#101: The Power of Salt: A Deep Dive into Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

We’re kicking off our breakdown of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat, and this week, it’s all about Salt! Salt is the key to unlocking flavor - it enhances taste, balances sweetness, and transforms bland dishes into something truly delicious.

 In this episode, we explore how salt impacts cooking, why it’s essential, and how to use it effectively in your home kitchen. If you’ve ever wondered how to season your food like a pro, this episode is for you!

Plus, we’re wrapping up with answers to your Dinner Dilemmas, tackling real-life meal planning questions to help make your home cooking easier.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] I'm Riley and I'm Roni. And this is the plan to eat podcast, where we have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you answer the question what's for dinner. 

Yeti X-1: Hello, and welcome back to the Plan to Eat podcast. Today, Riley and I are starting our book club breakdown of the book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nostrat. And we are starting in the salt section this week. So if you're following along, that's where we're at. And we've got a lot to say because we like salt.

USBAudio1.0-1: we love salt. This book is massive. If you've ever seen it at a Bookstore. It feels, it has a textbook feel to it. And I, I know a lot of people can look at the heft of a book and think, okay, I can't, I'm not going to read that or I don't have time. This book is enthralling. Like, from the first paragraph, she's such a storyteller.

You're [00:01:00] in. You just want to read everything she says. Um, you earn her trust. You, like, you just, I don't know, you want to eat everything she talks about. She obviously loves food. , she may have won me over on the science. of baking And it's just, I just, what a storyteller, I just can't, you're just with her from the first paragraph and you just want to read everything she says.

I was really impressed. 

Yeti X-2: Yeah, it is a really fun book to read. It's not only about cooking. She does share a lot of personal stories, how she came to her own revelations about the things that she talks about. She talks about her culinary education at the Michelin star restaurant that she worked at. And it's a lot more than just cooking, um, lots of fun stories and just different things that you learn about her life too.

USBAudio1.0-1: Also it's full of beautiful illustrations. Like somebody or her, her illustrator hand illustrated everything in this book. There's really beautiful. It's just beautiful. It's high color and engaging.

You want to look at everything. You [00:02:00] want to look at every illustration. You want to follow along. She talks about them. It's just a great read.

Yeah. 

Yeti X-3: Do you want to give us a quick overview of the author, Riley?

USBAudio1.0-1: Yes, so Samin is an author, of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, which is a James Beard award winning New York Times best selling cookbook.

Uh, she's also the host of a Netflix documentary by the same name, which I have not watched yet. I haven't either. I just want to do, I want to read everything she writes. She has a cookbook, another cookbook coming out in fall of 2025, which I'm already looking forward to. 

Yeti X-4: Yeah, I'm looking forward to that too. Well, I have a summary of the section related to salt, if you don't mind. So salt affects both the flavor and taste of food. Without salt, food can taste bland and flat. Salt helps unlock the natural flavors of food, and it masks bitterness, balances sweetness, and enhances aromas.

The best way to utilize salt is throughout the cooking process with tasting and adjusting until you get that zing. Seasoning from within [00:03:00] is kind of a coined term that she uses and you do that with the effect of time, temperature, and water. Those are the three elements of salt diffusion.

And to effectively salt your food, adopt the mantra, stir, taste, adjust.

USBAudio1.0-1: Oh, I wrote that down too. I loved that. That was a beautiful summary. Yeah, uh, she jokingly refers to it as pepper sidekick, which is how most of the world views salt. But it has so much that, there's so much more to salt. It is, I mean, arguably after you read this chapter, I already believed this, but I'm sold now. After you read this chapter, you will care about salt so much more.

You will understand salt and how it operates, and everything is richer, sweeter, tastes better, more flavor because of salt. 

Yeti X-5: And you will go and buy New Salt.

USBAudio1.0-1: A hundred new salts. Yeah. 

Yeti X-6: So this is actually my second time reading this section of the book and it was really enlightening [00:04:00] to reread and remember some of the things that I thought originally like, oh yeah, that's amazing. I need to incorporate that. And maybe I did incorporate it like once or twice in my cooking, but kind of fell by the wayside or forgot about it.

So it was a super good reminder to salt. Once again, like I said, in the summary throughout the cooking process, salt things early in particular. We talked a little bit about this a couple episodes back where Riley and I shared our cooking journeys. We talked quite a bit about salt in that episode as well, actually.

And one of the things I remember learning from this book that I re learned reading it this time is the idea of salting meat in particular quite early in the cooking process. I actually just watched this really interesting YouTube short where a chef was explaining this idea of salting meat early. And he had this like really thick steak and he put salt on it and waited a couple of minutes and he talked about how, uh, you notice that it actually draws the water [00:05:00] out of the steak.

And you don't want to cook the steak right then because that water itself has like its own heating point that's different from the meat. So if you wait longer, the meat will actually like reabsorb that water with the salt and it's that reabsorption that makes the meat so tender and juicy as a byproduct of salting it early.

So, salting ahead of time, game changer, particularly if you're a meat eater, um, eating any type of meat, but I think in particular, expensive cuts of meat, like taking the time to learn how early should I salt this beforehand, and that's going to be a big game changer for your cooking.

USBAudio1.0-1: Yep. And she breaks this down beautifully in the book.

There's, there's charts that tell you what is your ingredient? When do you salt it? And that kind of thing.

There's some great charts in the book that really help break this down for you as reference guides to know when to salt something as much as three days in advance to two weeks in advance to 20 minutes beforehand. One of the things that I [00:06:00] really, that really struck me is the idea of how fast it dissolves.

