I love chef Jean-Pierre. He’s energetic and positive, and if you want to learn about cooking techniques, I highly recommend subscribing to his You-Tube channel (after you subscribe to mine of course)! He suggested a method for training your palette which I think is brilliant and I want to share it here.
When you’re watching one of those cooking shows like Master Chef, or Chopped, etc. The judges usually mentioned whether a dish is seasoned properly. Of course, they really aren’t just talking about herbs and spices so much as salt.
No mineral is more essential for conducting flavor than sodium chloride. Our bodies need it, and according to the fine work at the Monell Center for Advancing Discovery in Taste and Smell, salt really does bring out the good flavors of a dish, while also reducing bitter ones.
So if you add the right amount of salt to, say, steamed broccoli, the veggie doesn’t taste like salt, it tastes more like broccoli. Even sweets like cookies and cakes benefit from a little salt. (Salted caramel, anyone?) The right amount of salt in a cookie will make it taste sweeter, believe it or not.
Salt can balance bitter flavors. Brussels sprouts can be bitter if cooked improperly, but roasted with just the right amount of salt? Voila, no bitterness! If you’re pairing wine, think of pairing bold, tannic wines like a Cabernet or Nebbiolo, with a well seasoned dish, like steak. It’s one of the reasons red wine is most often paired with well-seasoned red meats.
Brining is also a great way to boost flavor because it loosens the texture of meats, especially the meats that tend to dry out like turkey or pork, so that they can absorb moisture and thereby enhance flavor.
You also don’t need to just use salt to season, but you can use a salty ingredient, such as parmesan, to do much the same thing. Next time you make a marinara, sauté a little anchovy paste into your olive oil and garlic before you add the tomatoes. It will practically dissolve, it won’t taste fishy, and it will impart an umami-goodness to your marinara that will blow you away.
In the following articles on seasoning, I’ll talk more about when to salt and the kinds of salt to use. For now, I want to talk about how much to salt. How do you know how much is enough, and how much is too much?
This brings us back to chef Jean-Pierre. In his video, How To Salt Like a PRO! he discusses how to train your palette and he suggests an exercise with a simple marinara. Make a batch, salt it a little at a time, tasting it as you go. Make note of how the flavors change and how some of the ingredients you couldn’t taste before begin to shine. When you think you’ve seasoned it just right, take some of it out and continue salting it. Taste it, and if it still doesn’t taste too salty, take some out of that portion, and salt it some more. Keep doing this until you decide the latest portion is definitely too salty.
When you’re done with that, go back and sample each, starting with the first batch you thought was salted enough. Now, if you’re a pro home cook, you’ll probably get it right the first time, but if you haven’t had much experience, this exercise will stretch your imagination. Repeat the process with future batches of marinara and soon, your palette will be trained like a pro!
Try it and let me know how it went! Happy cooking!
p.s. Special thanks to #Kimberly Y. Masibay and her article in Fine Cooking, Salt Makes Everything Taste Better
