The Italian Pantry: Salt

Not too much, nor too little.

Salt by Jordan Mackay

Salt has a paradoxical place in the world of food. On one hand, it’s the greatest common dominator across all cuisines and, thus, arguably, the most important ingredient in any dish. At the same time, most foods can be made and consumed without salt, so salt is technically optional. Yet, on its own, sodium chloride is never considered a food, though, to be fair, the element sodium (number 11 on the periodic table) is seen as a “macromineral” that provides our bodies with essential ions.

Salt crystals are obtained via the evaporation of salt water or extraction from salt mines. Albeit ubiquitous and quotidian today, salt in ancient times held immense value. Romans founded cities near sources of salt, created a highway called the Salt Road (Via Salaria), and even, at times, paid soldiers in salt. Indeed, the Italian word for salt, sale, is the basis of our word “salary.” Salt’s ability to preserve foods through dehydration made it invaluable during human existence before the (very recent) advent of refrigeration.

Today, besides its uses in curing, salt’s great contribution to gastronomy is its ability to help ingredients taste more clearly and intensely of themselves, which is a subtle yet powerful capability. Too much salt obliterates this effect, but just the right amount allows food to taste savory, attractive, and delicious - a balance that can only be measured by the human tongue and is subject to individual palates and preferences.

In Italian cuisine, salt is ingeniously woven into the fabric of many dishes, not through its addition as a raw seasoning but through the incorporation of flavorful products created with it. Ingredients like anchovies, capers, olives, and pecorino cheese are savory, umami-rich, and extremely salty. Dishes made with them usually require less seasoning with salt.

When it comes to their pantries, Italian cooks often stock three kinds of salt. The first is a fine, flaky finishing sea salt like Maldon. This is to dust dishes just before serving for a little bump of salinity and a snap of crunch. It shows particularly well on proteins, from steak to pork chops to whole fish.

The second kind of salt in an Italian pantry is for seasoning food while cooking. For this purpose, kosher salt is the preference of most chefs, as its comfortably pinchable crystals are easy to grasp and distribute with two or three fingers. It also dissolves quickly into liquids. The two major brands of kosher salt available in American markets, Diamond and Morton’s, are composed of differently sized crystals, thus making them not interchangeable in recipes that measure by volume! Salt is always the same by weight - a gram of Diamond is the same as a gram of Morton’s. However, these salt’s different densities make the classic measurements of volume (teaspoon, tablespoon, etc.) problematic. So, whichever you choose, be aware that Morton’s is significantly denser than Diamond and cannot be used interchangeably by volume. 

The most common salt-related refrain in all cooking is the Italian injunction to remember to salt your pasta water; therefore, the third pantry item is inexpensive, bulk sea salt that Italian chefs use specifically for that purpose.

How salty to make your pasta water is a matter of preference, as many cookbooks tell you to salt the water “generously” or until it “tastes like the sea.” If you can remember what seawater tastes like, more power to you. Generally, seawater has a salt concentration of 3.5%, or 35 grams per liter (1,000 grams) of water, which is, in fact, far more salt than most recommendations for cooking pasta call for. But then, if you do a little research, you will find that most recommendations call for teaspoons or tablespoons without specifying which kind of salt, so it can’t be taken too literally. The best adage is to find a concentration that tastes reasonably salty but not so much that you want to gag. Usually, 2% to 2.5% salt is sufficient.

Salting pasta water is indeed essential, though. Failure to do so, no matter how flavorful your sauce, will result in bland pasta. However, occasions exist when you will want to salt the pasta water less. For instance, fresh clams release actual seawater into a sauce. So, if you are making linguine and clams and plan to finish cooking the pasta in the sauce - a popular technique - the dish will be unpalatably salty if you salt the pasta water at a normal rate.

No Italian chef nor an Italian neighbor will summarize salt this succinctly - but the recommendation for the Italian pantry when it comes to salt is typically free-form: use salt, but not too much, nor too little.