What It Really Means To 'Season As You Go'

Cooking is an intricate process, demanding a keen attention to detail. In addition to watching the heat, duration, and ingredient combinations, an especially crucial nuance is seasoning. Chefs sample and adjust their flavors throughout the process, ensuring that each component tastes delicious, thereby leading to a better melded result. Not to mention adding salt incrementally also helps enhance flavors and smoothen the cooking process.

The technique is casually referred to as "seasoning as you go," although the move seriously enhances dishes. Sprinkling salt in stages doesn't require much work, but offers large pay-offs. For instance, adding salt to boiled beans helps create a more uniform texture, while seasoned pasta water helps the noodles from sticking. Furthermore, salting while ingredients are heated concentrates flavors, drawing a bit of moisture away from meats and vegetables. It's a range of complex chemical processes, all wrapped up in one simple phrase. So, season food every step of the way, and you'll get the best tasting result.

Salt deservedly receives the majority of attention when it comes to seasoning, but it's not the only option. The nuances of spice vs. seasoning are complicated, but typically, herbs and spices are also included in the definition. So, any dry compound that's sprinkled in for a dish's flavor fits the definition.

As a result, seasoning as you go can also refer to integrating that pepper blend, or adding a flourish of dried herbs. For instance, whenever you're making chili, don't forget the spice blooming seasoning step — adding spices too late won't result in the desired outcome. Alternatively, when crafting a slow simmering dish like a beef stew, you'll want to season later into cooking, not just during the beginning. Plus, with any dish, remember you can always season at the end, in order to adjust the level of spice and salt to a desired level. So, keep such malleability in mind, and your meals will come out more flavorful.