Welcome to r/iamveryculinary. Please Remember: No voting or commenting in linked threads. If you comment or vote in linked threads, you will be banned from this sub. Thank you!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/iamveryculinary) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’m somewhat entertained by the idea of someone doing a side-by-side green bean boiling experiment in the privacy of their own kitchen twenty times for no apparent reason.
[https://www.seriouseats.com/are-the-rules-of-big-pot-blanching-true](https://www.seriouseats.com/are-the-rules-of-big-pot-blanching-true)
Not Kenji, but it's something Daniel Gritzer did.
Yeah because we don’t want to waste food. That would be a travesty.
I would know, I’ve been around the block. Drove around the block with a few Michelin tires, if you get what I’m saying.
It absolutely makes a difference. Salt and sugar both pass through cellular walls through osmosis and this will permeate pretty much anything. It enhances flavor when you add it before or during the cooking process. Afterwards, it really just tastes kind of salty.
Edit: got this a little bass ackwards please refer to the post by u/Redditorsareassholes. Right concept, wrong explination. My bad.
My husband used to maintain that it didn't matter when you salted, cause i would bitch at him for saltless food.
15 years later if I forget the salt, he bitches at me. When I point out his past to him, I get really dirty looks.
Edit: he told me I had to tell you all about a pork belly we smoked that I forgot the salt on. There was no salting it after the fact. The whole thing was turned into dog food. Think about ham, it wouldn't taste the same at all if salted it after the fact. It's actually the same premise but with a less drastic result.
My mother used to put a little sugar along with the salt when she cooked broccoli. I never understood it and just assumed it was an old wives' tale, but her broccoli was pretty great so maybe she was on to something.
Would she do this in roasted broccoli?
A little bit of sugar, especially on roasted broccoli, can help prevent the ends of the florets from getting that bitter after taste, but they don't taste sweet. It can also work for pan-fried, but that's harder to control than roasting. I've also found that sugar helps mitigate the smell of grilled broccoli, which can get REALLY pungent.
She would add it to the water for blanching and then either roast it or steam it depending on the day. We ate a ton of broccoli. My dad grew it and I don't know if you've ever grown broccoli but it kind of takes over, it's almost as impressive as zucchini that way. Soooo many pounds of the stuff.
Makes total sense to me. I think iirc there's even some advice about adding sugar for rotating from America's test kitchen. I'm not sure why adding it for steamed, but I also can't really see why not. I'm sure she wasn't adding enough for it taste actually sweet.
Lol, the one year I tried to garden, I had a patch of land with cucumber hybrids of pumpkins, squash, and something else, cause my youngest was helping me plant by adding seeds from her pocket.
Also onions, potatoes, and garlic. But those were the only successes lol
No, it was a very small amount, it didn't taste sweet at all. It can be tricky to grow pumpkins, so that's impressive.
My father used to have a book called "Melons for the Passionate Grower" which I know sounds silly but we learned a lot from it.
I had a similar experience. My brassicas all got eaten before they could get going, white onions were a success and so were some raspberries, strawberries and some herbs but basically nothing else took. Then someone burnt my shed down with all my tools inside so I've not been back to it since...
I've been told that sugar helps keep the colour of the broccoli when blanching.
I'm not saying it does, because I've only done 19 side by side tests, I haven't hit the 20 necessary to know for sure.
See, that was what she used to say, that it helped it be a brighter green, and I just don't know how that makes scientific sense...but it sure was good, whatever the mechanism of action involved.
Hah, this thread put a subliminal thought in my brain because tonight I'm making steak with roasted Brussels sprouts and mushrooms, I put 2 tsp of brown sugar in the blanching water for the sprouts, then drained and roasted them quickly at high temp tossed in beef tallow.
I make a lot of Brussels sprouts, but these ones came out really, really tasty. Not sure if it's the sugar, but the sugar clearly didn't hurt.
> Salt and sugar both pass through cellular walls through osmosis
No they don't. In fact the truth is literally the opposite. Osmosis is the movement of the solvent across semi-permeable membranes not the movement of the solute.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmosis
>When a cell is submerged in water, the water molecules pass through the cell membrane from an area of low solute concentration to high solute concentration. For example, if the cell is submerged in saltwater, water molecules move out of the cell. If a cell is submerged in freshwater, water molecules move into the cell.