Yeah. And how, like, you just sometimes need to give something a little bit more time so that the salt actually dissolves and flavors your food. I've definitely made this mistake and ultimately over salted. So every salt dissolves at a different rate based on if it's a rock salt, based on if it's table salt, based on um, because the granules are all such different sizes. Um, and so depending on what you use it can take a really long time for your salt to dissolve which means that flavor is not permeating your entire dish yet.

And so salt and time are highly highly intertwined. I've definitely made this mistake before. And, so I just loved reading it and kind of, honestly, I feel like a lot of the things I read, if you are a home cook, actively cooking, you're, you're, you know, I would say like maybe a little bit more advanced, you're cooking a lot, you kind of get to know these things when you're cooking.

But what I found when I read this, I'm like, Oh, this like scientifically confirms the things that I feel like I've seen in practice and through [00:07:00] failure. And I've just felt that. I thought that was a really interesting thing. Like, oh, now I know how to talk about this. Because it's kind of something you just like know or you feel as a chef.

And then once you're reading this book, you're like, oh, this is explaining things to me that I think I knew, but now I really know. Yeah. After I read this the first time I, I switched over to buying diamond crystal salt. Cause that's pretty much the salt that she recommends for most general cooking in the cookbook.

She says that it's the salt that most restaurants use as well. And I will say that I noticed a big difference right away switching over to that salt. I was previously using a, it's called Redmond real salt before that. And so it's a, it's a type of sea salt and the Redmond salt is, it's great. It's a wonderful salt, but it is actually a lot less salty than the diamond crystal.

And so. I just noticed that I was having to add less salt to, the food that I was cooking when I changed over to Diamond Crystal. And she mentions in the book that Diamond Crystal is [00:08:00] one of the faster to dissolve salts. And so when you are doing the stir, taste, adjust method for your cooking, you're able to add the salt, stir, and it dissolves faster.

So you're much less likely to over salt your food. And one of the things that she said is that your food shouldn't really taste salty. It should be salted, which are two different things and, you know, adjusting your taste and getting to know that is kind of part of this whole process. There was a part of this chapter where she talks about a chef she was working with who literally said, like, add seven more grains of salt to something.

Cause it was, she knew like so specifically how much salt something needed. And she talks a lot about, you know, how some things need handfuls of salt and something need, some things need seven grains of salt. And I just think it's, gives you a really, uh, there's a little bit of freedom in it. There's also some stress in it, right?

Because she says season to taste, season to taste. And that can be really scary, especially if you're a new cook, but it actually allows something to come to your [00:09:00] preference point of salty or saltedness. And so it's just interesting, like, you know, trying that out in practice, like it's scary to put handfuls of salt in something.

But just like everything else, it becomes that automatic, like, I know I need this much for this recipe. You know, when you taste something and you're like, it feels a little bland, always try salt first. Unless it tastes salty already, but try salt first because it enhances the flavor of everything else about the dish.

Um, another thing that I thought was really fascinating was that she says that salt, given the chance, will always distribute itself evenly. to season food from within because it's the sosmosis diffusion effect. It's literally scientific that it will work to distribute itself evenly, if it can. And so you're, we've got to work with the right salt so that can do that effectively.

I would say overall, one of the big takeaways that I took. From this chapter is that chefs are master planners because when it comes to salt, there are a lot of things that need time and they need this layering process of salting at certain [00:10:00] times. And so if you have, a steak or a roast or, you know, she even gives the example of like, you're cooking a half a pig for a luau or something and like how early you would salt something like that.

I just, I don't, that was just the thing that kept running through my head the entire time that I was reading this was like chefs are just master planners. They're so amazing at planning ahead in order to make taste, in order to make food taste good. That is such a beautiful visual that I hadn't really considered.

Um, I think because I almost read it, I don't know, I just love the perspective. It's really true. She answers every question you might have ever had about salt and answers questions that you didn't even know you had about salt. I think that another thing that I really gleaned from the book is at every turn she's teaching.

She is a teacher, which I don't know if that's true for every chef. You hear a lot, a lot of famous chefs are teachers because they become show hosts or they become, you know, like reality chef shows. They become like [00:11:00] the guide, the guide for the little under, like new chefs to be able to like, you know, come into their own and that whole kind of thing.

But you do kind of get that sense. She's put her arm around you while you're reading the book and she's like, every chance she gets, she's giving you a tip. She's saying, um, potatoes that were simmered in salted water before being roasted are going to taste so much better than a potato that was salted on the outside and then you roast it in the oven.

I'm just thinking like how much this will affect my cooking. Cause I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to boil these in salt water first. Because she just gave me this little tip. It feels like it's full of recipes, but it's just literally basic cooking information. Right, and she does give a few recipes in the cookbook.

I think the end of the book does have recipes in it, and there are a few recipes scattered throughout where, she gives an example of, you know, here's what I mean by this thing of salt in this recipe. But yeah, you're right. She does, it does, it's amazing how it's, It's just information [00:12:00] and yet you're, the way that she presents it, you're immediately able to connect it to your own cooking methods and the way that you're making things.

One thing that I have written down that I wanted to mention, that you mentioned the boiling in potatoes, is she, she gives you really good references, so when you salt your water for pasta or potatoes or something, she says it should taste like the sea, or she puts it in quotes like, what you remember the sea to taste like, if you don't live close, which we don't.

And so that's such a, a good thing to be able to be like, okay, I'm just going to like dip my finger in my salty water. Is it salty? Like the ocean yet? No, it's not. So like a keep you need to add water. And this was a good. Reminder, and I actually did this the other night, I was making mashed potatoes, and I was like, Oh, I actually need like a lot of salt in this pot in order to make this salty, but it totally made a difference in the end with the potatoes.

