Not to mention that it is questionable whether a low salt diet isn’t actually worse for your cardiovascular health.
"CONCLUSIONS:
In this population-based cohort, systolic blood pressure, but not diastolic pressure, changes over time aligned with change in sodium excretion, but this association did not translate into a higher risk of hypertension or CVD complications. Lower sodium excretion was associated with higher CVD mortality."
(bolding mine)
I don’t think this is anything new. I’d like to see any research that ever showed salt to be a problem. This idiot idea started when sodium was a suspected problem, and some morons started saying salt must be bad because it contains sodium. None of these dimwits (who usually had medical degrees) bothered to see if it was possible for the human body to seperate sodium and chlorine so that the sodium would be reactive. It can’t. If anybody has a cite that shows a mechanism by which normal amounts of salt can cause any health issues for people, I’d like to see it.
Of course it can separate sodium and chloride - it happens as soon as it hits the water in your mouth 
No, it is still NaCl in an aqueous solution.
In the past few weeks, I have been modifying this steak recipe for use on my Weber charcoal grill. Placing a small chunk of water soaked mesquite wood on top of the glowing coals immediately before the steaks are placed on the grill, a nice light smoky flavor is added to the meat.
Heavily salting and then rinsing away all of the salt per the linked recipe works. These are some of the finest steaks I have ever had. Use USDA Prime from Costco, use Kosher salt, add a very small amount of seasonings during the salting phase and rinse very, very well. These steaks do not end up tasting ‘salty,’ just amazingly beefy and flavorful.
For those with a Weber charcoal grill, invest in an aftermarket cast iron grill. Worth every penny.
Umm, have you ever combined salt and water?
NaClsub[/sub] <—> Na[sup]+[/sup]sub[/sub] + Cl[sup]-[/sup]sub[/sub]
(sprinkle H[sub]2[/sub]O superscripts over the arrow as desired, vBulletin can’t handle that that I know of.)
I sit corrected
Thanks to all who responded.
We’re just trying to limit all salt intake since any processed food we may have has salt that we have little control. Since we don’t use salt at home, we can really taste it with processed food or when we’ve gone out to dinner, even at a “nice” restaurant.
No need to soak the wood - the water does nothing but make the chunk smolder and turns good clean smoke into sooty crap. If your chunks are burning up too quickly, you’re using chunks that are too small.
Thanks for the advice. I have always been told soaking the mesquite or hickory chunks before adding to the fire is The Way It Is Done. I will use a big non-soaked chunk this weekend.
Just make sure your wood chunk(s) is away from your food - it will flame up a little bit, so you don’t want to it scorching anything.
I agree whole-heartedly with Munch exactly for the reasons stated. You don’t want smoldering and billowing thick white smoke. When you have a proper, clean fire with wood chunks or even logs, you want the smoke to be that thin, whispy bluish-white smoke. It doesn’t look as dramatic as thick clouds but, trust us, it’ll plenty smoke your food without the bitter soot/creosote taste that the billowy smoke tends to impart.
You post this misinformation in just about every thread that discusses salt.
For those of you who want to actually try it out for yourself, get a grapefruit, slice it in half the wrong way (from pole to pole, not across the equator). Remove wedges of grapefruit like you would with orange wedges.
Take half of them and sprinkle very, VERY lightly with salt-just a tiny pinch will do. Do nothing with the other half.
The lightly salted halves will have a slight salty undertone, but will have nearly no sour flavor. The unsalted ones will be sour. The salt receptors in your tongue override the sour receptors and you pretty much can’t taste sour flavors.
The same does not happen with cinnamon, pepper or mustard.
If you are grilling, it’s better to make a foil pack of your woods and set them on the coals to the side of where you will be grilling the meat. The foil keeps the wood from catching fire, so you can have a good amount of heat for cooking your steak.
If you’re using chips, sure. (And grilling is the only time I would ever consider using chips.) But we’re talking chunks of wood here, so far as I can tell. No soak, no foil, no nothing. It shouldn’t flare up on you. If I’m grilling, I usually put a couple fist-sized chunks mixed in with the charcoal towards the top of the chimney starter, and by the time the coals are ready, the wood is burning along nicely without smoldering or flaring.
Okay guys and gals.
In just a couple of hours I am going to try Toofs link for the ubber salted then well rinsed steak. Will let you all know how it goes.
May the steak gods be with you!
(The one thing that bothers me about that link is the “regular supermarket steak” actually looks like a decent cut of steak. Actually, a very good cut of steak. Really nice marbling and color. The “regular supermarket steak” around here looks like crap, and I’m very skeptical the salting is going to make it that much better.)
So say we all…or …make it so…or…whatcha talking about Willis?
Getting ready to salt the steak. Using State of Kansas Kosher Salt (will explain later). Gonna salt the crap out of it. Our cuts are probably Loin? steak cuts from Sams Club (but from Kansas mind you). They are about an inch thick. Don’t look too bad but are NOT nearly as pretty nor nearly as marbled as the pics from that recipe. Some marbling but not alot.
Engage!
Okay. Salted. Cooked. Eated. Doned. And stuffed.
Generally a solid success.
First, neither I or the SO are salt lovers. Its a rare day that either of us thinks salt is needed on preprepared food. Or even unprepared food. And for that matter, it aint that uncommon for either of us to decide that something is just a bit TOO salty. So, on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 lurvs the salt and 10 is hypersensitive to it, I’d rate us both about an 8.
When I went to little local grocery they had no kosher salt or sea salt or any other kind of hippy salt. They DID have rock (aka road) salt. Bought a 10 pound bag for 3 dollars. Back at the RV I picked out the chunks that looked more like salt and left the ones that looked more like gray rocks. Ran em through a el cheapo coffee grinder and ended up with flakes and smaller chunks.
Then I salted the crap out of the steaks. Not a solid sprinkling like Toofs recipe link shows. A solid layer that totally covered the whole steak on both sides. I even rubbed it into the surface. I did this for several reasons. First, our steak wasnt nearly as marbled as what was shown in the recipe so I figured you might need more salt. Second, I figured “as much as you can get” is easier to define than “amount xyz”. Third, I wanted to see just HOW salty it could get using this method.
Okay, the steaks were run of the mill “loin” cuts from Sam’s club in Kansas. They’ve been sitting in the RV fridge for about 3 days. They were about 3/4 inch thick. Like I said, I salted the crap out of them. Left them for right at 1 hour (honestly they DID look pretty damn nasty by that point). Rinsed them pretty well and patted them dry (though I think I could have been a bit thorough on both counts). I had a bit of trouble with the charcoal grill timing so they had to sit another 15 minutes before the coals were as hot as they were going to get. So now we are at about an hour and 15 minutes.
Also, the grill wasn’t as hot as I’d like it. So, I couldnt get the sear I wanted. Given that, I was more worried about overcooking it than getting a good sear, so they ended up unseard but somewhere in the rare/medium rare stage. About 3 minutes on each side and they sat for another 5 minutes or so.
Okay, given all that, how was it? They were pretty darn tender. And they were pretty darn good. Interestly enough, to me they were NOT that salty. I could TELL there was salt but it wasnt enough to detract from the overall taste. Given that I put much more salt than called for, kept it on longer than needed, used a thinner cut than called for, probably didnt rinse quite as well as I could have, and am rather sensitive to salt in the first place I consider the outcome pretty impressive.
IMO the technique works and for me its now just a matter of tweaking it (and the SO heartily agrees).