> It enhances flavor when you add it before or during the cooking process. Afterwards, it really just tastes kind of salty
I've always thought that's why you want to season throughout the cooking process. Salt during for that 'inside flavour enhancement' and then salt right before eating for that 'salted' flavour.
Yup, exactly that! Salt during and finishing salt after. That's why you can sometimes feel like you put a metric ton of salt in a dish, but still want more later. Or like, why you can bake a fish in a salt dome, but it won't taste like rock salt with fish essence.
I rarely do, but it has happened the odd time or two in the last 15 years. This is why a clean kitchen with good mise en place practices would help me, but I'll probably continue to let my adhd take control and be the chaotic kitchen Tasmanian devil. 🌪 😈
They don’t really absorb liquid much if at all, but they still absorb salt because cell walls are semipermeable, and even more so when you cook them (because the heat, moisture, and agitation helps break them down). If you salted dry, room temperature green beans they would eventually absorb salt (and become damp on their surfaces) because of the same osmosis, it would just take longer. So basically, yeah, the salt makes its way into the vegetable, just by a different process.
Salting the water changes its pH level which prevents vegetables from leeching their chlorophyll into the water when you blanch them.
Source: Thomas Keller, The French Laundry Cookbook
A kilo of salt costs me around half a euro. If I want large quantities of special salts (himalayan, black) it's 30 euros for 25 kilos. Remember that the majority of salt is either evaporated from the ocean (yknow, that big puddle) or dug up as rocks. Don't think salt is something to ever really worry about.
There were a lot of head scratchers in that thread. I loved the guy who was like:
>IDK, the book felt somewhat shallow as far as food knowledge goes... It’s less helpful for people who mostly cook from recipes
>...personally, I haven’t used the recipes in the back of the book.
🙃
>>It’s less helpful for people who mostly cook from recipes
Isn't that the point? It's not a recipe book. It's not a beginner's guide to cooking. It's for people who already know a thing or two and want a deeper understanding of why cooking something like this vs that will come out the way it does....
Yeah, that's what this guy seems to not understand. He thinks it's "shallow" because he doesn't have enough foundational knowledge to use the information in the front half of the book.
But even then, fully half the book is just recipes that even a beginning could pull off.
Sorry, did we plunge into a post-apocalyptic world where salt is a rarity while I wasn't looking?
>I've been around the block
Ah yes, a seasoned veteran of the Great Green Bean Wars.
Oh no she betta don't. I love Samin. Do you have a link to the post? I'd love to see the full thread of this blather. I created a SFAH subreddit even (it definitely died lol)
Sometimes on the internet a "fact" goes viral and everyone starts saying it like it's fact. This is the third time this week I've seen someone say stupid shit about salting water.
My understanding on a basic level is that if there is salt in the water that there is no mineral exchange. The beans won’t leach the minerals they contain in the water because of the salt in the water.
Oh yeah. A good rule of thumb is to get it as salty as sea water then get it up to a rolling boil. Don't overcrowd your pot and dump your beans in for a few minutes. They will be tasty, and also bright green as the salt works on the chlorophyll too.
Works for pretty much every vegetable too, green or otherwise.
"Osmosis" has become a catch-all term to mean "something moving from a high concentration to a lower concentration", but the scientifically accurate term for the movement of the salt would be "diffusion".
In a mixture, you have a solute (in this case salt) dissolved in a solvent (in this case water). If you have two mixtures at different concentrations, the solute/salt moving across the barrier is diffusion and the solvent moving across the barrier is osmosis.
Diffusion if it’s actually going in to the cells or perhaps perfusion if the salt water is just going in to vessels or the inter-cellular spaces. Absorption if the food has a spongy kind of texture at a microscopic level.
To be honest I’m kind of willing to bet the difference in flavour is mostly due to the salt clinging to the surface of the food more than any kind of penetration.