Another way that she spoke about salt, which I think is something I really had not considered, [00:13:00] is that salt is salt, but salt ingredients are also things like parmesan cheese. Anchovies, um, anything, uh, like sometimes ricotta, like, like there's other things you can add to your food that add salt or the flavor of saltiness, without actually being salt, which I thought was really interesting.

So this chapter, while it speaks about literal granules, picture in your mind, your pink Himalayan salt, your white salt chunks, your little salt dish beside your kitchen, your stove, the one on your kitchen table, the one at every restaurant you've ever been to. Yes. All of that, but so much more than that.

She talks about all these ingredients that add saltiness, that I, I just thought, I thought it was really interesting, because I don't I don't always think, Oh, I'm going to add Parmesan to my dish and think, Oh, I'm adding salt, but it is a salt added, you know, it is salt you're adding, it's adding that flavor punch.

I just thought that was a really, it really changed the way I cook or it changed the way I thought about [00:14:00] cooking. Yeah. Related to that one. One thing that's consistent throughout the entire book is that she is very interested. She's making sure to teach you about ingredients that go with different types of cuisines. So this idea that there are extra foods that you could be adding that are salty, like pickles or soy sauce or anchovies or cheese, you know, all of those go. Might go along with different styles of cuisines and choosing the right one to add flavor to your dish can be really important.

I don't know that there are very many, Greek recipes that you would use soy sauce in. And maybe that's like a really simple example because soy sauce is very traditionally like a more Asian flavor. But, uh, it's very interesting the way that she, she really, Lays it out there where it's like, okay, you have like French cuisine and you use certain types of things that really enhance like a French cuisine flavor.

And a lot of that might [00:15:00] be, a lot of that is even over my head. And I'm not necessarily thinking about that when I'm cooking, but it is really. It is a good thing to just kind of keep in the back of your mind if you are somebody who cooks specific types of cuisine to remember, oh, there are specific ingredients that are made for this cuisine that will make it taste the best possible.

We'll get into this a lot more with fat also, because she really speaks to the geographical differences in, in why you would be using one fat over another based on its availability, which I thought was really interesting. Along the same lines of what you're talking about. It's like the idea of layering salt, and so you add your salt to your salt water, but then you're gonna, you're gonna blanch your vegetables in it or something, but then you're going to serve it with, uh, olives, or you're gonna serve it with, kimchi, or you're gonna add soy sauce to this, like, the idea of, you're gonna always be layering these salt ingredients in your recipe, which is something to consider as, and why you should salt, and taste, and adjust, because You are adding salty elements to something that's already been [00:16:00] salted, but it's important because the salt adds the flavor or brings out the flavor of things.

She talks about salt and baking, and she says that salt and sugar work in concert with one another, not in contrast, but we tend to look at sugar and salt being almost opposites of each other. Oh, salt, whoo, and then sugar, sweet, you know, like, but they work. In conjunction with one another, which I think is, I thought it was again, like it's things that people know and things that are, you, we talk about, you add salt to chocolate chip cookies, you add salt to caramel, you, you know, add salt to most cakes you bake and most things, but just to think about it in that this is an enhancer of the sugar.

They are working together in unison. I just love the way she spoke about these ingredients because I think we can kind of villainize them sometimes. Oh, these are against each other. These don't work well with each other, but there are a lot of ingredients that we would say that about are actually working together for a beautiful purpose.

It would actually be really interesting to make a. batch of [00:17:00] cookies or make a cake or something where you included salt in one and not in the other, and just see how different the flavor profile is, because even if you're only adding in a teaspoon of salt to your, you know, cookie dough, I bet it does make quite a bit of difference for how sweet the cookies end up tasting in the end, or, or maybe just like the, the depth of their flavor, I don't know, that would be a fun, that would be a fun experiment to try.

So she talks a lot about, How to salt your food, when to salt your food, timing, all of those kinds of things. She gives you an overview of, like we said, the different types of salt, your flaky salt and your table salt and all of those things. She is not a big fan of iodinized table salt, just so everybody knows.

I don't think that very many chefs are. Um, she says that it's very salty, compared to most other salts, and it actually can give your food a metallic y taste. So, her recommendation is, once again, like the diamond crystal, or to do a different type of kosher salt, that's not the, [00:18:00] like, iodinized kind. And one thing that we haven't talked about quite yet, is she does give options for if you've over-salted your food which I think is an important part of this process, because I think salting food can feel a little intimidating for some and so she has a few ideas around this, one of them is to dilute your recipe, obviously so

it's not so salty. One of her ideas around that is to like halve the recipe and then dilute one half of it so you're not ending up with like so much food. Another one is to balance it with acid and I'm sure we're going to get way more into that in the acid chapter as well. And then another option could be to pair it with a less Salty item.

So if you made a roast and the, you know, a pot roast or something, and like, maybe the meat is just like, Ooh, super salty. Well, maybe you pair it with mashed potatoes that are a little under salted and it can maybe balance them out a little bit.

The last way she talks about how to do that is, uh, how to make something less salty is to say like, Maybe you've made, [00:19:00] like beans that were too salty, But the beans are not, like, you take all the beans out of the liquid. And then the liquid and the salt remains in the liquid, but you can kind of salvage the beans and things like that.

Basically just select which part of the recipe you can save and get rid of like broth that was too salty. Or basically basically take some of the broth and turn it into like a less salty sauce that goes on the meat. So then it can kind of balance one another.

One of the things that we didn't talk about yet, which I thought was really interesting and I'm curious to hear your thoughts is the different ways that salt is made. And like the different textures of salt. So I mean, you've probably seen flaky sea salt that goes on top of it. Like I'm thinking, literally, I'm thinking about a chocolate chip cookie with flaky sea salt on top or caramel with like the visual crystals of salt on the outside.

