Seasoning

I have mentioned on numerous occasions already the term season to taste, but what does this mean?
These word feature in every cookbook or recipe you ever read but does anyone truly understand what this actually means?

Seasoning is about tasting and tweaking, or fine tuning to bring out the best in the food and each individual ingredient.

At work we are constantly told to taste and season everything we make, after adding very ingredient we taste and season, seasoning enhances the dish or sauce and brings out the taste of all the ingredients in the dish, if you don't season then you won't taste all the ingredients and whats the point of using the ingredient if you cant taste it??

Seasoning commonly refers to salt and pepper, but having read the devil in the kitchen by Marco Pierre White I soon realised that this is not the case. Seasoning can involve lemon juice, butter, herbs or spices.

However Marco states that these are not seasoning at all and I'm of a similar belief he writes "When people talk about seasoning they usually mean adding salt and pepper. Seasoning to me is adding salt. Salt enhances the flavour of the ingredients, pepper changes the flavour. I very rarely season a sauce with pepper"

I to believe this to be the case and only use salt to season my sauces.

The two most important times to season are at the beginning (base seasoning) and at the end. Base seasoning is important because it allows the salt to spread throughout the whole dish. Seasoning at the end is the final tweaking of the dish but bear in mind at what temperature you will be serving the sauce/puree as seasoning changes depending on how hot or cold it is so season at the temperature you intend to serve it at!

I hope that helps everyone out there who likes to cook, don't just add a pinch of salt and hope for the best, always always taste after seasoning. don't be afraid to season and experiment, I assure you it will improve your meals












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