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Why does a recipe tell you to use unsalted butter, then tell you to add 1 tsp. of salt?
(I generally don’t use salt when cooking or salt at the table, but sometimes, for the sake of chemistry, I will add a little salt. Never as much as the recipe calls for. But…unsalted butter, why?) -
If you put baking soda when it calls for baking powder, the result will taste terrible. If you put baking powder when the recipe calls for baking soda, the result will taste terrible. What are these things and why do they have such similar names?
About the butter and salt issue, I’ll say that I used to pretty much assume makers of cookbooks, especially the larger ones where they boast about their “test kitchens” and such, made a dish over many times with different variations and plenty of science, like a laboratory.
But since writing my own little cookbook, now when I use a published recipe, I often get the feeling that I’m “on to them.” I think it’s more likely that they just hit it once or in some cases, don’t even make it at all.
So, if my theory is correct, it could just be that whoever wrote that recipe just happened to have unsalted butter on hand, so that’s what they used. Then they tried to write the recipe accurately so others would get the same result they did, and that’s all there was to it. That *could *explain why the recipe calls for unsalted butter even though it also calls for added salt.
- Chefs like to use unsalted butter so they can control how much salt goes into the dish. How much salt is in 1 tbsp of the particular brand of butter you’re using? How much is in 3 tbsps or whatever the recipe calls for? You don’t know. If you use unsalted butter, you know exactly how much salt is going in there.
1a) Personally, I use salted butter whenever I cook simply because I usually don’t have unsalted butter in the house. I suppose if I were to do some sort of large-scale baking project, I might go out and buy some. For beef stew? Don’t worry about it.
- Baking soda is a strong base. When exposed to an acid, it produces (along with other things) carbon dioxide, which bubbles up and makes the batter rise. But you need to have an acid — lemon juice, cream of tartar, something — in the recipe as well. If you don’t, the baking soda will just sit there tasting metallic, and your dish won’t rise.
Baking powder is baking soda plus an acid. The acid is in powdered form, so the two don’t react until you add liquid. Once you add milk, water, red wine, whatever, the acid powder dissolves, and then reacts with the baking soda to produce (along with other things) carbon dioxide, which bubbles up and makes the batter rise.
But, if the recipe called for baking soda by itself, it has an acid in it. If you use baking powder, the acid in the recipe will have nothing to react with, so it will remain an acid, making the dish taste, I assume, awfully tangy.
My understanding is that baking powder contains several ingredients, baking soda being one of them.
Recipes call for unsalted butter because every brand of salted butter has a different salt content. By using unsalted butter, the recipe can be precise about the amount of salt added (which the cook may then adjust to taste), without inadvertently going too salty.
Baking powder contains baking soda, plus an acid. Baking soda is a base; it’ll react with acids in the recipe. Baking powder has an acid, for use when there’s no other acid in the recipe.
Here’s an article I found a while back when I needed to make something with baking powder and only had baking soda… Or maybe the other way around.
Baking powders are also “double acting”, where they bubble up once upon initial contact with moisture, and a second time once they get heated up, which can produce different (fluffier) texture than baking soda, which only bubbles up once.
This, 100%. Recipe writers who do test their recipes extensively, like America’s Test Kitchen, Serious Eats, et al, have said this many times. Salted butter varies brand to brand in the amount of salt by volume.
We are likely one reply away from this getting out of hand…
That was the third one. If Beetlejuice was going to show, he would have already. 
Butterjuice, butterjuice, butterjuice!
Instead of starting another cooking questions thread, I’ll ask my unrelated to butter and baking soda/power questions here.
When watching cooking videos I see the hand mixing done with any number of different tools - wisk (metal or silicone), fork, spoon, wooden spoon, spatula, etc. Can I not just use a regular old spoon for my mixing needs? Also, what are the advantages/disadvantages of tools made from different materials?
Thanks!
Some ingredients will react with different materials. When I make sweet sauce for donairs I have to use a stainless steel or glass bowls otherwise the sauce will not thicken properly if I use a plastic bowl. The same with making tomato sauce; I’ve dyed several plastic stirring spoons pink from reactions with the acid in the tomatoes. Similarly, different tools will set up ingredients differently as well. If you are beating eggs with a spoon you won’t get anywhere near the aeration that a whisk or fork will, and your eggs won’t be fluffy and light.
Mmm,butterjuice!
Also, with some very thick mixtures, if you try to mix them with a standard metal spoon, you might end up bending the spoon. And if you’re constantly stirring a very hot liquid, a metal spoon will eventually get too hot to comfortably hold.
Yeah, if it’s a batter, the whisk is going to beat a lot more air into the mixture than a spatula or a spoon.
I generally don’t use spatulas for mixing, I use them exclusively for scraping down the sides and folding. Folding is used to combine things like whipped egg whites into a batter where you want to lose as little air as possible. You cut down the middle of the batter like a knife and sort of flip the front of the batter over the back and then rotate the bowl a quarter turn and do it again until the mixture is uniform.
Everything I was going to say has been said except for this:
Unless your practice of not adding salt is due to a valid health issue (and “I am healthy but I don’t want high blood pressure” is not one), then the number one thing you should be doing immediately to improve your cooking is to start using salt properly. By properly, I don’t mean “Until it tastes salty”, but salt is a flavor enhancer, and pretty much everything tastes better with it. Baked goods without salt are for the most part terrible, no matter what else is done.