WOULD YOU RATHER …
Only be able to use salt, or use any other seasoning but salt in your cooking?
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Salt, totally.
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I don’t use salt in my cooking (nor add it to my food at the table).
Interesting. Do you substitute any other seasonings in place of salt?
If I pick “everything else,” can I still use soy sauce and anchovies?
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Yeah! I also like Maggie (not a girl, a seasoning sauce).
Anchovies really does elevate a sauce or dish.
The partner be like “but I don’t like anchovies”, then later “the (pizza/pasta) sauce is so nice!”. Me: “I added a few anchovies fillets to it”.
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Also capers, olives, etc.
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No. I cook the dish with whatever other flavourings are mentioned in a recipe but don’t add in anything extra. Must be 25 years or so since I stopped with the salt ((certainly before I stopped with nicotine & alcohol)
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I also use Chinese preserved turnips/mustards in Chinese dishes and omit extra salt a recipe calls for. Even seaweeds. They are already salted or naturally salty like in the case of seaweed.
(PS: should be 'really do" in previous reply)
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Totally unnatural.
This is REALLY hard for me to answer. But if I’m able to get saltiness from other ingredients like soy sauce, Parmesan, bacon (BACON!!!), Worcestershire sauce, and miso paste, I’d forgo the salt.
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I like salt. But not in excess.
Food in Portugal, Spain, Argentina and Chile (could be in more countries) tends to be more salty than I normally eat at home (as in my own cooking). The salt pots in Argentina and Chile have big holes and people add so much of it to their served food. I was a big amazed seeing that.
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I had to cook salt free when my ex had a medical issue.
I took it as a challenge and we were all surprised how much we didnt miss salt, as I cooked a lot of more heavily-seasoned dishes like curries.
BUT…rice and pasta with no salt are dismal.
I still don’t use a lot of salt, but some is needed.
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An interesting question. Some elderly family I know, they were told by doctors to have no salt diet. They can use spice generously to substitute the lack of salt in diet. They said no salt diet isn’t disturbing for them.
Back to your question, “only able to use salt” does it mean we can use naturally salted food like roe, or cured food like ham, miso to salt our food, or these are options are out too? I need salt, if those options are not there.
Not even pasta? Bread one purchased contains salt, unless you buy those salt free bread for people with medical issue.
Also, you love to eat out, do you feel those cooking are too salty for you, as you’re used to salt free food?
Salt is more than just a seasoning - it is a tool. Certain cooking processes, like drawing water out of vegetables at the desired moment, are difficult if not impossible to accomplish without it. If I had to choose, I would choose salt without question, but I’m glad I don’t have to!
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Not only vegetables, cured fish, cured meat need salt. Miso, soy sauce used salt, even certain cheese. If one has a medical issue, doctors will forbid all salty food.
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I started dialing back the salt in my cooking some years ago, after our first visit to Italy. The level of saltiness we’d become accustomed to in the US was more than we’d realized (working in offices, buying lunch daily and dinner out at least weekly). Saltiness was overpowering in many foods so I cut way, way back. We can always add a few flakes of finishing salt at the table if we feel a dish needs a lift.
If I had to choose between salt and all other seasonings, that would be tough for me. I’d want to choose chilies over salt but if I couldn’t have salt for pickling or salads—oh my, that would be a challenge.
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I think British chefs have cut back on the use of salt in recent years, so it’s fairly rare that I get served a dish that’s too salty for me. It used to be an issue when I first stopped. “Normal” saltiness, as it was then, was much too salty for me. But, yes, there’s still occasions when I find dishes where all I’m tasting is salt.
I think it’s one of those food addictions, like sugar or chilli, where you become used to what is “normal”. But, if you cut it out of your diet, “normal” flavourings becoem to salty, sweet or hot.
There is the occasional dish we cook at home where I will add a few grains of sea salt - but that’s because I want to taste the salt, not to enhance the flavour of the other ingredients. Asparagus would be my prime example.
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A big difference I found when I switched salt I use from the table salt to the grey salt is I find the quantity used is increase, grey salt are less salty than the chemically bleached white salt.
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