Salt

Salt is a basic taste, one of the five your tongue knows without being taught. But in the kitchen it does more than taste salty. It pulls water out of cells and changes the structure of proteins. It also quiets bitterness, so other flavors come forward, and on the tongue it makes sweetness taste more pronounced too. That is the whole mechanism. Nothing mystical.

How to choose it: forget the marketing. Look at the crystal. Coarse, dry, sliding freely off your fingers — good for salting meat before it goes into the pot, because it dissolves slowly and evenly. Fine salt is for dough and for finishing a dish, when you need it to vanish instantly on the tongue.

Some people say fine salt is stronger than coarse salt, gram for gram. No! It is exactly the same salt, only ground finer, so a spoonful of it simply holds more crystals — more salt by volume, not by strength. This misconception is why people over-salt soup when they switch from coarse to fine and measure with the same spoon, trusting the spoon instead of tasting the pot. Taste, always. The spoon does not cook. You do.