One of the simplest ways you can improve your kitchen skills is to master cooking with salt and pepper. These are generally two of the basic cooking ingredients that will be practically in every recipe so mastering their use will pay off big for anybody looking to improve their cooking skills.
When You Should Salt
Cooks just about everywhere have varying ideas on when to salt food when cooking with salt and pepper. This debate is especially contentious when grilling steaks with the many opposing sides each claiming that it's better to salt a couple of days before grilling, a couple of hours before, right after grilling, or on the table while eating. One of the most entrenched opinions held by lots of chefs and home cooks alike is that salting ahead of time dries out food.
Numerous home cooks attest to the fact that salting too early will only result in a puddle of juices seeping out of the meat, leaving the meat stringy and wasting prime cuts. Traditionalists for this reason suggest grilling without salt and adding it right after grilling or at the table.
The more scientific salt advocates, in contrast, firmly insist that salt actually possesses an osmotic cell-changing effect on meat which enables it to hold in more moisture, thereby helping to make it much more juicy. Salt is also thought to dissolve the sticky myosin protein in meat to help hold ground meat better. It is because of this that salt advocates of this particular persuasion suggest salting early and salting liberally. The general rule is that the bigger the food item, the earlier it needs to be salted. That can mean anywhere from a couple of hours before grilling to a few days depending on who is actually doing the advocating.
When to Pepper
Although less contentious than the "when to salt" debate, cooks also have differing opinions on when to use pepper when cooking. Some say that because pepper is heat sensitive, putting in pepper before grilling or cooking is a waste because you lose the flavor from the heat. A comfortable majority nevertheless insists that pepper needs to be cooked into the food to ensure that its flavor melts into the steak or whatever food item it is put on. The more technically inclined point to the fact that the melting point for pepper's core element is high enough to allow the flavor to migrate deep enough into the food item before it escapes, therefore helping to make the meat much more flavorful. To put it simply, the high temperature cooks the pepper into the food to provide a depth of flavor you cannot achieve by sprinkling pepper on a meal after it is cooked.
Just How Much Do You Really Need?
When cooking with salt and pepper, beginner cooks frequently find themselves agonizing over the standard instruction to "season to taste." While the reason for that is clear enough for anybody who has been cooking for a while, it can be daunting for the first-time cook who simply doesn't know where to start with "season to taste." The only real answer to this is to start with quite little and to season throughout the cooking process bearing in mind that using too much seasoning is a bigger danger than using too little. With the appropriate amount of seasoning, a dish tastes perfect, however with too much the rest of the flavors become overpowered.
It's easy to know when you require more seasoning anyway as under seasoned food seems flat. As most veteran cooks understand, salt does not simply add saltiness to a dish, but is in addition instrumental in allowing various other flavors to come out better leading to a more complex and full-bodied dish. So salt and season slowly, with a final adjustment just before serving to get that perfectly salted and seasoned dish.
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