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Salt and Pepper: A Few Thoughts

Many years ago, my husband was crazy about watching Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network. Emeril had a live audience and a jazz trio, and he would make food and yell, "BAM," and he threw salt around with wild abandon, and I was pretty much horrified the whole time.

Hey, I was still trying to learn to cook. I didn't know a lot, and I didn't know the difference between table salt and kosher salt. So when Emeril started adding salt to a pot of boiling water, or a skillet of pork chops, or, well, anything, I thought it was too much salt and it would chap my lips if I tried to eat it, and I was seriously annoyed with Emeril Lagasse's salt habit.

(Now is not the time to touch on how much cayenne pepper or hot sauce Emeril employed. That's a rant for another day.)

I also remember when I was writing for scrapbooking magazines, back in the hey day before 2006. There was a tutorial for how to make interesting backgrounds with watercolor paints and glossy paper. One of the techniques said to wash the whole sheet of glossy paper with watercolors and then sprinkle kosher salt over the wet page, let it dry, then brush off the salt. I had to go out and purchase kosher salt just for that project. It *did* make a great background... and I was introduced to kosher salt in the kitchen, thank goodness.

Turned out regular old table salt (Morton's, for instance, in the pretty round canister with the little girl under the umbrella, looking for all the world like a Hummel figurine in the rain) tastes saltier than kosher salt. So when Emeril was throwing around salt that actually registered on the TV cameras, it was kosher, and therefore not nearly as "salty" as table salt, and I was a judgmental so-and-so for thinking he was ruining the food the whole time.

Hey, man. Live and learn.

And about pepper: I like a pepper medley. I just do. I like black peppercorns mixed with pretty green and pink peppercorns, and if you want to throw in some brown or beige peppercorns, well, I welcome them to the party. The taste might not be as consistently round and mellow as black peppercorns, but the grindings are just prettier when they're multicolored. The vast majority of the time, if a recipe calls for "freshly ground black pepper," the pepper I'm adding is actually the medley that I picked up from the grocery store.

When a marinade or a brine calls for black peppercorns, I generally use black peppercorns. But for grinding, for fresh pepper flavor in a dish? I'm going for the multi-colored, multi-talented peppercorn medley.

Let me know what you think about kosher salt and freshly ground pepper in the comments below! Thanks for reading --

--Bay

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