It’s funny the way some of the sharp-toothed characters in Ann Rice’s vampire novels leave messages for each other, engraving their notes on the temple walls – hidden from those who don’t know how to look for them.
I get a little of this “hidden message search” feeling with the intriguing but difficult-to-learn vegetable pre-salting technique. I once read about a New Zealand chef who soaked his cauliflower in salted brine, and saw glimpses of the idea in the recipes for crushed cucumbers. We are not talking about pickling vegetables, we just season them in advance, thus giving them extra time to develop more flavor. You don’t have to use more salt than usual, just do it earlier and be more intentional to make a good meal better.
While home cooks are scouring the internet every holiday season looking for wet and dry brine for their turkeys, and it’s easy to figure out how to give a salty bath to pork chops for an hour before grilling, there’s surprisingly little in this regard for vegetables. .
I’m sure there’s no good reason for that.
As an ordinary sauerkraut grower, I knew there had to be something in the idea of salting that could be considered earlier than normal. There is an early step in cabbage recipes, when freshly chopped cabbage sits in a bowl of salt, releases the water and magically harvests a little more intense green after about an hour. I always eat a bite before putting it in a jar to ferment, and although it has lost some crunchiness, it acquires what you might call a pleasant “click” and, most importantly, taste.
I asked Chef Eric Rivera about the practice of pre-salting vegetables, and while he was doing it, it was “super random”, so he connected me to Priti Mistry, the chef, the podcast, the spice merchant and the co-author of The cookbook of the Juhu beach club. Mistry picked up on the texture changes I noticed, in stark contrast to the “European standard” where vegetables should be bright green and al dente.
“At a basic level, there is a feeling that you should not pre-salt because you will lose the crunchiness,” they said, adding that forward salting “allows salt and other flavors to enter the meat of vegetables.”
Mistry especially likes to pre-salt more hearty vegetables such as potatoes, corn and artichokes, adding intense flavors and spices along with salt.
“I’ll toss broccoli with salt, ginger, garlic, cumin and soy and leave it to stand for a few hours. If you do it in advance, your tastes will cling to the vegetables, “they said, warning,” If you season it just before grilling, it just falls off. “
Mistry especially likes to do this with food that will grill and fry. (Subsequent tests have revealed why they prefer these methods; making it in a pan has become a smoky mess in my kitchen.)
Change of seasons
As we talked, I realized that what I really wanted was pre-salted simplicity – some easy-to-follow basic rules, and Mistry was there to help.
“I can’t make people make percentage of brine,” they said, referring to the practice of adding 150 grams of salt to a liter of water and a pound of vegetables. Instead, they offered some simpler advice: “Put more salt than you would … if it was on your plate.”