Salting Vegetables

[brawburd]

Just how do you determine how much salt to use in cooking? Is there a water/ salt/ type of vegetable ratio? e.g. do potatoes in their skins need more salt than potatoes without, to get the same saltiness at the end???

[Jaybee]

It has been proved that adding salt to cooking vegetables is pointless. It does nothing to the flavour, nor does it help retain vitamins. Leave itout completely, and let people add salt at the table if they want to.

[geofbob]

Consuming too much salt is a common dietary problem these days (maInly because of the high salt content of processed food), so omitting salt when cooking, as Jaybee suggests, is advisable from a health point of view. However, unsalted water boils at a lower temperature than salted, so your vegetables will take slightly longer to cook.

[Jaybee]

There was a TV programme (possibly QED) a few years ago which investigated all the claims made about salting the water when cooking vegetables. They discovered that unless you are cooking vegetables in brine saltier than seawater, the boiling temperature is not altered enough to make any significant difference (maybe a quarter of a degree) to the cooking time - 10 seconds or so.