Salt for a dish is calculated as a proportion of the ingredient’s weight, and the proportion varies by type of dish: 5–7 grams per liter of liquid for soup and other liquid-based dishes, 1% of the meat’s weight, and 1.8–2% of the flour in bread dough. These amounts are a starting point; add three-quarters of the calculated salt, then taste and add the rest as the dish approaches its final consistency. Subtract salty ingredients from the calculation.
The advantage of working with ratios is that they do not depend on the size of the recipe. A soup for two people and a soup for ten people are salted at the same ratio; scaling up a recipe written in spoonfuls, on the other hand, is left to guesswork. You need to know the ingredient’s weight for the calculation. Meat and ground meat are bought by weight, so their weight is already known; for soup, use the liquid volume, and for dough, use the flour weight. For vegetable dishes, find the total weight by adding together the ingredients placed on the scale. Once you use the scale, adding them up takes only a few seconds.
The ratios differ by dish. For soups and other liquid-based dishes, 5–7 grams of salt per liter of liquid is enough. For cuts of meat, 1% of the meat’s weight, or 10 grams per kilogram, gives a balanced result. For meatball mixture, the ratio is 1–1.5% of the ground meat; as bread and onion are added to the mixture, use a value closer to the upper end. In bread dough, salt is 1.8–2% of the flour, or 18–20 grams per kilogram. For pasta and vegetables boiled in water, add 7–10 grams per liter; because most of the water is discarded, only part of this amount transfers to the food.
Here is an example of how the calculation works. For a vegetable soup cooked with one and a half liters of water, a ratio of 5–7 grams per liter gives a total of 7.5–10.5 grams of salt. Add three-quarters of that, or 6–8 grams, at the start. With fine table salt, a 5 ml measuring spoon holds 5.5–6 grams, so this is between one and one and a half spoonfuls. Taste and add the remaining salt after the soup thickens. The same calculation gives 10 grams for one kilogram of cubed meat and 5–7.5 grams for 0.5 kg of meatball mixture.
The only salt in the calculation is not the salt in the shaker. Tomato paste, white cheese, olives, bouillon, and soy sauce bring their own salt, and it should be subtracted from the calculation. Packaged products list the salt amount per 100 grams in the nutrition facts; 100 grams of olives labeled as containing 4 grams of salt per 100 grams adds 4 grams of salt to the dish. That is more than a half-liter of sauce needs. In a dish like this, do not add most of the calculated salt at all; taste the dish after adding the salty ingredients.
Do not add all of the calculated salt at the start. Water evaporates during cooking and the salt remains; a sauce simmered over low heat for half an hour will be noticeably saltier than when it started. That is why three-quarters of the calculated amount is added at the start or when the recipe calls for it, and the rest is added to taste as the dish approaches its final consistency. Taste at serving temperature; a dish that will be eaten cold may taste salty while hot but taste balanced as it cools. Once the ratio is dialed in, the same dish will have the same saltiness every time.
Comments (3)
Ağırlığa oranlamak mantıklı ama mutfak terazisi olmayan biri için pratik değil, yine göz kararına dönüyor.
Litreye beş yedi gram ölçüsüyle çorbalarım standartlaştı, artık her seferinde farklı tuzlu çıkmıyor. Terazinin bir gram hassasiyetinde olması yetiyor. Eskiden aynı tarifi iki gün üst üste yapıp iki ayrı sonuç alıyordum ve suçu tarifte arıyordum.
Etli yemekle sulu yemeğin oranının ayrışması önemli bir ayrıntı, ben hepsine aynı ölçüyle yaklaşıyordum.