Level Up Your Cooking With These 2 Ingredients

What if we told you we have 2 secret ingredients that can instantly transform any dish – and that you already have them in your kitchen?

That’s right: all you need to level up your cooking is salt and acid.

Salt enhances flavor, while acid enhances and balances. It’s as simple as that. The hard part is knowing how to use each of these ingredients – when to add them, how much to add, and how they’ll affect different types of dishes.

If you haven’t been using salt and acid in everything you cook, keep reading to learn why these 2 ingredients are so important, and how they can make the flavors of your food go from good to amazing!

Salt

It’s no secret that salt makes our food taste better. It’s a flavor enhancer! But many home cooks shy away from using enough – or any at all – out of fear of making things taste salty, or out of concern for their health.

But here’s what we’ve learned from reading cookbooks and watching MasterClass lessons by world-renowned chefs: it’s hard to use too much salt in your home cooking, if you want your food to taste good.

Why? Because to properly season your food, you want to use enough salt to bring out the flavors, but not enough to oversaturate the ingredients and make them taste salty. And by using the proper amount of seasoning, it’s pretty hard to cross the threshold into “unhealthy” levels of salt. If you used enough salt in your cooking to cause health concerns, your food would simply taste bad.

When To Use Salt

Salt exists in many forms – not just the white stuff you see on the table at restaurants. Salty ingredients like soy sauce and parmesan cheese can act as the “salt” in your recipes, so use caution when cooking with these and salting your ingredients. You’ll find that you often don’t need salt in these instances, because there is enough sodium in the food already.

Similarly, if you tend to use processed or store-bought ingredients, you may want to cut back on salt or avoid using it at all. Processed foods tend to have high levels of sodium already.

Although it might not seem convenient, we always recommend cooking with as many whole, unprocessed ingredients as possible. Not only is this better for your health, but it also provides the best flavor and the most control over the results of a recipe. When you use whole ingredients, you can control the amount of salt – and acid (more on this later!) – in the dish to ensure the flavors are properly balanced.

How To Use Salt

Cooking with salt is very different from adding salt to your food once it’s on the table! Salting your food after cooking is what makes it taste salty. Salting your food during cooking is what brings out the natural flavors of the ingredients and creates balance within a dish.

So, how do you use salt while cooking? It depends on two things: the type of food, and the cooking method.

Here’s what we mean:

1. Pasta, grains, legumes, vegetables, and meats will all absorb salt at different rates. This means you need to salt them at different points in the cooking process. Meat takes a long time to absorb salt, so salt it hours ahead of time. Delicate ingredients like vegetables absorb salt quickly, so salt them when they hit the pan, or towards the end of cooking.
2. Salt is soluble in water, so cooking methods that involve liquids (like boiling, poaching, or braising) allow you to use more salt than you might think necessary! For example, generously salting your pasta water yields properly seasoned pasta, not overly salty pasta. The water will absorb most of the sodium, while the pasta only absorbs as much sodium as the amount of water it absorbs will allow (through a scientific process known as diffusion).
3. Since salt likes water, it also draws moisture out of food. This is why properly seasoned meats caramelize as soon as they hit the pan, and why roasted vegetables are tender and crisp instead of mushy.
4. You can also use salt to quick pickle or marinate fresh ingredients for serving. Dress fresh tomatoes in a bit of olive oil and sea salt for the most delicious summer snack. Toss hot pepper slices in lime juice and salt for a flavorful topping on tacos and burrito bowls. Add a pinch of salt to your pico or guacamole to make the flavors pop.

What’s important to remember is that you should salt your ingredients before or during cooking for the best results. Taste as you go, and then adjust the amount of salt at the end of cooking if needed. This works particularly well when making sauces, soups, and stews.

What Is A Pinch Of Salt?

Many recipes call for a “pinch” of salt.This is because it can be difficult to specify an exact amount of salt, because everyone’s tastes – and the ingredients you might be using – are different. For example, a “medium tomato” can vary enough in size that one person’s tomato may need more salt than another’s!

So what is a “pinch” of salt, then? To be honest, this is something you’ll want to experiment with and figure out on your own. And the first step is to get yourself a salt cellar, so that you can actually “pinch” the salt.

For me, a pinch of salt is the amount I can grab between my thumb and first two fingers (a two finger pinch). Sometimes if I’m generously salting a large pan of potatoes, I’ll use my thumb and first three fingers (a three finger pinch). For Alex, a one finger pinch is about the same as my two finger pinch!

