How and When to Salt Food, According to Chef Thomas Keller
Renowned chefThomas Keller explains how to season your food properly so that the salt is evenly distributed.
In an interview with Lynn Rossetto Kasper about The Splendid Table, Keller offers some tips for proper salt distribution:
Season your food properly – don’t season the piece of meat with salt when you are very close to it, but actually raise your hand quite high, holding the salt between your fingers and letting it fall. When it falls in the air, it spreads evenly over the piece of meat, vegetables, or whatever you use. Sometimes we tend to salt really very close to our products. Therefore, we concentrate this salt in a specific area and do not get a uniform seasoning on its surface.
Casper mentions the salting of onions, carrots and celery, which is usually the starting point for frying, before adding other ingredients, and Keller agrees:
Exactly. For example, spinach is something that needs to be salted while it is still fresh, before it starts to wilt. Because when it withers, it shrinks. If you try to season it then you are more or less getting salt in a very specific place, not even dispersion of salt on the leaves. There are many different things you will learn as you cook better.
TL; DR: Consider an even distribution of salt when you season your food.
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