Salt

The flavor of nearly all the ingredients we work with lies largely immobile within them, sluggishly waiting to be drawn out. Cooking clears the way for it to emerge, but the magnet, the driver that gets it moving out where our taste buds can capture it, is salt. Nothing is so necessary to the production of taste as salt.

The fear of salt has caused most of the dishes that are set before us to be inexpressive, to be dumb in flavor. To stave off boredom, cooks resort to the immoderate employment of strongly emphatic agents, such as herbs, spices, chilis, and garlic, which substitute their own flavor for that of the ingredients, defeating the care with which one has marketed and cooked. Salt, when used judiciously but confidently, does not replace the natural taste of the food you’re cooking or the salads you’re tossing, but causes it to bloom.