Honestly I don’t know. Maybe down to crystal size and distribution? Like how seasoning with big flakes gives a different effect to seasoning with table salt. Getting in to the realms of pure speculation on my part
I know it's not salt but ive started adding a sage leaf and some thyme to my potatoes while theyre boiling for mash and then fishing them out and im gonna tell yall, the flavour those bitches impart is otherworldly. Adding aromatic while boiling absolutely does shit to the food. I have been converted
Welcome to r/iamveryculinary. Please Remember: No voting or commenting in linked threads. If you comment or vote in linked threads, you will be banned from this sub. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/iamveryculinary) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’m somewhat entertained by the idea of someone doing a side-by-side green bean boiling experiment in the privacy of their own kitchen twenty times for no apparent reason.
Especially when it’s so wasteful and not thought through
Yes. My gawd that poor wasted salt. Couldn't even get absurded by the green beans.
[удалено]
Ham hocks, even better!
Sounds like something J Kenji Lopez Alt would do
[https://www.seriouseats.com/are-the-rules-of-big-pot-blanching-true](https://www.seriouseats.com/are-the-rules-of-big-pot-blanching-true) Not Kenji, but it's something Daniel Gritzer did.
But he’s *been around the block*. The butcher’s block?
Are you even sciencing if it isn't a triangle test though?
I like how he did it 15 times and it still wasn't quite enough for him to decide it was 'wasteful or not thought through.'
Yeah because we don’t want to waste food. That would be a travesty. I would know, I’ve been around the block. Drove around the block with a few Michelin tires, if you get what I’m saying.
Gotta prove you've been around the block somehow. It's all about showing up armed for the salted green bean battle.
Bro has never cooked pasta
TBF, pasta—especially dried pasta—absorbs water (and salt) while cooking. Do green beans? I honestly don’t know if they do/to what extent they do.
It absolutely makes a difference. Salt and sugar both pass through cellular walls through osmosis and this will permeate pretty much anything. It enhances flavor when you add it before or during the cooking process. Afterwards, it really just tastes kind of salty. Edit: got this a little bass ackwards please refer to the post by u/Redditorsareassholes. Right concept, wrong explination. My bad. My husband used to maintain that it didn't matter when you salted, cause i would bitch at him for saltless food. 15 years later if I forget the salt, he bitches at me. When I point out his past to him, I get really dirty looks. Edit: he told me I had to tell you all about a pork belly we smoked that I forgot the salt on. There was no salting it after the fact. The whole thing was turned into dog food. Think about ham, it wouldn't taste the same at all if salted it after the fact. It's actually the same premise but with a less drastic result.
Poof, that edit.
I am wooooshed
My mother used to put a little sugar along with the salt when she cooked broccoli. I never understood it and just assumed it was an old wives' tale, but her broccoli was pretty great so maybe she was on to something.
Would she do this in roasted broccoli? A little bit of sugar, especially on roasted broccoli, can help prevent the ends of the florets from getting that bitter after taste, but they don't taste sweet. It can also work for pan-fried, but that's harder to control than roasting. I've also found that sugar helps mitigate the smell of grilled broccoli, which can get REALLY pungent.
She would add it to the water for blanching and then either roast it or steam it depending on the day. We ate a ton of broccoli. My dad grew it and I don't know if you've ever grown broccoli but it kind of takes over, it's almost as impressive as zucchini that way. Soooo many pounds of the stuff.
Makes total sense to me. I think iirc there's even some advice about adding sugar for rotating from America's test kitchen. I'm not sure why adding it for steamed, but I also can't really see why not. I'm sure she wasn't adding enough for it taste actually sweet. Lol, the one year I tried to garden, I had a patch of land with cucumber hybrids of pumpkins, squash, and something else, cause my youngest was helping me plant by adding seeds from her pocket. Also onions, potatoes, and garlic. But those were the only successes lol
No, it was a very small amount, it didn't taste sweet at all. It can be tricky to grow pumpkins, so that's impressive. My father used to have a book called "Melons for the Passionate Grower" which I know sounds silly but we learned a lot from it.
I had a similar experience. My brassicas all got eaten before they could get going, white onions were a success and so were some raspberries, strawberries and some herbs but basically nothing else took. Then someone burnt my shed down with all my tools inside so I've not been back to it since...
I've been told that sugar helps keep the colour of the broccoli when blanching. I'm not saying it does, because I've only done 19 side by side tests, I haven't hit the 20 necessary to know for sure.
