How to Salt to Taste Without Guessing

**How.** You have the pinch, the teaspoon, the grinder and the palm drop. If you want to be on the safe side, weigh your salt on a scale; otherwise a two-, three- or four-finger pinch works well. When you use a pinch, salt from high above so it sprinkles evenly, get too close and you end up with one focused little pile of salt. **How much.** Aim for roughly 1 to 2% of the total weight of your recipe. Keep in mind that counts salty ingredients already in the dish. **When.** Ingredients soak up salt over time, the longer salted food sits, the deeper it penetrates. That's why salting chicken a few hours in advance gives you better flavor. And salt doesn't make food salty; it brings out the flavors of the ingredients already in the dish. **Which salt.** I bought a range of salts and taste-tested them. They all taste like salt, but the bigger the crystal, the slower it melts, so it tastes saltier at first. That's the main difference. **In a real dish.** You're rarely salting a plain sauce, a complex dish gets salty ingredients like parmesan or anchovies on top. So add a little less salt at the start, add all the salty ingredients first, taste, and adjust with salt at the end. Adding salt at the end is the safest way to balance the dish without over-salting. **Train your palate.** Do this once and you'll salt better forever: 1. Heat up a can of tomato sauce (some basil or oregano is fine). 2. Divide it over five cups: no salt, 1 pinch, 2 pinches, 4 pinches, 8 pinches. 3. Taste from low to high, slowly. You're looking for the tomato taste. Decide which one tastes best, then keep tasting the saltier ones so you know what too much tastes like. 4. Do it again with your partner or a roommate and reveal your favorites at the same time. If they like less salt than you, either salt in the middle, or salt to their level and add more to your own plate. **When you over-salt anyway.** It happens, we're all human, and removing salt is a lot of work, so prevention is the game. You can dilute with unsalted ingredients (for stocks, soups and curries that's water), or make a second unsalted batch and combine them, now you have leftovers. Sometimes over-salted food just needs balancing with another element: acidity, umami, a bit of spice, in that order. And let your ego go: put salt and pepper grinders on the table. Many restaurants do it too.