The Great PB Poll

and who puts ketchup and hot sauce on everything, and who basically can't enjoy simple, natural, honest flavors and that, I do think, is pathetic.

I often put hot sauce on foods, Jenise, not because I can't enjoy simple flavors, but that too many foods taste bland and unappealing without some seasoning, and I really enjoy the capsicum burn and resulting endorphin rush. That is why the spice trade has been such a big deal for millennia, and is also why chile peppers have spread 'round the world in the few centuries since their "discovery" in the Americas. I rarely add salt to anything except small amounts while cooking some dishes to enhance flavors, but much more often will add a dash of black pepper or crushed chiles and/or various fresh and dried spices, as a means of livening up the natural flavor. Even a fresh from the vine heirloom tomato tastes better with a tiny dash of sea salt and a sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper - too my taste buds, anyway.

To get this thread back to peanut butter, unsalted peanuts are bland without a little salt, but it doesn't take much to really make the peanut flavor pop.

I always thought that salting the water was to limit the temperature at which it boils.

Yeah, I don't think much salt makes it into the pasta, it all goes down the drain with the water

Folks, a lot of you are really wide of the mark here.

I've been telling my students - literally for decades - the principal reason we add salt to a liquid is not to impart a salt flavor to the food we are cooking, but rather to retain the natural flavor already in the food!

Ever heard of osmosis? I think even the intelligent design folks will concede its existence.

Most of the foods we cook in water already contain natural salts. Most of the water we cook in has no - or very little - salt. Therefore the salt in the food, being eminently diffusable, will do its damnedest to equalize the salinity inside the food with lack thereof outside the food. In other words it hits the culinary road.

And when the salt migrates from the food to the liquid, it serendipitiously draws along with it flavor and nutrition.

By not salting a liquid in which one cooks solid food one is actually detracting from the "naturalness" and flavor of the food.

Your explanation of osmosis is not quite correct. In osmosis, the solvent--not salt (the solute)--moves from the solution of lower concentration (the hypotonic solution) to the solution of higher concentration (the hypertonic solution).

In other words, if there is no salt in pasta water, the water (hypotonic) migrates into the pasta (hypertonic) to equalize the concentrations, which lessens the salt concentration in the pasta.

If the pasta water is salted, depending on its concentration, the migration of water is minimized or reversed.

Yeah, I ain't a scientist and never played one on television.

But, I am trying to create an isotonic solution for pasta.

[Jenise]

I often put hot sauce on foods, Jenise, not because I can't enjoy simple flavors, but that too many foods taste bland and unappealing without some seasoning, and I really enjoy the capsicum burn and resulting endorphin rush. That is why the spice trade has been such a big deal for millennia, and is also why chile peppers have spread 'round the world in the few centuries since their "discovery" in the Americas. I rarely add salt to anything except small amounts while cooking some dishes to enhance flavors, but much more often will add a dash of black pepper or crushed chiles and/or various fresh and dried spices, as a means of livening up the natural flavor. Even a fresh from the vine heirloom tomato tastes better with a tiny dash of sea salt and a sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper - too my taste buds, anyway.

Agreed! I love salt. And chiles. And spices. And I use them all. It's just that the person I spoke of really goes overboard.

Agreed! I love salt. And chiles. And spices. And I use them all. It's just that the person I spoke of really goes overboard.

Yeah, I think that is the point. I'm not rabidly suggesting that no one use salt for anything, ever.

I AM suggesting that people use more salt than they need, that the manufacturer can satisfy both types of person by allowing the salty dogs to do their own salting, and that to oversalt their product is a diservice to taste and possibly health as well as a disincentive for some to buy.

There are some foods that cry out for salt - seared foie gras for one......

Speaking of chiles for seasoning. I always have an emergency container of crushed red chiles in my truck for use at those restaurants who won't or can't make my food hot. For example, I love this one Thai restaurant, but no matter how much I beg, they won't make their food hotter than tepid. Chile peppers to the rescue!

If I have a quick Wendy's chili con carne, I don't want to use their vinegar-based hot sauce, I sprinkle chiles. Chiles to the rescue, again!

And, of course, if I'm having pizza at my relatives' house, I have to have chile peppers. Kids like things bland. I don't.

... For example, I love this one Thai restaurant, but no matter how much I beg, they won't make their food hotter than tepid.

I'm amazed. In New Mexico? The Chili Pepper State? Where those classic modern books -- The Pepper Garden, etc. -- originated?

This is not classic Thai cook behavior, as you surely know. If you want it hot, please visit the SF area where some proud expat Thai cooks will gladly accommodate you as hot as you like it, and then some. I say this from humbling experience.

Recall that the little green Thai pepper nicknamed -- pardon the frank but accurate translation -- "mouse turd" -- gives Scotch Bonnets a run for their money on the Scoville scale. And even challenges lesser-known, higher-scoring peppers of the Americas. Such as a plant I was given once. ("Don't touch the leaves." "Any insect vulnerabilities?" "No, insects don't trouble this plant.")

Yeah, it is weird. This particular Thai restaurant just doesn't get it. Others around town will make food superhot.