The blog of cooking-ez.com

Let's go easy on the salt


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.
3,463 19 4.8
Grade this page:

Last modified on: February 20th 2021

Keywords for this post:SaltHealthExcessWHOLimitationReduction
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.

le sel


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.

boite de ravioli


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.

le sel dans le pain


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.

saler



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.


Back to top of page

Lasts posts
Divide and weigh dough into regular pieces
Divide and weigh dough into regular pieces
When you prepare dough for cupcakes in a pastry shop or bakery, at some point you're going to have to divide it, i.e. cut it into small pieces, which should all have the same weight. Sounds simple enough, but is it really that simple?
6955 May 30th 2023
How to sprinkle well?
How to sprinkle well?
When in a recipe you need to sprinkle something, that is to say to spread a fine layer of powder (flour, sugar, etc.) on something, powdered sugar on a pie for example, you will probably use a fine strainer or a sieve, this is the best way to proceed. But is that all?
8294.7 May 23th 2023
How to properly roll out a pie crust?
How to properly roll out a pie crust?
Very often in pastry making, you have to roll out a pastry before using it for a pie or another dessert. At home, of course, you get out your rolling pin and simply roll it out. Is there a way to get an evenly rolled out dough? That's what we will see in this article.
1,2204.9 May 10th 2023
Don't throw away your pizza crusts
Don't throw away your pizza crusts
You've probably already noticed that at the end of a pizza meal, at least half of the participants have left the crusts in the boxes or on the plates that many don't eat. Naturally, one would tend to put them "to the birds", or worse, to throw them away, and it's a shame because they are in fact...
1,9494.9 April 22th 2023
The long fermentation of bread
The long fermentation of bread
I had already told you in a previous article about the delicious little alchemy that happens when we make bread, let's try to go a little further this time, and try to discover what makes a good bread, in other words, which has taste. .
2,1344.9 April 13th 2023
Other pages you may also like
Is it really necessary to cream egg yolks?
Is it really necessary to cream egg yolks?
Let’s try and answer a question that crops up in cookery and patisserie, even if it verges on the existential: do the egg yolks in a custard recipe really need to be beaten until pale, or not?
32K4.6 February 28th 2018
The window-pane test in bread-making
The window-pane test in bread-making
The home bread-makers often ask themselves “Have I kneaded my dough long enough?” . A good question, as dough that is insufficiently kneaded will not rise properly or will fall flat when the top is slashed, which is very frustrating. To know when the dough is ready, one can rely on the length...
82K 23.9 June 16th 2021
What is the difference between bakery and patisserie?
What is the difference between bakery and patisserie?
This is a question that you may well have asked yourself and which I will attempt to answer. In France the two trades of "boulangerie" (bakery) and "pâtisserie" (patisserie and confectionery) have always been quite distinct, but where exactly do the boundaries lie? .
110K 14.1 February 7th 2017
A few tips for effective kneading at home
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.
255K 23.6 June 23th 2021
Drawing a pattern in pastry
Drawing a pattern in pastry
Often in the kitchen, in pastry-making, or in baking, we need to trace a pattern on a pastry. It's just a question of aesthetics but it has its effect after baking on a galette, pithiviers, pâté en croute (terrine in a pie crust), etc.
20K4.1 May 23th 2019
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.
I am not a leaving thing
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.

Back to top of page