Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

by Samin Nosrat

  However, as Cal Peternell, the chef who’d shocked me with his palmfuls of salt in that pot of polenta so many years ago, likes to say, there is such a thing as toomami, so don’t be tempted to pack bacon and tomatoes and fish sauce and cheese and mushrooms into a single meal. A little bit of umami can go a long way.

  Balancing Sweetness with Acid

  Imagine taking a bite of the perfect peach: it’s sweet, juicy, and firm, yet giving.

  But is that all? It’s also acidic. Without that pucker, it’d be all sugar.

  Pastry chefs know that the best thing we can do in our cooking is to mimic this perfection—there’s no better model for getting that sweet-sour balance just right than nature itself. The best apples for pie aren’t the sweetest, but tart varieties such as Fuji, Honeycrisp, and Sierra Beauty. If a dessert’s only quality is sweetness, it stimulates only the taste buds that sense sweetness. Chocolate and coffee are the perfect bases for building desserts because they are bitter, sour, and rich in umami. Once sweetened, they trigger more types of taste buds. Caramel, too. Add salt and suddenly all five of our basic tastes are activated with a single bite. For this reason, Salted Caramel Sauce has never gone out of fashion. And it never will.

  Always balance sweetness with acid, and not only in desserts. Roasted beets, full of sugar, benefit from a splash of red wine vinegar, which offers contrast to the naturally earthy flavor of beets that is so off-putting to some. Season them with olive oil and salt, and all of a sudden even the staunchest beet-phobe will be converted. Roasted carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli—or anything that’s developed sweetness from browning—will always appreciate a squeeze of lemon or touch of vinegar. A little will go a long way.

  Acid Balance in a Meal

  From time to time, I travel with Alice Waters to help cook special dinners. During one particularly rich, wintry meal we served in Washington, DC, while the snow piled up outside, I had an epiphany about acid. The last savory course was a garden lettuce salad, dressed with delicate vinaigrette, which we sent out in big bowls to be eaten family-style. After we served the salad, all the cooks stood in the kitchen, exhausted, absentmindedly shoving lettuce into our mouths with our fingers. After a long day of cooking in a dry, hot, crowded kitchen, none of us had ever tasted anything so delicious. We were all marveling about how refreshing and perfectly dressed the salad was when Alice walked into the kitchen and said it could’ve used some more acid.

  We were confounded! We were downright besotted with this salad, and yet here she was telling us that the balance was off? We all protested, trying to get Alice to admit she was wrong.

  But Alice was steadfast. She pointed out that we hadn’t been at the table with her, piling salad onto a plate laden with grilled lamb and shelling beans, garnished with a decadent sauce, following courses of creamy lasagna and rich shellfish soup. On a plate with all of that other stuff it wasn’t doing its job—a salad should relieve your palate and leave it clean after rich, muddy foods. It needed more acid to stand up to the other intense flavors.

  Alice was right. (That happens a lot.) In order to make the best salad, you have to consider how it fits into the meal. Though each dish, on its own, should always be balanced in Salt, Fat, and Acid, there is also the larger picture to consider—a good meal should also be balanced. Make a caramelized onion tart, with all that butter in the crust and onions, and serve it with garden lettuces dressed with a sharp mustard vinaigrette. Make long-cooked pork shoulder, Southern barbecue–style, and pair it with bright, acidic slaw. Make a rich Thai curry, thick with coconut milk, but precede it with a crunchy, light shaved cucumber salad. Begin to incorporate this sort of balance with every meal you plan, then read on to What to Cook? for more tips on writing a balanced menu.

  Improvising with Salt, Fat, and Acid

  Think of any dish you absolutely love to eat. It probably has an ideal balance of Salt, Fat, and Acid, whether it’s a bowl of tortilla soup, Caesar salad, a bánh mi sandwich, a margherita pizza, or a bite of feta cheese tucked with cucumber into a piece of lavash bread. Since the human body can’t produce certain essential forms of salt, fat, and acid, our palates have evolved to seek these three elements. This results in a universal appeal to food with Salt, Fat, and Acid all in balance, no matter the cuisine.

