Read This Before You Salt Your Vegetables | The Bittman Project (2024)

FAQs

Do you rinse cabbage after salting? ›

The salt will draw out excess water from cabbage while helping preserve the crispiness. After letting it sit for an hour or two, rinse it with water to remove the salt.

Salting these watery vegetables draws out extra water and flavor molecules. So don't skip this step—it allows more flavor to soak in and helps the veggies stand up to more heat and heavier dressings.

You generally add salt to the vegetables during the cooking process. After adding salt, vegetables release water.

Cabbage. Make your slaw with salted cabbage and it'll be noticeably less watery and stay crisp and fresh for days longer. Put sliced cabbage in a colander, sprinkle with salt (about a tablespoon for 6 cups cabbage), toss, let sit.

If recipe directs, rinse vegetables under cold running water to remove excess salt and liquid. Pat dry with paper towels.

Cabbage. The outer layer isn't going to be eaten—the leaves are tougher and undesirable to many—so why wash cabbage? There's a good reason: Worms or other insects could be inside the cabbage, so to be safe, follow these steps for cleaning and washing it.

It's simple. Use about a teaspoon of kosher salt per pound of vegetables. Toss well and then let them sit for about 30-45 minutes. You can let them drain in a colander as they sit or press them with a towel to get rid of the water.

While the process speeds up during cooking, it's still not instantaneous. Adding salt at the beginning of cooking gives it time to migrate into the food, seasoning it throughout. Meanwhile, if you add salt only at the end, it provides a more concentrated, superficial coating that immediately hits your tongue.

A pinch is always good to start with, and by a pinch we do mean an actual pinch of salt between your thumb and pointer finger. After that, seasoning is up to you. Remember that salt needs time to dissolve, so taste frequently as your cook and get excited about getting to know salt a little bit better.

Use fine sea salt.

Traditional Kosher salt is a bit too coarse and doesn't evenly coat the vegetables.

What salt is best for cooking vegetables? ›

French sea salts are ideal for use on salads, cooked fresh vegetables, and grilled meat.

When plant cells are broken, the oils are separated from the sugar molecules by an enzyme and released as a very bitter compound. It's a clever defense mechanism for the cabbage plant to discourage hungry foragers.

Cabbage contains lots of water. Alton Brown suggests salting the cabbage and letting the water drain for two hours, then rinsing the cabbage and spinning it dry before dressing it. That purges the excess water out of the cabbage before it is dressed, so it doesn't get watery.

Wash the Cabbage and Remove the Outer Leaves

Just remove the very outer leaves—the ones that are softer, more leafy, and easy to pull off.

Quite unlike the ice-water cabbage, salted cabbage shreds lost most of its liquid while sitting in the salt, leaving the cabbage pickle-crisp. In addition to having less water in it, the cabbage took on more of the dressing's flavors, and unlike stiff, icy shreds, this limp cabbage was also easier to eat.

Rinsing sauerkraut can help reduce its salt content. To do this, drain the brine and rinse the sauerkraut with cold water. Use a colander or strainer to ensure that all the sauerkraut is rinsed thoroughly. You may need to repeat this process a few times to achieve the desired salt level.