The “annoying habit” of salting an already salted meal.

Why would someone put salt over a plate of food that was already salted during cooking?

It happens all the time, the salt is shaken or ground all over the food before it’s even tasted!

And the cook is often annoyed. “Why don’t they taste the food first??”

There’s a simple reason and it’s at the heart of the taste of salt.

We have a deep physiological need for salt and crave the taste. Of the basic tastes—sweet, sour, bitter and salty—salt is the hardest to live without.

It has many flavours. Firstly there are many different kinds of salt from different sources.

Secondly, as Michael Moss explains in his great book “Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us”, a salt can be transformed into a vast array of shapes and designs. It can be “smashed, ground, pulverized, flaked, and reshaped in hundreds of ways, all with one goal in mind: to maximize its power in food”.

There are dozens of forms of it either naturally available or manufactured, anything from a fine powder to large granules, from crystals to flakes. Each with a special application, such as coating popcorn or chips to “lash the taste buds instantaneously with a direct hit of salt”. Salts have become “finely tuned bliss machines”.

So there it is, there are two levels of salted taste for a cooked meal. The salt cooked in for the essential flavour and that which is added after serving for the distinct taste we crave.

Dare I say, there’s a simple answer for the cook. Use a lesser amount during cooking to allow that spicy addition at the table.

There are ample delicious options, we’re spoiled for choice.

Makes you hungry just thinking about it ..