  On their own, Salt, Fat, and Acid can give shape to the idea for a dish or even a meal. When deciding upon what to make, first answer the questions of which form (or forms) of each element to use, and how, and when. You’ll find yourself with a to-do list that resembles—wait for it—a kind of recipe. If you want to turn last night’s leftover roast chicken into chicken salad sandwiches, for instance, think first about whether you’re craving Indian, Sicilian, or classic American flavors. Once you decide, refer to The World of Acid to help you choose the forms of Salt, Fat, and Acid that will take you in the right direction. To evoke a taste of India, you might use thick, full-fat yogurt, cilantro, onions macerated in lime juice, salt, and a hint of curry powder. To conjure up a night on the shores of Palermo, you could use lemon juice and zest, onions macerated in red wine vinegar, aïoli, fennel seeds, and sea salt. Or try a chicken salad sandwich inspired by Cobb salad, with huge crumbles of bacon and blue cheese and slices of hard-cooked egg and avocado. Then dress everything with a red wine vinaigrette before loading it onto the bread.

  If the thought of improvisational cooking scares you, take it slowly. Try the recipes I’ve included in this book, grow comfortable with a basic repertoire of dishes, and then start to play with one component at a time. Make Bright Cabbage Slaw enough times to memorize its ingredients and method, then adapt it as you like, by varying the Fat, Acid, or both. Use mayonnaise instead of olive oil to make a Classic Southern variation, and rice wine vinegar instead of red wine vinegar to make an Asian one.

  Play to each element’s strengths: use Salt to enhance, Fat to carry, and Acid to balance flavor. Now, with the knowledge of how they affect various foods, add each to a dish at the right time in order to season it from within. Add salt early to a pot of beans, but acid late. Season meat for a braise in advance, then start it off on the heat with a dose of cooking acid. When it’s done and rich in flavor, lighten it with a garnishing acid.

  Let Salt, Fat, and Acid work together in concert to improve anything you eat, whether you cooked it or not. Doctor a lackluster restaurant taco by asking for sour cream, guacamole, pickles, or salsa. Eye the dressings, cheeses, and pickles at the local salad bar with renewed interest. Use yogurt, tahini, pepper sauce, and pickled onions to amend a dry, bland falafel sandwich.

  Harmonize these three notes, and invariably your taste buds will sing with delight.

  When aspiring chefs ask me for career advice, I offer a few tips: Cook every single day. Taste everything thoughtfully. Go to the farmers’ market and familiarize yourself with each season’s produce. Read everything Paula Wolfert, James Beard, Marcella Hazan, and Jane Grigson have written about food. Write a letter to your favorite restaurant professing your love and beg for an apprenticeship. Skip culinary school; spend a fraction of the cost of tuition traveling the world instead.

  There is so much to learn from travel, especially as a young cook: you collect taste memories, understand the flavors of a place, and gain a sense of context. Eat cassoulet in Toulouse, hummus in Jerusalem, ramen in Kyoto, and ceviche in Lima. Make these classics your beacons so that when you return to your own kitchen and change a recipe, you know precisely how it diverges from the original.

  Travel offers another extraordinary value, too: watch and learn from cooks around the world, and discover the universality of good cooking.

  For the first four years of my cooking career, Chez Panisse was my only point of reference. Eventually, I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer. I had to go to Europe and cook in the kitchens that inspired the chefs who’d taught me. Arriving in Tuscany, I was surprised by how familiar it felt to cook alongside Benedetta and Dario. Some habits seemed to be common to all good cooks. Benedetta doted
on her onions as they browned and brought roasts to room temperature before cooking them, just as the chefs at home had taught me to do. Heating up a pot of oil for deep-frying, she tested its temperature not with a thermometer, but by dropping in a stale crust of bread to see how quickly it turned golden brown, just as I’d learned to do the first time I’d fried glimmering fresh anchovies at Chez Panisse.

  Curious, I began to watch others who cooked the foods I loved to eat. Enzo, my favorite pizzaiolo in Florence, served only three classic pizzas: Marinara, Margherita, and Napoli. He worked alone, snapped at regulars and tourists alike, and eschewed all luxuries, cooking all night in a kitchen the size of a postage stamp. I never saw Enzo use a thermometer to gauge the temperature of his wood-burning oven. Instead, he paid attention to his pizzas. If they burned before the toppings cooked, the oven was too hot. If they emerged pale, he’d throw another log onto the fire. And his method worked: with its crisp, yet chewy crust and barely melted cheese, I’d never tasted a better pizza.