But just like, let me see if I can find the section because I thought it was really interesting. Just the way that different salt is made, sea salt is left behind when seawater evaporates. Uh, rock salt is mined from an ancient lake and sea. Um, [00:20:00] I just thought it was such an interesting thing, or even the way that they make the salt, because the way it evaporates, and when they take it, out of the water that it's in, that it's evaporated from, and like how, how the, how the crystals literally form, I, I just thought that was really interesting, because it's something I did not know.

Yeah, it is a super interesting process, and when we were in Salzburg, Austria, we actually toured a salt mine, and, because the word Salzburg means salt town. And um, It was a really cool experience because you go into, you go into the floors of the mine that are no longer being used, but you literally see veins of salt in the walls, and like they're like pointing them out and they're like, yeah, that's like a vein of salt right there, you know, that like didn't get mined out, um, and then we actually took like a little like boat ride over a salt lake, because in the salt mine there, they do the process where they, Drill into the caverns and then they fill it up with water.

And, after a certain period of time, like pump the water back out to then evaporate it outside [00:21:00] of the mine. And so this is, I'm sure just a lake that they only use for like the commercial purposes of the tour, but super fascinating to like, learn about that process and kind of like see it happen in real time.

More or less, obviously we're not like seeing the evaporation process and stuff, but, uh, so cool to, to see. Be just like inside of a cave and be like, there is salt all around us. I really wanted to go to the Redmonds real salt mine because it's over in Utah, which is not terribly far away from us. And it's one of the world's oldest salt mines, which I just think is really interesting.

And it's not that far. So that's really cool. You got to do that. I really have wanted to go. I just haven't gotten the chance to do the one in Utah. Okay we're going to taste some salt. Are you excited? Yes, I am excited. Riley brought all sorts of salts over to my house that we are going to try. So, she's going to get this set up for me and we're going to give you guys a, our little flavor profile, the different salts that we taste.

[00:22:00] I kind of went a little crazy because I read the chapter and I love salt and my family members who are listening to this right now. You know who you are. You know, I love salt. We'll do our best. I know it's a, I know it's a podcast, everyone. Um, Salt has what, Samin says in the book is that salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient.

Yeah, so salt matters quite a bit. I believe it. Yeah. Okay. What do you want to go with first? Do you want your present first? I yeah, apparently Riley has surprises for me. So Oh my gosh, that's so cute Oh, Riley got me a little pin. That's like a morton Salt shaker that just says salty on it. It's so adorable.

She got one for her. You know, the like iconic little girl with the umbrella. Oh my gosh. That's so cute. We do joke that we're salty girls. We, I don't know that our personalities are salty, but we like to season our food. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to be honest with you. I am the person who has a tiny salt shaker in my purse.

Yeah. And we'll salt things as needed. [00:23:00] What do you want to try first? Okay, I've got some pink Himalayan salt. I brought, just for fun, iodized table salt. Ah, I think we should try that one first. Do you think so? Yeah. Okay, I also brought some Redmond's Real Salt. I also brought Maldon Sea Salt Flakes. Nice. I also brought Diamond Crystal Salt.

Very nice. And lastly, I brought two flavored salts. Oh, very fun. I brought, some flaky wild garlic sea salt. It's beautiful. It looks beautiful. Yeah. Look at the, structures. We'll show you these in stories. It's really, really cool. And I also brought, this one's really interesting, but it's citron flakes of sea salt.

Oh, the citron has like made it like orangey yellow. Yeah, it's beautiful. Really cool. Yeah. So we'll make sure to take a video and post these in stories so you can go see on the Plan to Eat Instagram. Okay, let's do this. We're gonna need some water after this. Oh, that's what I was gonna ask if you needed me to fill up your water.

Good, [00:24:00] good. All right. Uh, oh, yeah, we're gonna try the iodized table salt first, which this might not even be open. I just found it at my house. I don't use this anymore. I've not used table salt for several years now.

Okay.

Oh, yeah. Tastes just like table salt. It is so strong. Table salt is so strong. Very, very strong. It definitely has a particular flavor. Oh, yeah. It like, tastes like my childhood or something. Yeah, I could see, yeah, but it has, it doesn't just taste salty to me, there's like another layer of it and I can't name it.

Maybe it's that metallic y kind of flavor. Maybe my palate's not refined enough to name it, but. Yeah. Okay, here, can you grind some of this Himalayan salt on the plate? This is like pink rock salt. Oh, here we go.

Tastes like the ocean, but it tastes really good. That does taste exactly like the ocean, actually. It's really interesting, the difference between the two of those. I mean, I feel like this exact thing, this like table full of salt, this is exactly what I would picture a new home chef doing if they had the opportunity with a [00:25:00] bunch of different salts.

And this is what Samin really says to do in her, in her book. Right. My mouth's watering. Sorry. This is this, the, the Himalayan sea salt, markedly less salty. Yeah. Now let's try the Redmonds because Redmonds. I think you need a ton of redmonds to get to the salt level that I prefer. I think it's amazing salt.

Right, I agree.

I was expecting it to taste exactly like the Himalayan sea salt and it doesn't. It doesn't at all. I don't know what the difference is, but it tastes different. Maybe this is kind of a silly thing because I know that the redmonds have like a lot of trace minerals in it from the way that they mine it.

But I feel like you can almost get that taste of like there's other things, like there's minerals in the salt. It has a different flavor than the sea salt did. 

Okay so visually, 

USBAudio1.0-1: Maldon sea salt flakes, it's like little rocks. It's beautiful. It's like little diamonds.

