Let's go easy on the salt
In terms of cooking, I'm probably not teaching you much, salt is ubiquitous, we put it in almost all our dishes, in varying amounts depending on our taste, some like salty, others less, others still not. Its main role is the flavor, the taste, we say that it is a flavor enhancer, ie it reveals the tastes of food, especially if they are a bit bland by nature.
7,214 4.8/5 (19 reviews)
Keywords for this post:SaltHealthExcessWHOLimitationReductionLast modified on: February 20th 2021
Let's go easy on the salt
In other words, a dish that is not salty is much less tasty than a salty dish, and as a result, it is, for many (and I am the first), difficult to do without it.
But there are 2 salts, the one you add while cooking, or by spreading with semi-salted butter, according to your taste, and especially the one you don't see or don't feel, the hidden salt. And to illustrate this, I will take 2 concrete examples:
So when you heat up a simple box of ravioli, you will eat too much salt without realizing it, and as a recent study by "Que choisir" shows, it's even worse for anything that seems cheap, the less expensive the product is, the more salt it contains, so that the manufacturer can mask the poor quality of its ingredients.
But let's go back to salt, in France, the usual use (but it is not regulated, for the moment), is 18 gr of salt per kilo of flour. This is relatively little, to compare 50 years ago it was 24 gr, or even more!
The trend is clearly downwards, and the bakery industry is pushing for a reduction to 16 or 14 g, or even less.
Moreover, there is a simple phenomenon linked to slow bread-making: the longer the dough rests and ferments, the less salt it needs. And so the express baguettes from the supermarkets or bread factories, imagine what they load in salt to try to sell you something that has a vague taste.
Don't hesitate to ask your baker, ask him how much salt he uses per kilo of flour? If he's a good baker, not only will he give you a straight answer, but he'll also be able to give you his personal perspective on this delicate subject. By the way, our Belgian friends have a maximum of 14g.
Then, when we cook, we must try to avoid having a heavy hand in salt with extremely simple tricks too: always taste before re(salting), prefer spices to salt when possible, do not "double" that is to say for example do not salt a dressing, because it is already salty with the addition of mustard, no or little salt if you put cheese in your recipe, etc.
Nothing revolutionary in all this you will have understood, you just have to be a little careful, read carefully the labels of what you buy, and especially... cook as much as possible!
To sum up: Let's go easy on the salt, it's a matter of our health.
But there are 2 salts, the one you add while cooking, or by spreading with semi-salted butter, according to your taste, and especially the one you don't see or don't feel, the hidden salt. And to illustrate this, I will take 2 concrete examples:
Ready-made meals
The industrialists of the food industry have found in salt their best friend, not only they raise the taste as I told you previously, but moreover it acts as a water retainer, so everything that contains water, almost everything in fact, is generally very or too salty. Tragically, there is a lot of it everywhere, in all ready-made meals, cold cuts, snacks... even sweet foods (creams, desserts, biscuits, etc. etc.) contain it.
So when you heat up a simple box of ravioli, you will eat too much salt without realizing it, and as a recent study by "Que choisir" shows, it's even worse for anything that seems cheap, the less expensive the product is, the more salt it contains, so that the manufacturer can mask the poor quality of its ingredients.
Bread
In bread, there is also salt, bread is extremely simple: water, flour, a little salt and yeast or leaven, period! Everything else, as JP Coffe rightly said, is crap, just there to compensate for the deficiencies of industrial bread.
But let's go back to salt, in France, the usual use (but it is not regulated, for the moment), is 18 gr of salt per kilo of flour. This is relatively little, to compare 50 years ago it was 24 gr, or even more!
The trend is clearly downwards, and the bakery industry is pushing for a reduction to 16 or 14 g, or even less.
Moreover, there is a simple phenomenon linked to slow bread-making: the longer the dough rests and ferments, the less salt it needs. And so the express baguettes from the supermarkets or bread factories, imagine what they load in salt to try to sell you something that has a vague taste.
Don't hesitate to ask your baker, ask him how much salt he uses per kilo of flour? If he's a good baker, not only will he give you a straight answer, but he'll also be able to give you his personal perspective on this delicate subject. By the way, our Belgian friends have a maximum of 14g.
And so?
The observation is without appeal, we eat too much salt, we should be at 5 gr/day maximum according to the WHO, and we are rather at 10/15 gr in France.What can we do?
The solution is almost too simple: first of all, we must try to limit all ready-made products, which is often easier said than done. Let's see this as a strong signal to push us to cook more and more ourselves, by transforming the products we buy locally. The virtuous circle I've already told you a lot about (yes, it's my hobby): we buy local even if it's a bit more expensive, we support local producers, they produce well and healthily, it's good for our health, everyone wins.Then, when we cook, we must try to avoid having a heavy hand in salt with extremely simple tricks too: always taste before re(salting), prefer spices to salt when possible, do not "double" that is to say for example do not salt a dressing, because it is already salty with the addition of mustard, no or little salt if you put cheese in your recipe, etc.
Nothing revolutionary in all this you will have understood, you just have to be a little careful, read carefully the labels of what you buy, and especially... cook as much as possible!
To sum up: Let's go easy on the salt, it's a matter of our health.
Lasts posts
The grease spray
As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...August 26th 20253,9425
Cake moulds
When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?August 25th 20254,4515
Thinning out herbs
If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...August 8th 20252,6725
Add a bay leaf
Bay leaf: small in size, but big in flavor. You'll find it in hundreds of recipes, and it's often added to cooking meat, in a sauce or broth, usually accompanied by other herbs or products. It's a staple of Provençal, Mediterranean and Oriental cuisine, but not the only one. Usually, in a...July 31th 20252,7785
Parsley stems
Parsley, whether curly or flat, is a delicious ingredient in many recipes, where it is used both raw and cooked. When used raw, in a salad for example, where it always provides, alone or with other herbs, a remarkable freshness, only the leaves are kept. And when used cooked?July 28th 20252,991 13
Other pages you may also like
The grease spray
As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...August 26th 20253,9425
A few tips for effective kneading at home
When you have to knead dough for bread or some other recipe, you may well use a food processor or the type of machine known as a stand mixer. The best-known brands are Kenwood and KitchenAid. They are useful tools, but here are a few tips to help you get the best out of them.June 23th 2021280 K 23.7
The art of the charlotte
In cooking, a charlotte is a delicious moulded dessert, with biscuits around the outside that have been soaked in a flavoured syrup, filled with a light cream or mousse. The charlotte is left to set in the fridge before being turned out and served in slices. It is very light and a lovely sweet...February 27th 201344 K4.3
Steam for baking bread
What does steam have to do with bread-making? This is not only a bakers' secret, it is something you might not think of at all: if you make bread and bake it like a cake, you will end up with bread, but pale and with a thick, hard crust – a long way from the golden-brown crusty loaf you had in...June 16th 2021143 K4.5
Parsley stems
Parsley, whether curly or flat, is a delicious ingredient in many recipes, where it is used both raw and cooked. When used raw, in a salad for example, where it always provides, alone or with other herbs, a remarkable freshness, only the leaves are kept. And when used cooked?July 28th 20252,991 13
Post a comment or question
Follow this page
If you are interested in this page, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the page is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.
Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.
Alternatively: you can subscribe to the mailing list of cooling-ez.com , you will receive a e-mail for each new recipe published on the site.