When to add salt to certain foods: Before, during or after cooking

For an ingredient with such a small footprint, there is a whole lot of ground to cover when it comes to salt. How much to use? What type? Should you even use salt at all?

Just as important as whether and how much to use is when to add it to your food.

Even Ben Jacobsen, whose entire business, Jacobsen Salt Co., revolves around this essential ingredient, counts himself among those who have been unsure about the right time to apply salt. He used to think only at the end, “and I’m probably not alone.”

Let’s work on clearing that up.

“Salting isn’t something to do once and then check off your list; be constantly aware of how a dish tastes as it cooks, and how you want it to taste at the table,” Samin Nosrat writes in “Salt Fat Acid Heat.” “Tasting and adjusting — over and over again as you add ingredients and they transform throughout the cooking process — will yield the most flavorful food.”

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One tip to keep in mind: High-quality flaky salt is best used to finish a dish, adding a briny pop of flavor to meat, vegetables and even desserts.

Here’s more advice on when to salt certain foods — before, during or after cooking, or some or all of the above.

Meat

“When salting meat for cooking, any time is better than none, and more is better than some,” Nosrat writes. This gives the salt time to diffuse through the meat, which improves flavor, moisture retention and browning.

“Aim to season meat the day before cooking when possible. … The larger, denser, or more sinewy the piece of meat, the earlier you should salt it.” As examples, oxtails, shanks and short ribs should be salted for one or two days. Salt steak more than 40 minutes or less than three minutes before cooking, J. Kenji López-Alt recommends in “The Food Lab,” noting that anything in between will leave too much moisture on the surface. Just keep in mind that salting meat too long will start to cure it (think jerky), so if you start with the best of intentions but realize you won’t get around to cooking, Nosrat suggests freezing the meat for up to two months and picking up the process from there after it defrosts.

Poultry

It’s best to salt chicken one day in advance and Thanksgiving turkey two or three days ahead of time, according to Nosrat. Especially with smaller cuts, you can still reap the rewards by salting a few hours before cooking or even in the period while your oven or grill preheats and you prep other ingredients.

Eggs

Once I started adding a little more salt to them, my scrambled eggs went from blah to well-seasoned. Moreover, salt can improve the texture of cooked eggs. It serves as a buffer that prevents the proteins from bonding too tightly and squeezing out water, López-Alt explains. He recommends salting eggs at least 15 minutes before cooking to allow the salt to evenly dissolve, though just before cooking also helps. Salting toward the end of cooking may produce tougher eggs that weep liquid.

Seafood

Unlike meat, seafood does not benefit from advance salting. In fact, the more delicate proteins of fish and shellfish can break down when salted too early, turning them tough and dry, Nosrat says. She recommends salting flaky fish 15 minutes before cooking and seasoning one-inch-thick steaks of meaty fish such as tuna and swordfish 30 minutes ahead of time. “Season all other seafood at the time of cooking to preserve textural integrity.” That includes such quick-cooking standbys as shrimp and scallops.

Vegetables

A one-size-fits-all recommendation for vegetables is hard to come by, thanks to the range of types and cooking methods. Salt works on vegetables by helping break down pectin, a fiber in plant cell walls, speeding up cooking time, Harold McGee says in “On Food and Cooking.” It can also preserve the color of green vegetables, such as green beans.

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“When in doubt, salt vegetables before you cook them,” Nosrat says. Add salt when you toss them with oil before roasting, and include it in the cooking water or in the skillet when you saute. One exception: mushrooms. Because they are mostly water, adding salt too early can draw it all out and prevent browning. So salt mushrooms once they start to take on color. In other scenarios, salting sliced vegetables at least 15 to 20 minutes in advance works to your advantage. This may be eggplant or zucchini you plan to roast or add to a tart, cabbage for a slaw, or tomatoes for a Southern tomato sandwich or Caprese salad. Simply let the vegetables drain in a colander or on a towel and dab away any excess moisture before proceeding. Jacobsen almost always recommends a sprinkle of flaky salt on cooked vegetables for “a little salty pop rock in your mouth.”

Beans and grains

As with vegetables, add salt at the beginning of cooking beans and grains to help them soften and improve in flavor. Cooking beans in salted water does not make them tougher, contrary to a common myth, López-Alt says on Serious Eats. In fact, he recommends soaking them in salted water as well, for creamy beans that don’t rupture during cooking. You can salt a little less aggressively with foods such as grains that will, unlike beans, absorb all the water they’re cooked in, Nosrat says. And the longer a food cooks, the more salt it will absorb over time.

Soups, sauces and braises

“You want layers of flavor, because layers of flavor mean a more nuanced bite,” Jacobsen says, and this applies especially to longer-cooking dishes that evolve over time. Salt soups, braises, sauces and similar dishes at several points from beginning to end. Seasoning the vegetables or meat before you start cooking will lay the foundation, then you can adjust throughout the process. Although the amount will be different from person to person, at a certain threshold, the flavor will just “click,” my colleague Aaron Hutcherson says. If your recipe calls for other salty ingredients (olives, capers) or starts by salting meat, have a lighter hand seasoning the cooking liquid and lean more on adjusting at the end, Nosrat advises.

Baked goods

Baking is such a specifically designed process that it’s best to salt a baked good when the recipe instructs you. Although salt can enhance the flavors of other ingredients in baked goods, it has a much greater effect than that, meaning only salting to taste at the end is about the worst thing you can do.

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Among other effects, salt encourages gluten formation, which can contribute to how much and when your bread dough starts to tighten up. Sometimes salt is held off to allow for easier kneading and hydration. (This is known as the autolyse method.) It may be added later to other batters or doughs to keep things tender, Nosrat says. Stirring in salt when instructed can also ensure that it is evenly distributed. Although it’s no substitute for salting before baking, flaky salt can finish off a chocolate cookie or caramel tart quite nicely.

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