I mean, it's exactly what it says it is, which is sad. Flakes, you know, like it's it's definitely like what you would put on top of a brownie. That's like top with flaky. Yeah. Yeah, exactly, right [00:26:00] I'm gonna taste that but it looks so different than the diamond crystal one. Okay, I'm gonna go with the flaky one

noticeably way longer to dissolve in your mouth. Yeah, which is really interesting and so much less salty. Mm hmm. Until it's dissolved. Yeah. And then you get that salt kick at the end. So interesting. Okay, lastly, um, diamond crystal.

It's a little more powdery. Yeah. So dissolved way faster. Yeah, the texture of the diamond crystal is different from, it's like a, it's like a mix in between the flaky salt and like the Redmond sea salt, the like fine ground. It tastes so good. I went back for seconds. It's like a meaty, I would say it's like a medium grind.

Mm hmm. Yeah, it's really nice. Let's try citrus. I'm curious because my husband and I tasted this at home. Selfishly, I did this already. Um, and we didn't get a lot of citrus flavor, but the container says It gives a touch of citron to fish salads and [00:27:00] poultry. So I think with the right ingredients, it could really bring out the citrus.

Yeah. Again, we're just trying these with nothing. Yeah. This one I can literally, you can literally look like a little, they make little pyramids, literally little pyramids. They're beautiful. Yeah.

Now that I've had all these other salts, I think I definitely taste the salt, the citrus.

I don't know that I'm getting any citrus. But that's okay. Yeah. It's yummy. I want more, actually. Yeah, it's really good.

I definitely taste the citrus now. Last night when I tried it, I didn't. But I think after all of these salts, it has such a standout flavor. It's certainly different. I like that it's little pyramids. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's really adorable, honestly. Okay. If we haven't lost you, we're going to try one more, which is like a garlic, wild garlic sea salt.

Keep pouring out too much. Oh, I can smell the garlic in this one.

I need a little palate cleanser while you talk about that one. Definitely garlicky.[00:28:00] 

Garlic definitely comes through on that one. I didn't mean that, like, that cough wasn't, like, a bad thing. It kind of just, like, went down my throat a little bit, but this is delicious. Two things I love, garlic and salt. I know. Add a little butter to that and I'm sold. If a recipe calls for garlic, I literally ignore the amount and I just add the amount that my heart says to add, and that is how much salt I add also, as much as my heart says to add.

Mmm. That was really fun. Yeah, it was super interesting. I highly recommend listen if you're listening to this to test out this different test out different salts and Particularly if you use table salt, I highly recommend trying out table salt versus some other salts Seasalt, the Diamond Crystal. Just so everybody knows, I have not personally been able to find the Diamond Crystal at any of our, like, local grocery stores.

I had to buy mine online. Maybe if you have a we have like a [00:29:00] Cisco warehouse. Yeah. Um, so that, Cisco is where a lot of restaurants get their big food deliveries from. And we have a warehouse here where you can actually go, and that's just a Regular person you can go do shopping there.

I'm certain they would have diamond crystal there in like probably ginormous boxes Just so everybody knows i've had to order mine online. I wasn't able to find mine in a local store I made a large bulk order For all of these things that we just tasted today, except for the few that we had at home. So, I bought all of these online, but I had not, I did not have a chance to go shop around.

Yeah, and certainly some specialty salts you'd be able to get at like a spice shop. We have spice shops in our town. Yeah. Where they would have specialty salts and stuff, but particularly the diamond crystal. I'm not sure why it's harder to find. , she does give an option in the book for a different type of kosher salt that she likes.

So. That could also be an alternative to the diamond crystal. Yeah, that was fun. I hope you guys hung out with us while we tasted salt. I'm taking some video behind the scenes content so we can show you guys in our stories. So if you are listening to this when this is [00:30:00] live, you can go check it out.

Cool. That is at Instagram. It is at plantoeat underscore official. If you're not currently following us on Instagram. So go ahead over there, give us a follow and check out our salt tasting.

Awesome. I enjoyed that. So salty. Too much salt now.

Alright, I think that concludes our Recap of the salt section of salt, fat, acid, heat. If you guys are reading along with us, in two weeks, we're going to be going over fat. So, I'm very interested to talk about that section as well. She has so much to say. I can't emphasize enough how good this book is. I hope that we did it justice in just talking about the things that we got out of it.

But I hope you'll pick up a copy and read along with us. And I think it's going to make you a better home chef. It's going to make me a better home chef. I've learned so much already. A hundred percent. All right, so now we are going to switch over to some dinner dilemmas.


[00:31:00] From Becca, our first one today, no time from four to seven p. m. even as late as 8 30 some nights. My kids are in activities and we're driving everywhere. Weekends are competitions. There is no time to prep and cook. Oh, that's a rough one because, uh, time is, You can't get it back once you have devoted your time to lots of other things in your life.

Yeah, this is a hard one and I, I, um, I have to assume, I have to work off the assumption that they're, I understand that you have no time to prep and cook. So we've got to find those in between times. We've got to utilize things like, maybe we're utilizing a lot of the, uh, pre, semi homemade idea. You're getting a lot of semi homemade ingredients that you're utilizing to make homemade food that takes a lot less time, and we're going to look at maybe even pack and go kind of things. 

I'm sitting here thinking when I said this earlier, I just think there's probably got to be at least some time in your, in your week where you've got maybe a little bit of time to be two hours. What can we do with those kinds of things? [00:32:00] We've talked about other dinner dilemmas where. We're going to batch cook when we do have time to cook one meal, we're actually making three.

USBAudio1.0-1: I'm referencing the time a couple of weeks ago when I talked about, making my like kitchen sink enchiladas and I ended up making three pans and I was just utilizing the ingredients that I needed to use up, but it ended up making three pans and it didn't take me any extra time. I've done this with like manicotti before, like stuffed.

