Cooking Fundamentals: Season to Taste (Salt and Pepper)

There is a reason why salt and pepper is on every table, of every low quality restaurant in America: cooks generally do not understand how to season properly. Salt and pepper are the most fundamental seasoning ingredients in our diet.

When I say "Season to Taste" in any of my blog posts I only mean this: put enough salt and pepper on the dish to make it great, no more, no less. It seems simple, but it is like anything else, it has to be practiced and mastered. CrossFit has nine fundamental movements, cooking has one: seasoning.

Chicken, zucchini, tomatoes, spinach, eggs, steak, and everything else tastes remarkably good with nothing else save for salt and pepper. Do your self a favor and figure out how much salt and pepper goes with everything and anything you eat. I don't have good rules of thumb for this one (except for a pinch here and there), because intuition hasn't led to easily discernible patterns for me yet. You must learn the way I did, by trial and hopefully limited error.

The best bet is to try to get a feel for this is on eggs (since you will end up eating a ton of these on Paleo diets). Do your self the dis-service of grossly over seasoning you eggs, observe what happens. Then go the opposite way and go bare: no salt, no pepper. Compare and contrast for time. Add different ingredients to your egg scramble and observe how they change the level of perceived salt and pepper needed in your diet. It will be noticeable and remarkable. You will understand food and cooking, all for the better, if you can understand seasoning.

Salt, pepper? Yeah, its super super important when you learn to cook. Its fundamental.