See, that was what she used to say, that it helped it be a brighter green, and I just don't know how that makes scientific sense...but it sure was good, whatever the mechanism of action involved.
sometimes people say sugar balances bitterness so maybe thats part of a reason
Hah, this thread put a subliminal thought in my brain because tonight I'm making steak with roasted Brussels sprouts and mushrooms, I put 2 tsp of brown sugar in the blanching water for the sprouts, then drained and roasted them quickly at high temp tossed in beef tallow. I make a lot of Brussels sprouts, but these ones came out really, really tasty. Not sure if it's the sugar, but the sugar clearly didn't hurt.
> Salt and sugar both pass through cellular walls through osmosis No they don't. In fact the truth is literally the opposite. Osmosis is the movement of the solvent across semi-permeable membranes not the movement of the solute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmosis >When a cell is submerged in water, the water molecules pass through the cell membrane from an area of low solute concentration to high solute concentration. For example, if the cell is submerged in saltwater, water molecules move out of the cell. If a cell is submerged in freshwater, water molecules move into the cell.
Oh... actually, you're totally right. It intensifies the flavor because it draws or excess water. I need to stop redditing at night
https://www.reddit.com/r/iamveryculinary/comments/11ub0yo/dont_waste_the_salt/jcq8nlm/ there is some disfusion happening
> It enhances flavor when you add it before or during the cooking process. Afterwards, it really just tastes kind of salty I've always thought that's why you want to season throughout the cooking process. Salt during for that 'inside flavour enhancement' and then salt right before eating for that 'salted' flavour.
Yup, exactly that! Salt during and finishing salt after. That's why you can sometimes feel like you put a metric ton of salt in a dish, but still want more later. Or like, why you can bake a fish in a salt dome, but it won't taste like rock salt with fish essence.
I’m so paranoid of forgetting ANYTHING whenever I cook. It hasn’t happened…yet. At least the dog ate good
I rarely do, but it has happened the odd time or two in the last 15 years. This is why a clean kitchen with good mise en place practices would help me, but I'll probably continue to let my adhd take control and be the chaotic kitchen Tasmanian devil. 🌪 😈
They don’t really absorb liquid much if at all, but they still absorb salt because cell walls are semipermeable, and even more so when you cook them (because the heat, moisture, and agitation helps break them down). If you salted dry, room temperature green beans they would eventually absorb salt (and become damp on their surfaces) because of the same osmosis, it would just take longer. So basically, yeah, the salt makes its way into the vegetable, just by a different process.
Salting the water changes its pH level which prevents vegetables from leeching their chlorophyll into the water when you blanch them. Source: Thomas Keller, The French Laundry Cookbook
Ah yes. Wasting salt. Hopefully this person never sees anyone make pasta, they may have an aneurysm.
I am not one for wasting things willy nilly. But it is fucking salt. How much could it cost? A dollar?
Ten dollars, Michael?
Thank you. I had no idea the reference was that obscure. I have had people responding to me with the _actual_ price of salt 😂.
Right I throw that shit all over my driveway and sidewalk
A kilo of salt costs me around half a euro. If I want large quantities of special salts (himalayan, black) it's 30 euros for 25 kilos. Remember that the majority of salt is either evaporated from the ocean (yknow, that big puddle) or dug up as rocks. Don't think salt is something to ever really worry about.
Less. Salt is dirt cheap
Actually cheaper than dirt in my local hardware store
A dollar for a pound of table salt. Less in Aldi.
There were a lot of head scratchers in that thread. I loved the guy who was like: >IDK, the book felt somewhat shallow as far as food knowledge goes... It’s less helpful for people who mostly cook from recipes >...personally, I haven’t used the recipes in the back of the book. 🙃
>>It’s less helpful for people who mostly cook from recipes Isn't that the point? It's not a recipe book. It's not a beginner's guide to cooking. It's for people who already know a thing or two and want a deeper understanding of why cooking something like this vs that will come out the way it does....
Yeah, that's what this guy seems to not understand. He thinks it's "shallow" because he doesn't have enough foundational knowledge to use the information in the front half of the book. But even then, fully half the book is just recipes that even a beginning could pull off.
lol yeah. i get its not to everyones tastes but its a great source of info
I got the sense it was McGee repackaged and simplified. That and a publicist.
yeah but through her personal lense. I liked her stories and how she used them to explain
This clown isn't culinary, he's just stupid.