But instead of focusing on the actual volume of salt, learn what different size “pinches” of salt taste like. This is what matters. If you don’t taste your food while cooking, you’ll never learn to intuitively know how much salt or acid a dish needs. Practice makes perfect, after all! Learn more about how to cook intuitively here.

Acid

Like salt, acid makes the flavors of a dish pop! It can balance sweetness, saltiness, or heat, or brighten the flavors of a dish that’s high in fat, like a creamy pasta sauce or soup. Acid also breaks down proteins, so it’s essential for marinating meats or pickling vegetables.

In the same way that you’ll want to taste for salt as you cook, make sure to taste for acid as well. Learning how adding acid to your food affects the flavor by tasting all the time will help you get a feel for how much acid a dish needs, what type of acid, and when to add it, until it becomes second nature.

Types Of Acid

There are many forms of acid in cooking. Types of acid include citrus juices, vinegars, certain dairy products, and alcohol. Certain foods are naturally acidic as well, like pineapples and tomatoes.

Our favorite way to add acid to a dish is by using fresh lemon or lime juice, but you don’t have to be limited by these two ingredients! Red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, buttermilk, beer, and wine are also often used in cooking to add an acidic element to a dish.

How To Use Acid In Cooking

You can add acid to your dish before or after cooking to achieve different results. Here are a few examples to help illustrate this point:

1. Before – Marinate chicken in a simple mixture of olive oil (fat), lemon juice (acid), and salt. The acid in a marinade breaks down the proteins in meat, which yields more tender results during cooking.
2. After – A fresh squeeze of lemon juice over prepared fish balances the naturally salty flavors of the fish. Similarly, fresh lemon juice added to a creamy pasta sauce balances the fat to lighten and brighten an otherwise heavy dish.

Generally, if you add acid during cooking, the acidity will cook out of the dish and you’ll be left with the flavor of the ingredient you added. So while sometimes you will add acid during cooking (like when making a beer cheese sauce or adding white wine to risotto), you may also want to finish the dish with a splash of acid right before serving to amp up the flavors.

The one exception here is that you can actually use acid to “cook” certain ingredients! Because acid breaks down proteins, which will soften and tenderize your food, you can use it for things like pickling and making ceviche.

Our pico de gallo recipe is a great example of this process in action. Mix together raw onion, tomatoes, and jalapenos in a bowl and you’ll have a salad of crunchy vegetables. But add enough lime juice and a pinch of salt, stir it together and let it sit for a few minutes, and you’ll notice the vegetables start to soften and you have a delicious salsa. The next day, your pico will be even softer as the lime juice continues to break down the proteins.

Using Salt And Acid Together

Salt and acid are like PB&J, or pretzel bites and beer cheese. You can’t have one without the other!

Why? Because they balance each other out. If your pasta sauce tastes too salty, try adding a splash of lemon juice. If it tastes too acidic, try adding more salt. You’ll start to learn how these two ingredients interact the more you cook and taste as you go.

You’ll also find that salt and acid often need to be used together. Let’s revisit our earlier example of hot pepper slices tossed with lime juice and sea salt:

• If you were to toss them in only lime juice, they would begin to soften since the acid will break down the proteins in the peppers. But taste one, and you’ll see that you can taste the lime juice. Add a little salt, and you’ll get to taste the peppers – which is the flavor you wanted in the first place!
• Likewise, if you were to only salt the peppers and not add lime juice, they would never soften and you’d simply be eating salty, raw peppers. You need the acid to “cook” the peppers.

It’s a simple example, but the concept applies to most dishes across the board. It’s why soy sauce and rice vinegar go hand-in-hand in Asian cooking; why lime juice and salt make guacamole taste so much better (or make a tequila shot go down easier!); and why parmesan and white wine make a great risotto or pasta dish.

Conclusion

Next time you roll up your sleeves and get to work in the kitchen, remember these 3 things:

1. Salt enhances flavor, when used properly during cooking (not once you’re already at the dinner table!)
2. Acid balances flavor and breaks down proteins to tenderize foods
3. Salt and acid complement one another and balance each other out, so use them hand in hand

Grab your tasting spoon and taste your food as you go (we can’t stress this enough!) to learn how these two ingredients play together in every single thing you cook. If your dish tastes flat, try adding salt. If it tastes dull, too sweet, or too spicy, try adding acid. Before you know it, you’ll have a knack for adding just the right amount of salt and acid, at just the right time. And your food will taste that much better because of it!

Note: We are just scratching the surface of using salt and acid in your home cooking! It’s a lot to get into in one blog post, so if you want more of an in-depth explanation we recommend checking out Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat. This cookbook has been an invaluable resource in expanding our cooking knowledge and we highly recommend it to anyone looking to become a better home cook!