Salt has been a valuable commodity throughout history. Until refrigeration became common, it was a main ingredient in preserving perishables like meat. According to etymonline, the English word “salary” comes from Latin for “salt ration,” “salt buying money.” Apparently it was pretty important for the soldiers to buy their salt.
All that to say that I’m immensely grateful for salt after I managed to leave it out of all my cooking this week. Even curry and chipotle seasonings don’t substitute for salt. Bleh.
Fortunately, salt is also something that can be fairly easily added afterwards. I just take it less for granted now.
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How did you come to leave the salt out? Were you worried about sodium intake? Did you run out?
I’m wondering the same thing as your mom. 🙂 I use salt sparingly, but I wouldn’t leave it out unless a doctor advised me to. It really does help bring out the flavor.
No…this would be the usual reason, I completely forgot the salt. I was focusing on some new spices and I’d gotten them all lined up but wasn’t thinking about the lines in both recipes which called for salt. It was supposed to go in along with the spices, but it wasn’t in the lineup.
Lol! That happens 🙂 I hate when I forget ingredients!
I was wondering the same thing! I don’t use a lot of salt, but when I leave it out of recipes that it goes in, it is very noticeable
I rarely use salt, and don’t really miss it. 🙂
I’ve left salt out of the bread machine a couple of times — it’s horrible!
I had been given to understand that Roman soldiers were actually paid with salt rather than coin…is that incorrect?
That reminds me of this book that our honors college had contemplated switching to as the “let the freshman suffer” summer reading book. It’s called Salt: A World History. Honestly, at 498 pages it would have been a better choice than what they DID make us read (Europe: A History at 1392 pages) and we could have skipped the whole “people having sex with bulls” meandering.
Anyway, it came to mind. I heard it was a good read.
I shall call you Queen Lear.
Salt is extremely important at my house. We get our water from a well that is full of very, very metallic water. The water contains so much iron and magnesium that are dog won’t even drink the water!
So we have a heavy duty water softener system that uses salt to clean the filtering media. We go through a 40 lb bag of salt every week. Fortunately, the salt only costs ~$4.50 at Walmart!
Have you ever given sea salt a try? My ex-boyfriend sold me on the idea. It seems weird, but in some things without lots of seasoning, like when I stir fry veggies with a bit of garlic and some salt, it really does add interesting nuance. Sea salt cost slightly more, but when you calculate it on a per serving basis it adds less than a cent to the cost of the dish.
leaving salt out (as I did) can leave you low in iodine and cause problems with your thyroid!!
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