5 Unexpected Ways to Use Salt Every Cook Should Know | What's Eating Dan?

Though most of the time we use salt for seasoning, it also comes in handy for a wide range of less obvious applications. Dan breaks down 5 unexpected ways salt can improve your food (beyond making it taste good).

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[nancyr]

I'm so glad you gave the metric measurements. It makes life so much easier.

[CrunchyLikeness]

Salt in sausage making is really interesting. Salt frays the micro-fibrils of the meat, causing the proteins to essentially become meat velcro. This allows it to bind together and become a cohesive mass known as a farce. When cooked, it contributes to that snappy mouth feel.

[scottgray]

I use a rubber spatula when I’m dissolving salt, for brining. As a dyer for stage and screen, over the past 45 years, I’ve dissolved hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds!)of pounds of salt, and the spatula moves the water in the container efficiently, and quietly… You can hear when the grains of salt have stopped scraping at the bottom of the container!!!

[caseyglick]

The same salting trick works for black teas. Just don't do it in England unless you want to be evicted from the country.

From experience, it doesn't work as well for green teas. Or rather, the salt unbalances the flavors somehow. But for black teas, especially ones with milk and sugar, a pinch of salt brings out so much more flavor.

[mynameissang]

Note on blitz-chilling the wine: make sure the bottle is in the ice bath when you add the salt, the melting ice molecules have a secondary effect of taking on energy to transition from a solid to liquid phase, and this energy is taken from the bottle, i.e. making it colder

[ctfddftba]

When berries are super fresh I like to make a simple strawberry and cucumber salad, with just sliced strawberries and cucumber sprinkled with equal parts sugar and salt and a little chopped mint

[rickycpa]

I had to chuckle when you suggested a pinch of salt in coffee. 55 yrs ago I was on KP during Army basic training at FT Dix NJ and watched the army cook add salt to the giant army coffee drip brewers. I was amazed and questioned him and he said it was an old trick that mess sergeants have used for years. I thought he was crazy and since army mess coffee wasn’t what you’d call fine dining (not to mention few of us soldiers wanted nothing. to do with Vietnam era Army ideas) , I never used it after I got out of service. Now that I listened to your video, I tried it in both my hot and iced coffee. Cannot believe I missed 55 yrs of better coffee😎

[thHouseOnTheRight]

My grandmother always sprinkled salt on fruit especially melons. She said it made them sweeter, brought out more flavor & of course she was right

[supergeek]

I like to use salt to cure egg yolks:
Simply take a 1 cup (250 ml) deli container, and fill it 1/3 way with Kosher salt. Then gently place 4 or 5 fresh egg yolks of top of the salt, then, you gently cover them with more Kosher salt, and refrigerate for a week or two.
Once cured they become quite firm, and delightful when grated (like cheese) on salads, crostini/sippets, asparagus, green beans, etc.

[eclecticexplorer]

The salt-water bath trick is familiar to any of us who made homemade ice cream back in the days that I grew up in. The metal ice cream canister was placed in a bucket of ice and rock salt then churned either by hand or by a motor. For those who did this, there is a definite nostalgia about it.

[hermeticbear]

I've added salt to coffee and it really is wonderful. It doesn't taste salty at all, but instead brings out depth and flavor in the coffee that the bitterness covers up

[Berkana]

6:03 re: chilling wine in an ice bath with an aquarium pump: If you have a sous vide machine, you can use that, and set the temperature to 0 or turn off the heating element, and the circulator can circulate the ice water for the chilling the wine. However, first you need to make sure the sous vide machine can actually operate without heating. I don't know if all brands and models can do that.

[MakeSomething]

Us silly woodworkers also use salt to keep boards from sliding around from slippery gluing ups.

[petermontoya]

I'm not a big bean eater, but the blanching of vegetables in salty water was a great tip.

[mgfroyo]

2:42 Literally have a bag of green beans I harvested from the garden a week ago, a tomato plant with about 10, 000 cherry tomatoes on it, and a half block of feta in my fridge. Thanks Dan.

[scrambledegg]

Dan's dead herb sadface is genuinely heart-wrenching.

[matthewweaver]

I think many of us in our 30's and 40's right now grew up being told salt=bad. Once we get past the bad information we were told, it does open up a lot more possibilities.

[farstrider]

If your wine is not chilled enough, frozen berries or frozen grapes work well as ice cubes, especially on a hot day.

[fedupwelsh]

From the U.K. thank you for giving measures in grams. Much appreciated.

[mpjyqus]

I love Dan's presentation as much as I like the content!