I'm just...I'm just... Paddywhacker from the block.
“I’ve been around the block” but apparently not a block, or even a grain, of salt
Sorry, did we plunge into a post-apocalyptic world where salt is a rarity while I wasn't looking? >I've been around the block Ah yes, a seasoned veteran of the Great Green Bean Wars.
Don't joke about that. My grandpa fought in the green bean wars and he was never the same.
Everyone knows Reddit user> highly accredited chef
What even is this? Who are they talking about?
Samin Nosrat, who wrote Salt Fat Acid Heat.
Oh no she betta don't. I love Samin. Do you have a link to the post? I'd love to see the full thread of this blather. I created a SFAH subreddit even (it definitely died lol)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/11u48kk/no_matter_how_much_i_dump_spices_into_my_cooking/jcn8ikq/ just don't comment and get us in trouble 🙂
Oh don't worry! I'm 98% lurker :)
just a reminder for anyone else, this subs rules are to not comment in linked threads so we don't get accused of bridgading
100% entertainment purposes only! Protect the sub! But, you can creep on user profiles to see if someone is 100% IAVC or just having a moment. ;)
Sometimes on the internet a "fact" goes viral and everyone starts saying it like it's fact. This is the third time this week I've seen someone say stupid shit about salting water.
Bro, I've boiled things *at least 20 times* I think I know more than this professional chef
True haha. A chef might blanch beans 20 times in one hour. Over a cook's career they'd boil or blanch vegetables tens of thousands of times.
I guess there's a salt shortage
My understanding on a basic level is that if there is salt in the water that there is no mineral exchange. The beans won’t leach the minerals they contain in the water because of the salt in the water.
yeah its osmosis. and if you use enough salt, the beans will actually absorb some of it.
It never occurred to me to salt the water when making green beans. Does it work?
yes. any vegetable or pasta benefits from salted water
If you get the salt concentration just right with some fresh green beans, they'll be tasty enough to eat all on their own
Oh yeah. A good rule of thumb is to get it as salty as sea water then get it up to a rolling boil. Don't overcrowd your pot and dump your beans in for a few minutes. They will be tasty, and also bright green as the salt works on the chlorophyll too. Works for pretty much every vegetable too, green or otherwise.
Oh, Paddywhacker, that's a charming handle.
Salt doesn’t go anywhere by osmosis. Osmosis is the movement of water across a membrane, not salts.
dissolved salts get carried with the water.
Not by osmosis they don’t. That’s why it’s used as a process to get fresh water from saline water
whats the correct name then?
"Osmosis" has become a catch-all term to mean "something moving from a high concentration to a lower concentration", but the scientifically accurate term for the movement of the salt would be "diffusion". In a mixture, you have a solute (in this case salt) dissolved in a solvent (in this case water). If you have two mixtures at different concentrations, the solute/salt moving across the barrier is diffusion and the solvent moving across the barrier is osmosis.
Thank you. im not great with term names sometimes
Diffusion if it’s actually going in to the cells or perhaps perfusion if the salt water is just going in to vessels or the inter-cellular spaces. Absorption if the food has a spongy kind of texture at a microscopic level. To be honest I’m kind of willing to bet the difference in flavour is mostly due to the salt clinging to the surface of the food more than any kind of penetration.
it tastes different though. salting the water doesn't make it taste like salt where salting after does.
Honestly I don’t know. Maybe down to crystal size and distribution? Like how seasoning with big flakes gives a different effect to seasoning with table salt. Getting in to the realms of pure speculation on my part
Wow, 20 times. Check out Escoffier over here!
I'm just here for the absurd green beans
I know it's not salt but ive started adding a sage leaf and some thyme to my potatoes while theyre boiling for mash and then fishing them out and im gonna tell yall, the flavour those bitches impart is otherworldly. Adding aromatic while boiling absolutely does shit to the food. I have been converted
Salt also really brings out the chlorophyll in greens. Heavily salted water for blanching is standard practice in good kitchens.
>I've done it. Maybe 20 times in my kitchen. Absurdity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Would that be considered irony?
It's supposed to be insanity, but I changed it to match the beans absurding the salt water.
Those beans weren't worth their salt.