How strongly do we feel about salt and pepper? Check out our video, Salt & Pepper.

Salt: Salt has many uses. Of course, not the least of which, is to enhance the flavor of our food. Most of the salt we consume in our diet comes not from what we’re cooking at home but from processed foods and beverages we buy elsewhere. To that end don’t be afraid to bring the salt to your cooking...unless of course, you’re on a restricted diet. So often we cook a dish and then think it needs a little something else so we reach for an herb, a spice, some heat trying to boost the flavor when most of the time all we need is a little salt. Now you can go overboard. If you are tasting salt, a lot of salt, then that’s too much. Salt should subtly bring out the flavor not become the flavor. Salt. It will make you a better cook.

Pepper: Why do we use pepper? Why is salt always married to pepper? It’s salt and pepper. Not salt or pepper. Why? Well, we’re not sure exactly. You expected some great culinary explanation? Pepper has been around for millennia. So have a lot of other spices. So how did pepper ascend to the top of the spice rack and become a fixture in our seasoning lexicon? There are many theories, none certain. An elixir. A cover to meat that was going bad. A flavorful alternative to other, more potent spices.

A dish without salt is easy to spot but a dish seasoned well with salt but lacking in pepper can be difficult if not impossible to recognize. So why use it then? Pepper has a special place in our cooking through the ages that no other spice outside of salt has occupied. Added in small doses it probably won’t be missed, but the flavor of pepper is one of ancient history and deserves its place in our kitchens.

Enjoy pepper’s unique flavor. Avoid those flavorless “coffins” of ground pepper and grind it fresh when needed.