For the first thirty years of my cooking life I thought I was bad at food. It turned out I was bad at salt.
I followed recipes carefully and ended up with meals that were correct and dull. Then a friend who cooks for a living came round, tasted my soup, added a pinch from her fingers and handed the spoon back without a word. It was like somebody had cleaned a window.
What changed
Salt does not make food taste salty, at least not at first. It makes food taste more like itself. Tomatoes get more tomato. The sweetness of an onion comes forward. There is a point where a dish stops being flat and starts to mean something, and you can only find that point by tasting.
How to practise
Make a pan of plain soup or a pot of beans, and divide it between three cups.
- Taste the first as it is.
- Add a small pinch to the second, and stir.
- Add two pinches to the third, and stir.
- Taste them in order, then go back and do it again.
A few rules I keep
- Salt early, in small amounts, and again at the end.
- Salt pasta water properly. It is the only chance you get.
- Keep it in a bowl by the stove, so that you can use your fingers.
- If it tastes of nothing, try salt. If it tastes of salt, try lemon.
Taste it, then taste it again. That is almost all that I have learned in thirty years.
I am still not a good cook. But I am now a bad cook whose food tastes of something, and my friends have stopped being polite about it, which I take as a compliment.
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