Lately I’ve been noticing something that bothers me about cooking shows. Typically at the end of a recipe, they say.. and then add a pinch of salt and pepper.. And they sprinkle this ridiculously minute amount onto the food, like it’s going to season something. In most dishes, a pinch of salt does NOTHING.
For years I kind of emulated this and thought I was doing ok.
A couple years ago I took this french cooking techniques class and during the first lesson, this other lady and I were making some mushroom soup.. Nothing exciting, really. Cream, mushroom, you know.. that sort of thing. The man that was helping the teacher out came by and asked if we seasoned the soup then tasted it. Clearly we had not seasoned it properly because he just started telling us, Salt.. more.. more .. no! more! until I felt like we had seriously over salted it. He did the same thing with the pepper.. until I was pretty sure it was gonna be all seasoning and nothing else.
I took a bite and thought, ‘Holy crap. This is what it’s supposed to taste like!?!’ because apparently I had been seasoning everything wrong for my entire life. It was amazing and kind of opened up a new world for me. It was kind of like winning the food lottery.
The Confluent Kitchen 