  I left Italy and traveled to visit friends and family around the world. Late one night at a bustling roadside stand, I ate flavorful chapli kebabs—Pakistan’s mouthwatering answer to the hamburger. The cook flavored the meat with chilies, ginger, and cilantro, flattened each patty, and slid it into hot oil, monitoring the gurgling fat to decide if he should add more coal to the fire beneath the meter-wide iron pan. When the bubbles relented and the meat was as dark as the tea leaves in his cup, he pulled the kebab from the oil. He handed me one, wrapping it with a warm naan, and drizzling it with yogurt sauce. I took a bite: heaven.

  I thought back to one of my first nights in the kitchen at Chez Panisse, when I’d watched Amy, a soft-spoken chef, grill steaks for a hundred guests, graceful and skillful as a dancer. She showed me how she watched the surface of each steak. If the meat didn’t sizzle as it hit the grill, she’d stoke the fire, pulling more coals beneath the metal grates. If the meat browned too quickly, she’d spread out the coals and wait for the grill to cool before continuing. Amy showed me how to ensure that the heat was just right so that the steaks browned evenly on the surface as the interior cooked, so that by the time they reached medium-rare, the outside was mouthwateringly charred, and the strip of fat lining the edge of each rib eye was perfectly rendered. It was no different than turning up or down the flame on the stove.

  When I left Pakistan, I visited my grandparents’ farm on the coast of the Caspian Sea in Iran, where my grandmother spent all day in the kitchen. Though she loved to cook for her family, she nevertheless grumbled about how ours is the most labor-intensive cuisine in the world. She chopped mountains of herbs, peeled and prepared cases of vegetables, and tended to khoreshs, complex meat and vegetable stews, as they simmered on the stove for hours. My grandmother watched and stirred the bubbling pots constantly—never still, never boiling—until finally the stews were done. My uncles, on the other hand, would spend all day smoking filterless cigarettes and telling stories before they lit the fire shortly before dinner. They’d thread chicken and lamb onto flat metal skewers and cook the kebabs quickly over grills so hot their arm hairs regularly caught fire. One kind of cooking took all day, the other, minutes. Both kinds were delicious. Our meals wouldn’t have been complete without either the tender khoreshs or the juicy, charred kebabs.

  As I traveled, I noticed that in every country, whether I was watching home cooks or professional chefs, and whether they were cooking over live fire or on a camp stove, the best cooks looked at the food, not the heat source.

  I saw how good cooks obeyed sensory cues, rather than timers and thermometers. They listened to the changing sounds of a sizzling sausage, watched the way a simmer becomes a boil, felt how a slow-cooked pork shoulder tightens and then relaxes as hours pass, and tasted a noodle plucked from boiling water to determine whether it’s al dente. In order to cook instinctually, I needed to learn to recognize these signals. I needed to learn how food responds to the fourth element of good cooking: Heat.

  WHAT IS HEAT?

  Heat is the element of transformation. No matter its source, heat triggers the changes that take our food from raw to cooked, runny to set, flabby to firm, flat to risen, and pale to golden brown.

  Unlike Salt, Fat, and Acid, Heat is flavorless and intangible. But its effects are quantifiable. Heat’s sensory cues, including sizzles, spatters, crackles, steam, bubbles, aromas, and browning, are often more important than a thermometer. All of your senses—including common sense—will help you gauge heat’s effects on food.

  Exposure to heat changes foods in many different, but predictable, ways. Once familiar with how different foods respond to heat, you’ll make better choices about how to shop at the market, plan a menu, and cook every dish. Turn your attention away from the oven dial or the knob of the stove and toward the food you’re cooking. Heed the clues: is the food browning, firming, shrinking, crisping, burning, falling apart, swelling, or cooking unevenly?

  These cues matter considerably more than whether you’re cooking on an electric rather than gas stove, on a makeshift camping grill rather than in a grand marble hearth, or whether your oven is set to 350°F or 375°F.