Stuffed pasta and I'm making it, we're eating it tonight, but there's, it's going to be something we have another night. Because I just like, anytime I'm cooking a meal, I'm also cooking another meal. I think that's probably going to be something that you have to do. This makes me think about, I talked to Allie Powell on the podcast, um, sometime in 2024 and she talked about her life experience of needing to cut back on the amount that they were spending going out to eat.

And so she did that by cooking at home more, her and her husband both worked corporate jobs. They had, you know, busy kids and activities and all this stuff. And she. [00:33:00] said that the way that she did it was exactly that. She started batch cooking and she would do I think four dinners a week. She would find just a couple hours and she would batch cook, I think she would do two different recipes and she would do two full family servings of each recipe and then she would put them in the freezer so that way they at least had four dinners.

Every, um, every week and she was able to do it because she would say like her, her husband would, you know, take the kids to their soccer practice that one day or something. And so she would have the time at home to be able to cook. So if you have a little bit of help, whether it's from your partner, or maybe you can get a babysitter or somebody or an older child.

Yeah, exactly. But just maybe like having a little bit of help for somebody to be able to like take your kids to one of their activities to give you a little bit of extra time. I think that might be one of the easiest ways to try and free up a little bit of time just for some like really quick batch cooking.

Yeah, I'm thinking we can also kind of try to go outside of the [00:34:00] box here because you're probably eating on the go a lot. Um, so I'm thinking of things like that. Do you guys, you know what Crystal is? Like the hamburger place? It's Southern. I don't even know if they still exist. I have no idea what it is.

It's like a, it's like a steamed bun. With like the thinnest little hamburger patty on it. I'm just thinking, that does not sound good to me. Okay. It's a, it's like nostalgic. Like in my mind it has a very, okay. Somebody told me that they've had a crystal hamburger before. It's fine. We're going to go with it there.

I'm thinking you throw like a sheet pan of ground seasoned ground beef into the oven. You cut it into squares and you put it on a Hawaiian roll or like that shape of Hawaiian, a square, small square roll. That is something really low. Um, like. You can throw that in some tinfoil and take it with you guys in the car, but you still made it.

You can put that in the oven while you're getting ready to go. You know, I'm thinking a lot of pre made, beef burritos, uh, beef and you could even do [00:35:00] all bean and cheese for a vegan or. a vegetarian option you could do, a lot of like even breakfast burritos, the breakfast burritos and burritos in general are awesome in the freezer.

It's an easy thing to warm up in a microwave at a gas station if you have to, but you made it yourself. I'm thinking homemade granola that you just have in the car in a Ziploc bag with some yogurt. That are in your cooler. I'm assuming you're eating on the go a lot. And so I'm thinking these weekend competitions, you've got a homemade granola and your yogurt bowls.

Like you can kind of make those things come together really quickly. Your breakfast burritos, your, you could do like a chicken salad for lunch. It's literally just made in a cooler in your car and you take some tortillas with you or a loaf of bread. These are still, these are really low. prep things or there are things that stay in the fridge or freezer really long, a long time.

Right. The other thing that's come into mind is that you could, Becca, you could be a good candidate for a few meal kit meals in your week. Um, if part of the process, part of the hard part about [00:36:00] getting dinner prepared. Is that whole prep time, you know, if you have 15 minutes to actually cook and get the recipe made, a meal kit could be a really good situation where all of the stuff comes pre prepped for you and you're just basically assembling it and cooking it.

That could save you quite a bit of time, but you're still getting a home cooked meal. Yeah. I mean, it is a good option. Unfortunately, with meal delivery kits, there's still so many other meals that you have to consume, you know, it's like just dinners, but the great idea with this Roni is do that. And while it's cooking, make something else for the next day.

If you've got 15 minutes to cook dinner, you probably have 15 minutes to make some hash browns and scrambled eggs and some salsa for a burrito, you know, something along those lines, I think probably what's going to be your best bet is. It's really the time saver thing, like, your future self will thank you if right now while you're making dinner, you're also making tomorrow's breakfast burritos.

Right. And, and I know that sounds stressful and it does sound like if I, I read this and I think you're probably exhausted. [00:37:00] Yeah. And so I'm just thinking, I don't want to make you feel. more exhausted, but I think that over time, this is going to feel a lot simpler. Don't be afraid to embrace the semi homemade.

Don't be afraid to embrace the simple because you're going to be feeding your family. And that's ultimately what you have to do. Absolutely. Yeah. One just last thing. Riley mentioned doing like a sheet pan of hamburger. I'm even remembering one time we made a bunch of. Homemade breakfast sandwiches. And we did scrambled eggs on a sheet pan.

So you could also do that with this burrito idea. You could do your scrambled eggs on a sheet pan, bake it, and then like slice it into strips, which I know doesn't sound very appealing, but you're putting it inside of a burrito. So it doesn't really matter. And then it's like literally, literally two things for your burrito.

You've already, you put all the stuff in with your scrambled eggs and cook it and then put it inside of a tortilla. You could add some. Uh, hot sauce or something with it as well if you wanted to, but such a simple way to make a ton of breakfast burritos all at once. Absolutely. You've made me think if you could also do that for a croissant sandwich.

Yes. Go to Costco. Grab the pre [00:38:00] made croissants. It's like a 12 pack. One thing that I do that saves me a lot of time, if I know my morning is going to be crazy, I will take a protein shaker bottle that has like the little like shaker ball in it. I'll add all my eggs to it and any seasonings or anything extra cheese or whatever.

And I'll scramble that up the night before and put that in my fridge so it sits overnight. And then I'll pour it into the pan so it, like, just that little bit of time saving. But like Roni said, you can cook, you can pour that shaker pan, shaker bottle full of eggs into a, uh, like a really shallow baking dish.

