Meat and Salt

Doesn't this hot dog look so cozy and comfortable on a cold day like today? My office is cold right now. I'd like to cuddle with this hot dog. Take a nap. And then eat it. I'd wash it down with a root beer and follow that with some hot green tea. Burp.

Now, to the point: Salt is amazing. There’s a book called “Salt: A World History” that I’ve seen around. It’s a thick book but, unfortunately, salt is not amazing enough for me to read it.


What is most interesting to me about salt, rather than its historical significance, are its amazing properties. Foremost, it has the ability to leech moisture out of ingredients. I first learned this in China. When Croptop and I were teaching in China, we went through a period where we would invite students over to our apartments and they would cook for us. This doesn’t sound very hospitable in writing, nor when spoken, but you’d have to be there and witness it to appreciate how much fun all of us would have and how much the students appreciated cooking for us. Too funny.

Anyway, one pleasant Saturday afternoon, I gave Bruce, a precious bottle of Guinness that I had brought back all the way from Beijing. He took a sip, shrugged, said, “Eh, this is coffee.” Feeling a bit slighted, I then told him to call me Laoshi (teacher) and told him where the kitchen was located. He shredded some cabbage, put a considerable amount of salt on it and added some red pepper flakes.

“What are you doing? What is that?”
“I’m making kim-chee,” he answered.

Sure enough. After a few minutes, the cabbage became soggy as the salt extracted water from the cabbage and then I think some reverse osmosis occurred as the flavoring from the red pepper went back into the cabbage. It was still gross and uber-ghetto but what I had witnessed the salt do percolated within me.

I like using kosher salt rather than regular table salt. The large grains have a more satisfying pinch and kosher salt doesn’t taste as metallic or sharp as table salt.


It appears as though salt’s water extraction abilities can be used when grilling meats. I went to a nice restaurant a few weeks ago and the chicken was probably prepared in this same way. It’s been a while since I barbecued a steak, but I want to try this the next time I have the opportunity.

Essentially, you massively salt your steaks for 15 minutes to one hour before grilling. Then, you rinse off the salt and pat the meat completely dry before grilling. A bit of the extracted water dissolves the salt and it goes back into the meat which naturally tenderizes it. The author says that a steaks flavor comes from the breakdown of protein and fat and not the water in the steak. In fact, she points out that the most expensive steaks are dry-aged. Good point.