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Do you put salt in the water when you cook your vegetables? If you do, you should stop immediately, because it makes them taste horrible.

If you make sweet things, do you add a bit of salt? Well you shouldn't. It's a complete myth that adding salt into things that aren't meant to be salty somehow "brings out the flavour". It brings out the flavour of salt, surprisingly enough, and can really spoil a biscuit/cake/pudding.

I don't understand why people do any of this.

Another thing is salt in bread. Most people don't make their own bread, but supermarket bread always has salt in. But it's complete bollocks. If you want it to be salty you put butter or Marmite or something on it. No-one eats bread on its own anyway, so there's no need to make any additional assumptions about what to flavour it with. We do that ourselves with our toppings. So that really annoys me.

There was this supermarket cake I came across that came up as "red" on salt (some categorisation system where red means there's ways too much of it). I tried to explain to someone about how ridiculous this was, but they weren't getting it, just saying that they put salt in cakes. My argument wasn't even about that, but that they'd managed to put so much in that it came up as red, even though it wasn't a savoury thing! I mean, fucking hell!

The bottom line is - only put salt in something if it's meant to be salty and wouldn't be salty enough without additional salt. Is that so hard?

Hmm, I'm a minimal user of salt (one of those 750g table salt things will probably last me 10-20 years - I think I'm on my second since leaving home in 1985) - but I'm going to disagree about salt in bread: for me it needs to be in both the bread and the butter - it's a savoury delicacy (I absolutely hate anything sweet on bread & butter), and the saltiness is a part of the pleasure.

You seem to be forgetting that salt tastes brilliant, therefore adding salt to anything just makes it better.

Well, it's all a matter of taste, really. I know people who put salt on absolutely everything (although they are quite freakish in other ways to be fair) whereas I pretty much only add salt to stuff like fish and chips when it comes to cooked food (because I make the reasonable assumption that whoever has cooked it has seasoned it).

When it comes to cooking stuff though, you gotta do some seasoning. I once made a stew and somehow forgot to put salt in and it was the blandest fucking thing ever (ditto scrambled eggs without salt are pretty much inedible). That said, if you can explicitly taste the salt when something's cooked, you've used too much.

Brian Moore wrote:Hmm, I'm a minimal user of salt (one of those 750g table salt things will probably last me 10-20 years - I think I'm on my second since leaving home in 1985) - but I'm going to disagree about salt in bread: for me it needs to be in both the bread and the butter - it's a savoury delicacy (I absolutely hate anything sweet on bread & butter), and the saltiness is a part of the pleasure.

Since the butter melts into the bread, would you notice if it was initially in the bread?

Gavin Chipper wrote:Since the butter melts into the bread, would you notice if it was initially in the bread?

Bread & butter. Yes.

Cold toast & butter. Yes.

Hot toast & butter - haven't done an experiment, but since I like salted bread with butter, I can't see the point.

In a lot of these things, salt is used as much as a preservative as as a flavour enhancer. You need to keep unsalted butter in the fridge and use it quickly. Salted not so much, plus it's better. When I was little I never had salt with chips. I had butter.

Brian Moore wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:Since the butter melts into the bread, would you notice if it was initially in the bread?

Bread & butter. Yes.

Cold toast & butter. Yes.

Hot toast & butter - haven't done an experiment, but since I like salted bread with butter, I can't see the point.

By the way, I see eating bread/toast and butter as like cycling with an inner tube but no tyre. Or wearing just a vest and pants.

I believe that salt is supposed to have some effect on the yeast when making bread (slowing down the fermentation rate or something) - so it does serve a purpose.

Generally though, I don't bother to add salt to cakes or pastry or, indeed, most foods. I think you can introduce much nicer flavours if you need to enhance the flavour of a dish. The only thing I always add salt to is chips!

Karen Pearson wrote:I believe that salt is supposed to have some effect on the yeast when making bread (slowing down the fermentation rate or something) - so it does serve a purpose.

Don't know about the technicalities, but if you leave the salt out then the bread is practically inedible. Salt doesn't make bread taste salty, it makes bread taste like bread.

Seeing this thread made me think how I like salt, for me if I have some chips with anything I have to put salt on the chips or it is so fucking bland it's unbelievable. I however leave salt out of anything the chips are with, like a burger, I'll tend to get supermarket burgers and put in chilli and garlic or one of those 2 (if you've never tried this combination it is lovely). Back on topic I like salted butter too as there tends to be a blandness about unsalted butter and it just ruins the bread as I like to have flavour in my toast. It's personal preference though and some people may like one thing but hate another.

Matthew Tassier wrote:

Karen Pearson wrote:I believe that salt is supposed to have some effect on the yeast when making bread (slowing down the fermentation rate or something) - so it does serve a purpose.

Don't know about the technicalities, but if you leave the salt out then the bread is practically inedible. Salt doesn't make bread taste salty, it makes bread taste like bread.

Being of an age where blood pressure becomes an issue, I've had to find out a bit about this. Apparently the bread alone in two slices of toast and one sandwich contains about half the recommended daily maximum amount of salt one should consume. And it's only true that bread only tastes like bread if it's got salt in it if you're a salt-junkie. It's like stopping putting sugar in your tea. It tastes foul for a week or two till you get used to it. After that it's normal, and tea with sugar tastes like syrup. But I think Karen's right. You do need a bit of salt to make the dough rise, or something, but nothing like as much as they put in.

I often eat homemade bread but I've recently found out that it's not entirely made from scratch so the stuff probably has some salt in. But there's less salt than in "normal" bread and it's fine. And the vegetables I eat definitely aren't cooked in salt, and they're fine.

I still have takeaway pizza and curry which probably have ridiculous amounts of salt in, so it's not as if I avoid it completely, but when I'm just eating normal food at home, I think I do alright.

I stopped putting salt on food after a family meal when I was 14 because my older brother bollocked my dad for putting it on, telling him it was bad for him, much to my Dad's disgust. It put me off,but after nearly 30 years I've just started shaking it on again.It's a true pleasure, as long as it's not done to excess, as with anything else I guess.

My dad used to put salt on porridge though (bleurgh) and when I complained wrongly believed I was doing so because of what my bro had said.

Richard Priest wrote:I've just started shaking it on again.It's a true pleasure

Jon Corby wrote:

Richard Priest wrote:I've just started shaking it on again.It's a true pleasure

Walked into that one didn't I....