Cut it into squares and put it on a breakfast sandwich, too. That might be another really fast option. Yeah. I think also, Potentially, the thing that you need to be thinking about, Becca, is that not every single meal that you guys eat needs to be homemade. Yeah, absolutely. If you just try to transition to more homemade meals, maybe right now you're eating every single night you guys are going through the McDonald's drive thru, and maybe trying to [00:39:00] make Trying to get to the point where, okay, two nights a week, we're not doing that and we're eating homemade meals and maybe you can gradually increase that so that you're having more homemade meals and less time through the drive thru.

A hundred percent. And most, I mean, I, my family is not in this, in this position quite yet with kid activity times, taking up all of our evenings and weekends. But from what I see. It's cyclical. So it could also be something where when you're in the off season, you just do a ton of pre batch work of all of these things.

And then you don't have to do it at all during the busy season. Cause most things will stay in the freezer up to six to nine months, totally, which might get you through these busy seasons. And like Roni said, I feel like it's just the idea of giving yourself a little bit of grace to say. I don't have the time to even do what they're telling me to do.

Okay. So I'm going to do it one night a week. I'm going to make this happen one night. So I've got breakfast sandwiches made for the next day. Okay. That's all I got. That's all you got space for. Awesome. And then as you, your muscles get stronger in that, like, you know, habits of like, okay, I made this one thing I could probably do [00:40:00] too.

Um, then you can do more and expand it as you have the margins. Absolutely.

Alright, so Kate writes in and says she needs help cooking meals for one, not wasting food when shopping for one, and not always eating the same thing for leftovers when cooking for one, as well as she's interested in quick and easy low sodium meals. Well, I don't know if Riley and I are the low sodium meal people, no, I'm just kidding.

Well, I will, I will reference our podcast that we, you know, I will reference the beginning of this episode. Um, Samin says that you're automatically going to be eating less sodium by cooking at home and salting your own food. Yeah. That's one step. So home cooked meals, she says you already, because eating out, eating processed foods is going to be way higher in sodium.

So you're headed in the right direction, Kate, because you're already going to be eating at home. Uh, first and foremost, I want to tell you, go and listen to our podcast with Erin from YNAB. She is the queen of cooking for one, and she had some great ideas. Yeah, I don't remember exactly which number [00:41:00] episode that is, but, yeah, you can check it out.

It's with Erin Lowell from YNAB. So, some ideas for cooking for one. I think if you are using plan to eat, you know, some easy things to do are adjust your serving sizes of your recipes to either be one or two servings. I know some recipes that makes it a little awkward because you're buying or using such. small portions of things, but it can really help if you are finding a lot of the recipes that you're importing are serving six or four, you know, having those so that you're not constantly having a ton of leftovers for things. If you do have leftovers, I think immediately freeze some of the leftovers so that way it's not sitting in your fridge getting kind of weird and then you finally decide, no, I don't want to eat these leftovers anymore, and you have to chuck them.

So I would say immediately freezing leftovers that you have just for use at a later date. In, I would say just to piggyback on what you're saying, freeze them into portion size that you like, small portions for you so that you're not eating, you know, you reheat chicken noodle soup and you have it for six days, like we're [00:42:00] going to have small, small frozen portions.

Absolutely. And I think shopping for one, shopping for one can be a challenge, particularly with fresh things that come like bundled, you know, shopping for fresh things where you can just buy one orange or one cucumber, that's a little bit easier. But honestly, even like a head of broccoli can be a lot, a bigger head of broccoli can be a lot for a single person.

So. I'm not totally sure what to say related to that, other than just trying to find the smaller portions of things, particularly fresh items. I immediately thought of the farmer's market. Because you can buy the exact amount that you want most of the time. You can say, okay, I want, I want that one broccoli, or I want that one single tomato.

You're not having to buy like, you know, a bag full of all of these things. Um, potentially also looking at frozen vegetables and frozen fruit, things that, you know, you really like, but you're not going to eat all of. Cause I mean, I'm thinking I have a bag of [00:43:00] edamame in my freezer right now, but I've probably used for three meals already because I'm just not using a massive quantity of it.

And so I'm just thinking like something that can go back in the freezer, that I can, you know, use over and over again without it ever going back. Cause it's been in the freezer is another idea. Um, like Roni said, just meal planning around like. Single servings or two servings of a recipe and getting that shopping list going like the bulk food section is going to be an awesome section for you where you can say, I, I only want, you know, a half a cup of, of pecans for this granola.

I'm making, I only want two cups of this oatmeal or these oats, um, those kinds of sections in the grocery store might be your friend because you're, you're literally only buying like a dollar 50 worth of oatmeal. And not a gigantic container. Um, we also talked to someone on the podcast, which Roni, you might remember, she would batch roast a bunch of vegetables in the way that she made it interesting is so I understand eating the same thing for leftovers is really not everyone's favorite.

She would roast a [00:44:00] variety of vegetables and pretty mildly seasoned. So they were seasoned with salt and pepper or something like that, but then she would make multiple sauces. So maybe you have an emulsion blender, or you just buy a bottle of something or a dip of some kind and you have maybe your, maybe you're a meat eater and you could put, shrimp on your Um, one week you got shrimp on your roasted vegetable tray.

You're going to eat that in rice paper wrap, wrapped up with rice paper and, um, peanut sauce. Um, the next night you're going to have it on top of, uh, rice for like a rice bowl with a different kind of Asian sauce of some kind or shoot, ranch dressing if that's what you like. And then the next night maybe you'll have it.

