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Salt Mining: The Great Wide World of Flavored Salts
The jury may be out on the human tongue's ability to negotiate the subtle differences of specialty sea salts—though I think we definitely can—but there's no doubt in my mind about the whizz-bang effect of flavored salts. I say "flavored" because this broad category of salts delivers powerful flavors, be they minerals, infused ingredients, or special cooking methods. When I'm shelling out for specialty salt, these are the crystals I'm most likely to reach for.Salt Mining: Are Specialty Salts Worth It?
If some are to be believed, any cook worth his or her ... well ... salt has at least one or two specialty sea salts in the cupboard. Others will tell you this is all balderdash, that salt is salt, and the difference in flavor between specialty salts is too subtle for us to taste. So what's a cook to believe?Salt Mining: The What, How, and Why Salt is Awesome
At Serious Eats we have a thing for our salt. And rightly so. Salt is pretty awesome stuff, at the very core of what so much of cooking is about. For the next few weeks, Spice Hunting will be Salt Mining, an exploration of the enormous breadth of culinary salts available to cooks. Along the way we'll take a nod to science, dispel some myths, and consider why salt is one of the most important edible substances on Earth.Video: Foraging Sea Beans, Geoducks, and Salt on the West Coast
There was so much seaside goodness along the West Coast that we had to combine several ocean episodes into this one video. Watch as we forage for sea beans in Bodega Bay in Northern California with Hank Shaw of the site Honest Food, dig for a giant clam called a geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck) with John Adams and Langdon Cook, and made our own salt with the young chef from Herbfarm in Woodinville, Washington.Seriously Asian: Salted Duck Egg
Like curing meats, the practice of salting duck eggs may have started as a method of preservation, but now salted duck eggs are a delicacy. Salting makes the egg whites dense and almost rubber-eraser-like in appearance, but it's the yolks that are especially prized. There's nothing quite like a good salted duck egg yolk. If properly salted, the duck egg yolks are creamy, granular, and oily all at once—an intriguing textural composition that tastes especially rich and salty.Taste Test: Microwavable Popcorn
Something happens when you microwave popcorn. Even if you're a purist stovetop popper, when the packaged stuff is nuked, you're suddenly at the mercy of artificial butter intoxication. Some synapse fires and all of your thoughts are butter-scented. "I smelled it from floors down," tasters said as they were filing in for this taste test. We shopped around and bought brands in each of these five categories: Butter, Movie Theater Style, "Natural," 94% Fat Free, and Kettle Corn. When it was all said and done, we had a grand total of 27 varieties of microwavable popcorn. If you do the math, we were popping corn for, oh, about 81 minutes.Comment of the Day: Liberating Watermelon Confessions
"I slice the watermelon crosswise into circles about 1 1/4" thick, no wedging here. I eat with a spoon and twirl it as I go to make something akin to quenelles. I'm surprised how many are confessing to salting their watermelon; it's liberating..! I, too, salt mine and endure the scorn of those in attendance. My rationale is that I learned it at my father's knee. He grew up in Texas working an outside trade and used salted melon as a way to rebuild his electrolytes although he would have never used that term ;~)" —czken, on "Poll: How Do You Eat Your Watermelon?"Gadgets: Himalayan Salt Plate from Serious Salt
Himalayan rock salt on its own is most certainly not a gadget. But what about an entire slab of it? Sur La Table thinks it counts, so I gave the heavy rock a whirl.Salt: 'It's Basically Cocaine for the Palate'
From Josh Ozersky's latest column in Time magazine: "The food marketplace is under constant pressure to make everything tastier, more explosive, more exciting, and salt is everyone's go-to flavor enhancer because it opens up the taste buds. It's basically cocaine for the palate--a white powder that makes everything your mouth encounters seem vivid and fun. That's why restaurant cooks in particular use it in quantities that would make most customers' jaws drop. They grab fistfuls of it to cover steaks and roasts. They put a big pinch in a salad. It's everywhere."Hot Topics: Technique of the Week | The Food Lab
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8 Delicious Chocolate Cakes and Pies for Valentine's Day
Some might say that chocolate on Valentine's Day is about as unoriginal as you can get. We all remember the first heart-shaped box of overly sweet chocolate bonbons from grade school Valentines. But chocolate gift-giving needn't be a cliché. This year, let's bake our sweethearts chocolate cakes and pies instead! Here are 8 delicious recipes perfect for celebrating your love (of chocolate.)
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