  Just as I learned from watching cooks all around the world, no matter what you’re cooking, or what heat source you’re using, the aim is always the same: apply heat at the right level, and at the right rate, so that the surface of a food and its interior are done cooking at the same time.

  Think about making a grilled cheese sandwich. The goal is to use the right level of heat so that the bread turns golden-brown-toasty-delicious at the same rate that the cheese melts. Heat it too quickly and you’ll burn the outside and be left with an undercooked center—burnt bread, unmelted cheese. Heat it too slowly, and you’ll dry the whole thing out before the surface has a chance to brown.

  View everything you cook like that grilled cheese sandwich: Is the skin of the roast chicken golden brown by the time the bird is cooked? Is the asparagus cooked all of the way through by the time it’s developed the perfect char from the grill? Is the lamb chop evenly browned, all of its fat rendered by the time the meat is perfectly medium-rare?

  Just as with Salt, Fat, and Acid, the first step to getting the results you want from Heat is to know what you’re after. Know what results you seek, so that you can take the steps to achieve them. Think about your goals in the kitchen in terms of flavors and textures. Do you want your food to be browned? Crisp? Tender? Soft? Chewy? Caramelized? Flaky? Moist?

  Next, work backward. Make a clear plan for yourself using sensory landmarks to guide you back to your goal. For example, if you want to end up with a bowl of flavorful, snowy white mashed potatoes, then think about the last step: mashing potatoes with butter and sour cream, and tasting and adjusting for salt. To get there, you’ll need to simmer the potatoes in salted water until they’re tender. To get there, you’ll need to peel and cut the potatoes. There’s your recipe. For something more complicated—say, crispy pan-fried potatoes—you’ll want to end with a golden-brown crust and a tender interior. So the last step will be frying in hot fat to achieve crispness. To get there, make sure the potatoes are tender inside—simmer them in salted water. To get there, peel and cut them. There’s another recipe.

  This is good cooking, and it’s simpler than you might think.

  HOW HEAT WORKS

  The Science of Heat

  Simply put, heat is energy.

  Food is primarily made up of four basic types of molecules: water, fat, carbohydrates, and protein. As food is heated, the molecules within it begin to speed up, colliding with each other as they go.

  As molecules gain speed, they also gain the power to break free of the electrical forces uniting their atoms. Some atoms can split off and join up with other atoms to create new molecules. This process is called a chemical reaction.

  And the chemical reactions initiated by heat affect the flavor and texture of food.

  Water, fat, carbohydrate, and protein molecules each react to heat
in different, yet predictable, ways. If this seems overwhelming, don’t worry—it’s not. The science of heat, luckily, adheres to common sense.

  Water and Heat

  Water is an essential element of practically all foods. Cook most of its water out, and food will become crisp or dry. Leave its water in—or add water as you cook—to make food moist and tender. Cook water out of scrambled eggs, and they will be dry. Cook the right amount of water into rice, cornmeal, potatoes, or any other starch, and they will be tender. Vegetables that lose water become limp. During years with intense rainy seasons, fruit will taste watery. Overwater your tomato plants and the flavor of the tomatoes will be diluted. When food is weak in flavor, it’s “watered down.” To intensify flavors in soups, stocks, and sauces, reduce their water content. Use heat to control food’s water content to get the texture and flavor you seek.

  When frozen, water expands. This is why you must always leave headroom in jars of soup or stock you plan to freeze. Or why a bottle of beer or wine you stick in the freezer to chill will explode if forgotten. On a much, much tinier scale—at the cellular level—a similar phenomenon occurs inside foods: as food freezes, its cell walls, much like your storage containers, will burst when the water they contain expands. Freezer burn and dehydration, then, are the result of water escaping from the inside of a food’s cells and then crystallizing or vaporizing on the surface of the food. Have you ever opened a package of frozen berries or meat and wondered where those Antarctic stalactites came from? Now you know—from inside your food.

  This dehydration also sadly explains that leathery steak you forgot about in the freezer for three years, and is helpful to remember when deciding whether or not freezing will damage a particular food. In other words, choose to freeze foods that can withstand a little dehydration, and even be successfully rehydrated—raw braising cuts of meat, stews, soups, sauces, and cooked beans in their liquid.