In a salad with lots of lettuces and fresh cucumber or something like that, you're gonna have those roasted vegetables, but just three ways. So you're gonna look at having you, you've batch prepped for the whole week, but then you're gonna have different sauce for each night. You kind of make it have a different flare or fusion of flavors for each night.

And you're eating it in different formats. So wrapped in a, wrapped in rice paper, on a salad, in a rice bowl. You're kind of, um, creating it to be a different [00:45:00] way each time. And that might mix it up enough for you so you don't feel like you're. Just eating the same thing over and over. I really like that tip.

That's a good idea. I think that was our conversation with Joy Manning. That was pretty early on the podcast. I think it was like our spring seasonal recipe, spring seasonal podcast. One other idea that I had, I was trying to think about what you would do with staples items if you couldn't buy them from a bulk food section.

And I think if you invest a little bit of money into a vacuum sealer, they're not terribly expensive, maybe about a hundred dollars. That way you could either Either just, you know, vacuum seal things. If, if a staple item like oatmeal or rice or whatever, it comes in just way too big of a package, you could vacuum seal the rest of it so that it doesn't go stale in between the times when you're cooking that item.

Or even, uh, may not like my vacuum sealer. I don't have to vacuum the thing. So if it's something that was like potato chips and it was fragile, you don't want to vacuum seal it, but you can use the sealing [00:46:00] method to just. seal the bag closed. So you're not using like a chip clip and then a week later your stuff inside of it is stale.

That could be a way where you're able to, you know, buy the grocery store portions that come with a lot of staple items, but you're not, food's not going bad because you're able to save it for longer. Yeah, absolutely. I just want to throw this out there. Like, if you don't like the idea of like, kind of like that batch cooking, it is, I mean, I think like tagging on this, like vacuum sealer made me think of it, but if you buy a four pack of chicken breasts, often at your, your meat counter, you can also get smaller portions of things at your meat counter.

So if you just want one, you Half ribeye or if you want one chicken breast, you can buy all of those things at your meat counter, which might be another good way to utilize your grocery store. But also if you bought a four pack of chicken thighs, , just plan a different, you know, you've got chicken thighs all week, but one night is this, the next night is this.

Maybe you like to cook every night. You like a hot, fresh meal every night. First night, we're going to have, I don't know, [00:47:00] wrap some kind of like, I mean, like a curry wrap kind of situation. And then the next night you have like a ramen bowl. You just cook the chicken differently the next night. And, um, these are, I mean, you just, you could just go with more like a main, be the one thing you have constant the whole week and kind of mix it up with the other things.

Cause you know, ramen is something you keep in your pantry. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Next up we have Shannon from North Carolina, so keeping up with what I need when I reschedule a meal, it doesn't put those items on my list in Plan to eat. That's what she's talking about. So when I shop, I think I have them, but they could have been consumed already for other things.

I understand that. I run into this problem as well. Sometimes I'll buy something specifically for a recipe and my husband will find it in the refrigerator or the cupboard. Eat it for a snack. And then I'm like, but wait, I needed those peanuts or whatever for this next recipe that I'm making. Avocados, where are they?

They're gone or they're bad. Exactly. That happens a lot.

So low hanging fruit with Plan to eat, I [00:48:00] would say is, delete the recipe and reschedule it. If this is a recurring problem where, when you, you have a meal on your meal planner and you're not going to eat it and you just move it down to the next week. I would say duplicate it and move it down to the next week.

That's going to put those ingredients on your grocery list again. And then you can go through and say, Nope, I do not have cumin. No, I do not have lime juice anymore. No, I don't have, we ate those refried beans with something else. Okay, and then you can know then you have you have everything on your shopping list again, and you can remove what you no longer have.

I would say that's probably your first step is just change the way you're rescheduling your meals. Just duplicating it and moving that second copy down to the next week or the next week is gonna do this for you. So instead of just dragging it to the next week where it won't repopulate those ingredients, reschedule it by duplicating it and moving that entry.

I think since this is a problem you're obviously having, I would say that's the first thing I would tell you to do. That's what I was going to recommend as [00:49:00] well, because I think you're going to be, you're going to have more success overall by doing a little bit of manual work by doing the shop at home method and just checking off items that didn't get that the items that have not been used. 

I think it's, that is way less effort than running back to the grocery store because you need three items that didn't get put back on your list. Yeah, I'm, I just, for anyone listening who is not familiar with Plan to Eat, maybe you're a new listener or a new Plan to Eat customer, we recommend that you shop at home, so you meal plan, you add all your beautiful recipes to your beautiful meal planner, and then all of those ingredients, all of those ingredients is going to populate on your shopping list.

USBAudio1.0-1: The first step with that list is going to be to go to your own pantry, your own fridge, your own spice cabinet, and say, and check off and remove, as if you're shopping at home, remove all the things you already have. And then your list from that point is ready to go to the grocery store with consolidated items that you.

You actually need to purchase. So if [00:50:00] you've been listening to the way we've talked, been talking to Shannon about this, she's obviously a Plan to Eat customer. So if you're listening and you didn't know that, that's how we recommend you use the Plan to Eat shopping list. This is going to give you the most accurate list and then you're going to only buy what you actually need and you're not going to waste money at the grocery store.

Amen.

All right. Looks like actually the next person on the list here was Tasha, who also asked about meal planning for one. So Tasha, hopefully when we answered Kate's question, we gave you some ideas for meal planning for one without a lot of leftovers as well. Um, it is time for us to wrap up this episode.

We're going to answer more of your dinner dilemmas in upcoming episodes. So if yours hasn't been answered yet, don't you worry, we're going to get to you. That was fun. That was really fun. Thanks as always for listening to the Plan to Eat podcast, and we will see you again in two weeks. [00:51:00]