‘Season to taste.” Most regular cooks know those dreaded words, uncommon in the baking world but omnipresent in recipes from mashed potatoes to stir fry. It is a bit annoying, isn’t it? We prefer exact amounts, a clear path to follow, worried that our good sense and clear judgment are being put to the test by tiny grains of sodium chloride. Ingredients are expensive, and who wants to ruin a dish of chicken Florentine by making it taste like the ocean?
Besides the occasional vague sense of unease when it came time to season my various creations, I’d never put much thought into exactly how much salt I was using when I was, say, frying potatoes. But then I received a note from a reader asking how much salt I put in my soup. To this query, I had to embarrassingly reply that I was unsure, but since I was making soup for a dinner party the following Tuesday, I’d keep him posted about my salt use. This was a foolish statement on my part since, as most anyone in my family will tell you, I’m famously inexact with measurements, both of the culinary and tape-measure kind. I much prefer to eyeball both liquid amounts and home décor locations.
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