…some say it adds a tinny flavor to the demiglace and clouds it.)
No, you don’t understand: It’s literally the exact same stuff. The jar labeled just “Salt” and the jar labeled “Premium Sea Salt” both came out of that mine. They just stick different labels on it.
And no, having larger grains won’t make any difference for measurements, either. Having differently-shaped grains, like fleur de sel, will, but the packing efficiency of grains depends only on their shape, not their size.
Morton Salt would disagree with you. I will too (I have actually made this mistake and it mattered) but I think Morton has more cred than I do on this.
Of course size matters, packing efficiency isn’t the only issue of course. Basic calculus lets you know that.
For most of those measurements, they’re the same all across the table. And where it differs, the ratio isn’t consistent.
Tell me more about this basic calculus that I’ve never encountered as a physicist or math teacher. What basic calculus tells you that?
I’ve always left the marrow in. I’m trying to remember what the restaurant I worked for some 25 years ago did — I would not have been attentive to that detail then, but I feel like they left it in as well.
It is true recipes sometimes insist on premium ingredients where cheaper ones would give similar results. There is a general bias against canned foods and dried spices, which often give good results. But good canned tomatoes are usually better than most fresh, and sometimes better ingredients do make a big difference, depending on the recipe, when ingredients are added, and how important it is to be very good instead of good (if at all).
Let’s say I need you to fill a 15 mL hemisphere with salt. Do you really think you’ll get the same mass if you have cubic crystals that are 1 mm on each side and 10mm? Do you think the mass would converge to some limit as the size of the salt crystal decreased?
Oh you can assume the most efficient packing as well if that helps you.
Ignore the difference at your peril. Salt is strong. Oversalting something is very noticeable. In baking, well, baking is a science as well as an art. You need to get things right.
You can find out for yourself. Pick a baking recipe that uses salt and see how using one or the other turns out. You’ll notice the difference.
I will say salting a big piece of meat does not matter as much. It can take a lot of salt since most stays on the outside.
There are times the type of salt matters. Pretzels are not nearly as good topped with fine salt. But any decent chef is going to add salt conservatively, taste the food, and decide if it needs more salt, sweetness, acidity etc.maybe even at several points.
Materials science courses deal with optimal packing and such. While these things use more geometry than calculus, and different teaspoons of different salt shapes may have different weights, ultimately this does not matter that much, because any decent chef is going to taste the food. Any pastry chef will weigh the solids. And for many things (e.g. brining meat) the type of salt matters much less.
Biggirl, you can find recipes for homemade Velveeta if you google for them. I’ve never made one, but the recipe I thought about making called for water, dry milk, cheddar cheese and gelatin – no added salt. The cheddar is fairly high in sodium, though.
If you try it, let us know what you think. I think it would be handy to scale down the recipe so that I don’t have a lot of leftover Velveeta hanging around.
dont worry - i DO understand … try to reset your irony detectory
/i
I think one of the things that makes someone a good cook is their knowing when they can make substitutions in a recipe without harming the outcome.
Definitely.
I get mildly irked when recipes call for kosher salt (or anything besides table salt) in a recipe where it’s measured and dissolved. Table salt is a fraction of the cost of kosher etc., and it’s much more common in kitchens than any other kind; when it doesn’t matter, the recipe should use table salt. Kosher etc. salts are great for certain uses, but don’t put them in a recipe when table salt would work equally well.
Same goes for extra-virgin olive oil. Too often it shows up in a recipe not because it improves the food, but because it makes the recipe writer feel schmancy.
I’m with the OP on these two.
I doubt that the grain size makes much difference to the density of the salt: assuming they are more or less uniform in size (no abundance smaller ones to fill the gaps between the big ones) the crystal chunks are bigger for kosher salt and so are the gaps between them. Double the size of the chunks and you will double the size of the gaps but you will halve the number of both chunks and air gaps. The proportion salt/air should remain constant.
Salt crystalizes cubically, the most efficient packing for cubes leaves no gaps at all, no matter the size of the cubes. Pure NaCl crystals have a density of 2.16 g/cm3, normal table salt is only ~1.40 g/cm3, which gives a packing fraction of ~ 64.8%.
If it was spheres the same would apply though: the gaps and the chunks scale in the same proportion assuming the spheres are more or less uniform in size. And so are the grains in the different types of commercial salt.