Kitchen Notes
Salt — When and How Much
Salt by percentage, not by pinch. One number covers meat, one covers pasta water, and the timing matters more than the quantity.
February 2, 2026
“Season to taste” is useless advice at the start of a cook, when the thing you are seasoning is raw and you cannot taste it. Percentages fix that.
The numbers worth memorising
| What | Salt | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Meat, dry-brined | 1 % of its weight | Seasons through, dries the surface |
| Pasta water | 1 % of the water | Seasons the pasta as it hydrates |
| Bread dough | 2 % of the flour | Below this it tastes flat and over-ferments |
| Brine, wet | 5 % of the water | Fast; for lean meat and pickles |
A 1.6 kg chicken takes 16 g. Two litres of pasta water takes 20 g. You need a scale for a week and then you can eyeball it forever.
Weight, not volume
A tablespoon of fine table salt weighs about twice what a tablespoon of coarse flaky salt does — the crystals are a completely different size and shape. Any recipe that specifies salt by the spoonful is either assuming a specific brand or is imprecise by a factor of two. Weighing sidesteps the whole problem.
Timing changes what salt does
Early (hours before): salt dissolves in surface moisture, and the concentration gradient pulls it inward. The meat ends up seasoned throughout, and — counterintuitively — holds onto more water when cooked, because salt partially denatures the muscle proteins so they retain moisture rather than squeezing it out.
Just before cooking: the worst of both. Salt has drawn water to the surface but has not been reabsorbed, so you are searing wet meat, which steams instead of browning. If you did not salt early, salt after searing.
At the end: seasoning, not curing. Flaky salt on a finished dish is a texture and a burst of salinity — a different ingredient from the salt you cooked with, and not a substitute for it.
Why undersalted food tastes flat rather than bland
Sodium suppresses bitterness and amplifies our perception of sweet and umami compounds. So salt is not only adding “salty” — it is removing a competing sensation and turning up two others. That is why a properly salted tomato tastes more like a tomato, not more like salt, and why the fix for a dish that tastes of nothing in particular is almost always salt or acid rather than another spice.
Salvage
Oversalted a braise? Dilution is the only real fix — more liquid, more unsalted bulk. Potatoes do not “absorb the salt”; they absorb salted liquid, which is dilution with extra steps. Acid and sweetness can mask a mild excess, but they cannot remove it.