Yeah, unfortunately the more processed the food is the more likely it is to contain a lot of salt.
I’m holding a 10 oz. can of diced tomatoes with green chilies and it has 50% of the recommended daily intake of sodium. A 15 oz. can of Wolf brand chili has 75%.
Here’s the one that surprised me - A Jello brand box of instant chocolate pudding makes three cups. If you binged on that you’d get 120% of your daily intake of sodium. Now I’m not saying I’m gonna eat 3 cups of instant chocolate pudding any time soon but I never would have guessed it had that much salt.
I thought adding salt was done to keep the pasta from sticking together. How that would work I never knew. Maybe I’m getting salt mixed up with something else.
I tried this a couple of weeks ago. I salted the water until it tasted like seawater then made the pasta. I ended up with inedibly salty pasta. I guess I like my food bland.
I thought the addition of salt lowered the boiling point (reduced the heating time required) by…
reducing surface tension by diffusing another molecule (sodium chloride) into the solution (H20)
providing more & bigger nucleation sites at the bottom of the pot so gas can accumulate around them and escape the solution (earlier)
So your water boils faster and at a (microscopically) lower temperature and you have less time to get bored and walk away and get distracted. No, of course not! This has NEVER happened to me – I swear it!
I’ve cooked pasta both ways (sometimes I just forget to sprinkle the salt in); I’ve not noticed a difference in the resulting taste. But, then again, pasta is a sauce-carrier for me.
–G!
*Rice, on the other hand, has many different tastes depending on brand and which part of the world (e.g. Tokyo vs Takaoka) it’s grown in – and I don’t cook rice with salt.
I really don’t remember; it’s been decades since I cooked regularly (other than grilled cheese, quesadillas, etc.) I’d have to ask my wife.
About as much as the amount of water poured down the drain … i.e., over 99%.
A little, though if you REALLY salt the water, a lot. See more below.
I remember using seawater to cook rice & lentils while camping. The result was WAY too salty, but the addition of mussels, clams, limpets, and various other assorted found food went a long way towards compensating for too much salt. Thanks to the shore break, there was also a bit too much sand, and there’s really no compensating for that, other than to chew gingerly.
Yeah, “like seawater” is too salty. Check out the Serious Eats article I posted above, where I say about 1%-2% by volume of water. They come to the same conclusion, that “like seawater” is way too salty. Here is the quote:
Besides, a lot of people (like me) don’t have a good reference point for what “as salty as the sea” is anyway. I’ve been in seas and oceans, but I couldn’t tell you what their salinity generally is.
I personally have never heard this. Salt (or any non-volatile solute, I believe) lowers the freezing point and raises the boiling point (see: freezing point depression and boiling point elevation for the appropriate equations.)
Salt may raise the boiling point of water, but it doesn’t make the water hotter.
If a pot of plain water that boils at 212 degrees and a pot of salted water that boils at 214 degrees are both put on identical burners and you waited until they are both boiling, the water temperature should be the same 214 degress, it’s just that the first pot began boiling at 212, and the 2nd pot began boiling at 214. But the temperature should be the same in both bots. Besides from what I understand there’s not enough salt added to change the boiling temperature even 1 degree.
You might be right for this very specific example, but in general water doesn’t get much above the boiling temp: after that, the heat energy goes into vaporization energy (steam). The “normal” water (assuming sea level and all that) might get to 214 if you continued heating it, but it wouldn’t get to 220 under any sort of normal circumstance, and I’d bet against even 216.
Again, this is a pretty easy test to do yourself: stick a decent digital thermometer in a pot of water and boil away. You’ll note the temperature basically stops rising at the boiling point, so long as the thermometer is measuring the water and not steam or steam bubbles. if it didn’t, there’d be no need for pressure cookers.
It’s totally a flavor thing, not a boiling point thing. You don’t have to go crazy or anything- about a tablespoon per half-gallon of pasta water is about right, and is exactly what Pulykamell’s would suggest as well.
And really… you’re not supposed to bury your pasta under so much sauce that you can’t taste it.
I can definitely tell the difference. Adding salt on top does not make the pasta taste…right, at least for me. The water must be salted. One thing that salt does is to tame bitter compounds - it is why there is always a pinch or so of salt in most cakes and other dessert recipes, or in pancakes and waffles. Also, a few grains (no more than a dozen, not even a pinch) of kosher salt when brewing coffee results in a much smoother cup without making it taste salty.
As for sauce = gravy, the way I learned was that a sauce simmered with meat was a gravy. So you could have a marinara (alfredo, garlic, olive oil, pesto, etc.) sauce (not gravy) that was meatless and usually minimally cooked - sometimes the only cooking was by the heat from the pasta. Or you could have a gravy that would include anything the chef could put his or her hands on. These were the all-day cooks, braising/stewing the cheap, tough proteins. My source was my Sicilian grandmother and her sisters. Personally, I always look for “No Salt Added” canned tomatoes. Tomatoes are already naturally high in sodium and I find I have to add very little salt to any sauce or gravy to get it to taste good.
I find this also applies to rice and potatoes. The Asian way (the way my wife cooks rice) just doesn’t do it for me. I’d rather that neither the sauce nor the starch be overly salty to compensate for the other, but rather that each be properly salted.
I vouch for that recipe. It’s great. The other bolognese sauce recipe I use is also a Saveur recipe, linked to here. Those chicken livers add a nice touch, without overpowering with their liveriness. That recipe was included as part of my favorite lasagna recipe. Damn. Now I need to take some time out to make that lasagna again.