A blog about food and cooking by Chris Norris
Salt, Part 9 (final): Don’t Eat Food Without It Salt is an essential mineral that we can’t live without. Salt has an important role in the history of man, and even today is used as a large-scale delivery vehicle for iodine, essentially medicating the entire […]
Salt, Part 8: To Serve Man The ability of salt to cause water to move across cellular boundaries is at the core of salt cures and other forms of preservation using salt. Salted meats, whether fish, meat or fowl are cured by applying lots of […]
Salt, Part 7: Doctor Salt The concentration of electrolytes in our system must be precisely maintained in order for our bodies to work. Sodium, along with potassium, are two of the most important electrolytes in our body, so not surprisingly our bodies have quite a […]
Salt, Part 6: Please Pass The Salt Salt is one of our five basic senses of taste, which also includes sweet, sour, bitter and umami (savory). Haven’t heard of ‘umami’ before? It’s kind of a recent thing, discovered and named by a Japanese researcher. Umami […]
Salt, Part 5: The Salts of Our Lives Salt gets to our table in different ways and forms. If you do much cooking, or pay attention to such things, you’ll have noticed that there are different forms of salt used in the kitchen, each with […]
Salt, Part 4: Getting Inside the Salt Salt is an ionic compound, which means that the atomic elements in salt gain or lose electrons rather than sharing electrons. The chemical notation for salt is NaCl, which indicates that a molecule of salt consists of one […]
Salt, Part 3: Between Salt and a Hard Place Halite, the pure mineral form of salt, is the only rock that we routinely consume as part of our normal diet. Unlike most foods we eat, salt doesn’t burn and doesn’t catch fire. For all practical […]
Salt, Part 2: Saltiness Is To Godliness Salt was extraordinarily important in biblical times, and great power and wealth accrued to those who controlled the supply of salt. Wars were fought over salt and battles could be won or lost based on the ability of […]
Salt, Part 1: What’s Up With Salt? Click here for the whole series! My oldest son brought home his high school chemistry textbook after orientation classes a few weeks ago and inadvertently launched me on a new research project. While thumbing through the book, I […]