Hot answers tagged salt
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Summary for the Quick Reader
Only the shape and size of the grains really makes a difference. Otherwise, salt is salt.
What makes a difference between salts?
There are only two real differentiators between different types of salt (assuming the product is essentially just salt, and not a seasoning blend):
The mineral or other impurities resulting from ...
12
Unshelled peanuts are salted simply by soaking in brine. Some of the salt (and water) gets through the shell, which is a bit porous. They're then re-dried and roasted. I suppose the roasting is optional, but if you're adding salt you clearly want flavor, and that's what roasting's for too. There's a Serious Eats post with a bit more detail if you're curious.
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Depending on brand, it is approximately 1 1/4 tsp per pound (US), or a little more than 1/4 tsp per stick (4 oz).
For most applications, yes it is fine to substitute and adjust; you can just adjust the "salt to taste" step of your recipe in many cases.
There are a very few uses (such as yeast raised dough) where you want to be more precise. I would not ...
9
Salt should be put before putting the spaghetti (or any other type of pasta for that matters) in the water.
For 200g spaghetti (2 people) count ~2-3 liters of water and 20-30g rock salt.
You can reduce the amount of salt if the sauce you are using is already quite salty.
As a note to your point 2, the salt INCREASES the boiling point of water (a process ...
8
Reduce or leave out the salt. It is not essential to the chemistry of the recipe. I will not speculate on salt substitutes, as that is a health and medical issue, off topic for this site.
The pancakes will then not taste as good, but that is unavoidable. Perhaps you can serve them with a highly flavorful accompaniment, like a reduced peach chutney or ...
8
Per Harold McGee, in On Food and Cooking (page 86 of the 2004 edition), there is no truth to this common assertion.
Acids and salt do pretty much the same thing to egg proteins. They get the proteins together sooner, but they don't let them get as close together. That is, acids and salt make eggs thicken and coagulate at a lower temperature , but ...
7
Salt doesn't lower the boiling point of water, it elevates it. Even so, the amount of salt you add to pasta water (10g/litre is a good guide) will barely make a difference. You need to add nearly 6 times that amount of salt to a litre of water to raise its boiling point by 0.5°C.
As throwing things into boiling water can result in splashing, I suggest ...
6
Salt (Sodium chloride) is salt. As a topping, flakes are commonly used purely for presentation purposes only. The taste is the same, but gets more intense as the salt particles get finer, so use less if the salt is in powder form
As an ingredient, use any form you are happy with, and is economical to use. Once salt is dissolved into water it will be ...
6
I can think of several reasons why you might salt beer:
Salt is a natural flavor enhancer, so you'd be able to taste the hops and malt more
Salt reduces perceived bitterness, so overly hopped beer would taste less bitter
The salt crystals may nucleate bubble formation, giving the beer more head (briefly)
I've heard of it being done before, but never with ...
6
Alton Brown just generally prefers kosher salt, for reasons that don't really apply to peanut butter, which will be ground down anyway.
What matters is the total weight of salt. Remember, kosher salt tends to weight approximately 1/2 as much (depending on brand) as table salt, per unit of volume.
So you can replace the kosher salt with sea salt, or any ...
5
No, salt actually destabilizes egg white foams. The small amount added to a souffle won't ruin the souffle, but the meringue will actually hold a bit better without it.
There are many reasons for a souffle to not rise (overbeaten whites, bad folding, wrong base consistency, wrong oven temperature, etc.) but salt is not one of them.
4
As other answers have noted, salt enhances flavor and reduces perceived bitterness. It also increases the perceived body/mouthfeel of the beer.
My grandfather always salted his cantaloupe and honeydew melons. I tried it, and was pleasantly surprised by how it intensified the melon flavor.
Also of note is Gose, a style of beer brewed in Leipzig, Germany. It ...
4
It seems at the least plausible, on two fronts.
If I'm reading http://ajpgi.physiology.org/content/291/6/G1005.full correctly, saltiness and sourness can cancel each other out to some extent.
Salt can increase perceived sweetness: T1r3 taste cells have sodium-glucose co-transporters which may provide the explanation.
4
There are some kinds of rock salt that are meant for consumption ("food-grade"), and recipes like that salt-baked shrimp intend you to use that sort. While you're not directly eating the salt, it does come into contact with the shrimp, and there's water there to spread things around, so really, you are eating a bit of it. Even if there's not a safety issue ...
3
Cooks Illustrated apparently sent some brined meat off to a lab for analysis:
We were also interested in finding out how much sodium penetrates
during the process. To answer the question, we brined natural pork
chops and boneless, skinless chicken breasts in standard quick-brine
solutions of 1/2 cup table salt dissolved in 2 quarts of cold water.
