Samin Nosrat Quotes

Salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient. Learn to use it well, and food will taste good.

From a young age, I understood the idea of balanced flavor - the reason you put ketchup on a hamburger. I was that kid who wouldn't eat something if there was something missing. I never really understood it until I began cooking professionally, balancing acids, sweets, spicy flavors and fat.

A splash of red wine vinegar can pull things together like a pinch of salt.

Sugar is my friend, not my love. I always season sugar with a bit of acid or salt. Listen to your tongue.

In food, it's really, like, either you're right, or you're wrong. You know, people's taste buds kind of vary, but there's a technique. Either you do it right, or you don't.

There are about 700 flavors that you can smell, but only five you can taste. A lot of times what you're perceiving as flavor has nothing to do with palette, but it's more to do with scents.

Salt is one of the flavors that makes food taste good - salt, sugar and fat. So it's a natural thing for all chefs and cooks to add salt, because it enhances the flavor of the food. If you go out to eat, I guarantee you're going to be eating a lot of salted foods that you are going to have no idea.

The biggest hits - be they Coca-Cola or Doritos - owe their success to complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don't have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating.

If your kitchen smells good, your food lost something.

I pride myself in figuring out how to elevate a dish with a little preserved lemon or, then, a sprinkle of Maldon salt.

People under-salt their food, and they think it's bland, but salt brings out flavor.

Taste is an emotion.

Adding salt to desserts helps to balance and pronounce flavors. Almost all of my desserts have salt in them. They don't taste salty per se, but if I gave you two of the same item - one with salt and one without - side by side, you would realize something was missing.

Salt is so, so, so important. If that's the one thing everyone remembers, every step of the way, whenever I cook, I try to incorporate salt.

If I'm doing an olive oil tasting, I would do a very lean bread: an Italian style or pita bread. You want the flavor of the oil to shine; you don't want the bread or anything else to mask it.

The Chinese five-spice works really well in the quantity that I used. It makes it almost imperceptibly just a little bit sweeter without making it really sweet or really even that Asian flavored.

If the first bite is with the eye and the second with the nose, some people will never take that third, actual bite if the food in question smells too fishy, fermented or cheesy.

I buy soy sauce and flavor it five different ways: with sake, mirin, sugar, kombu and bonito flakes. I use them on lots of dishes at home.

The addition of vinaigrette to freshly roasted vegetables gives them a freshness and juiciness they don't normally have; the acidity brings out new shades of flavour, too.

Everything in food is science. The only subjective part is when you eat it.

Is the chemical aftertaste the reason why people eat hot dogs, or is it some kind of bonus?

I add a lot of citrus to my food and I think that flavors it. And, to me, that what makes it healthier, lower in fat, lower in calories. It adds lots of flavor. Spices, of course. But citrus is definitely kind of my go-to to season and really to really make those flavors, make that food come alive.

I have an enormous fondness for delicious food. It's very comforting.

The main thing I look for in a recipe is taste, which is different from caterers and restaurants, who first ask 'How does it look?'

My family is delighted every time I cook maitake. Our taste buds awaken in anticipation of its rich, deep and nuanced flavors.