...
3
Salt moves due to differences in concentration, from regions of high concentration to regions of low concentration. So, when you boil brined fish, you surround the salty flesh with low salt concentration liquid, and thus the salt moves out to equalize the concentrations.
Steaming the fish will not result in as much movement of salt, because steaming applies ...
3
There are circumstances where working in a hot place will make people sweat so much that they need to take salt to avoid a deficiency. I first heard mention of this from a man who had been doing field work in the Blue Mountains of Queensland, then found out more when working in a metal foundry, after which I worked in a factory where salt tablets were made.
...
3
I've been fermenting for quite a while (everything from sauerkraut and kimchi to Indian-spiced grated carrots and kohlrabi spears with dill), and my two cents is that the flavor of fermented pickles is vastly (vastly!) superior to that of vinegar pickles. Fermented pickles are indeed fruitier and more complex. When I have the first taste of something I've ...
3
The process is apparently very simple: grate fresh truffle into salt using a microplane, and pulse with a food processor to blend. One source said the flavor intensified over time. I can't find a ratio either, but it looks like about 10:1 salt:truffle, maybe less.
Flavor is always going to vary a bit with something natural such as truffles, but if your ...
3
Soak and rinse... completely immerse the side of bacon for a few hours in clean, cold ice-water, drain, rinse, and repeat. A cooler is best for this, as it keeps the meat cool and offers lots of water for the salt to dilute into, otherwise a use a large pot in the fridge.
The downside is that this may also affect the "cure" - the smoke-flavor that many ...
3
The folks at Cook's Illustrated had this to say to a similar quesiton:
We advise against cooking with salted butter for three reasons. First, the amount of salt in salted butter varies from brand to brand—it can range from 1.25 percent to 1.75 percent of the total weight, making it impossible to offer conversion amounts that will work with all brands. ...
3
Remember that the whole reason we cure bacon is to make it shelf stable over time, a process developed before refrigeration was as it is today. Now we do it more for taste, but the salt and curing process make bacon pretty shelf stable. If you are cooking the bacon as well, before you put it in the salt, I don't see any reason not to leave the bacon salt ...
3
The best peanut butter, in my subjective opinion, contains peanuts and nothing else. Liquidize the nuts in a food processor until it's as smooth as you want it; and you're done.
Peanut butter made this way might go a bit stiff if you leave it, but give it a good stir and it'll go back to normal.
Good wholefood brands sell ready-made peanut butter of this ...
2
A mechanical tenderizer may roughen up the surface of the chicken, making it slightly more absorbent. If you really beat the chicken, until it's falling apart, then it will take up a lot more water.
Denaturing the proteins has nothing to do with this; this requires a chemical change, where the mechanical tenderizer will only break up the muscle fibers so ...
2
If you would like chunks of chicken in the soup to be tender and juicy you might want to treat the chicken similar to chicken cooked sous vide as in:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/sous-vide-basics-low-temperature-chicken.html
Gently heat the soup/ chicken at 140 degrees for the necessary time.
If you are planning on boiling the soup for a period of ...
2
Here is an explanation of fruit salt:
Invented in the 1850s by James Crossley Eno of Newcastle, the Fruit Salt sold like hotcakes to sailors looking for something to keep them healthy on long journeys. The product is still available today – now manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, it sells in vast quantities worldwide and is a popular ingredient in Indian ...
2
I'm very far from being an expert in the kitchen, so take this with a grain of salt (sorry), but:
Unsalted butter has a negligible amount of sodium. Table salt has about 2400 milligrams of sodium per teaspoon. Different salted butters have differing amounts of salt, so check your salted butter's label for the sodium content. If the amount of butter you're ...
2
I quickly skimmed the article, and this was what I was looking for
"After a week, slice off a small amount of cucumber and taste. If you like the level of sourness that the pickle has reached..."
If the sourness of the pickles increases with time, then the answer to your second question is yes. I don't have the answers to the other ones, but when I worked ...
2
Add the salt in te bowl of egg and potato mixture, right before pouring the mix to the pan. You don't salt the potatoes you salt the whole tortilla.
Even if you use onion. The onion inside the Spanish tortilla tastes always sweet.
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The saltiness can be reduced by blanching. You will probably need to experiment with blanching times to find what you prefer.
Method:
Bring a shallow pan of water to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low.
Place bacon in simmering water for 30-60 seconds.
Blot it dry with paper towels.
Cook it however you would normally.
If you just want to mask the ...
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