What Not to Do When Seasoning Your Food

You Didn't Use Enough Salt

The Iliad is the earliest work of Western literature, and it also happens to be the earliest cookbook. In Book 9, Homer describes how Achilles' friend Patroclus sprinkles salt on loins of sheep, goat, and pork before roasting them over glowing coals. Nearly 3,000 years later, no one has come up with a better way of seasoning roasted meat.

Today, we use Kosher salt, and a generation ago, table salt was the norm, but the two aren't the same—table salt is twice as salty by volume as Kosher salt. So if you try to substitute, make sure to use half as much table salt as the recipe calls for. Better yet, get a box of Kosher salt.

It's not only meats that need salt; your cooking liquids for pasta, potatoes, and even poached eggs need to be salty.

When a recipe says "season to taste," that's your clue that you're supposed to be able to taste the salt.

The right way: Season boldly.

You Forgot to Taste as You Go

This is one of those mistakes that is easy to make, but which can ultimately lead to disaster.

There you are, cooking away, stirring, chopping, seasoning, simmering, adding a little of this and a little of that, and before you know it, you've added too much—of something. If it's something like cayenne pepper, you've got one kind of trouble. If it's too much salt, it's another kind. 

Still, it's in many ways one of the most frustrating kinds of mistakes because it's completely avoidable. You don't need any special culinary skill or talent. You just need to remember to do it! Get in the habit of tasting as you go. 

It's easy with soups and sauces and things that you simmer. Just take a taste now and then to see how things are going.

When it comes to seasoning ground meats, you might be leery of tasting raw meat. Some cooks don't mind doing it, but if you're not comfortable, just cook up a tiny little piece of it for tasting. 

Another good habit is, whatever amount of seasoning a recipe calls for, add half at the beginning and then add the remaining half a little at a time at the end, tasting as you go.

The right way: Taste as you go. 

You Used Pre-Ground Black Pepper

Black pepper is right up there with salt as one of the most important seasonings in the culinary arts. For that reason, there's no excuse for using that pre-ground black dust they sell as pepper at the store. That product is a throwback to the era of salt and pepper shakers. 

Now, you can buy a $30 pepper grinder, but you don't have to. These days you can buy whole peppercorns in a more economical grinder or a disposable glass grinder, and it'll do the job just as well. 

There's a couple of reasons pepper you ground yourself is superior to the pre-ground kind. Like all dried spices, black pepper starts to lose its potency as soon as it's ground. So grinding it yourself means it will be more flavorful. Additionally, pepper should have texture. The crack of fragments of peppercorns will do wonders for a steak, above and beyond the spiciness it adds. The crunch alone is the reason to grind your own. 

The right way: Grind your own black pepper by hand as you use it.

You Added Your Dried Herbs Too Late

Simply put, herbs are leaves. Thyme, oregano, basil, parsley, these are all leaves. For the most part, fresh herbs are better—more flavorful, more aromatic, more colorful. 

Sometimes, dry herbs are the only feasible option, and using dry herbs is not a cooking mistake. The mistake is adding them at the wrong stage of cooking.

When you're cooking with dry herbs, add them at the beginning of cooking. Add fresh herbs toward the end. The reason for this is that fresh herbs contain more volatile oils and a little bit of cooking is all they need for their full flavor and aroma to bloom.

Dried herbs, on the other hand, take a bit longer to activate. Indeed, if you're using dried herbs in a preparation such as salad dressing where there is no heat at all involved, it can take a few hours for the flavors to be completely released.

The right way: Add dried herbs early in the cooking process to make sure their flavors are fully released.

Your Ground Spices Were Stale

Spices are any other dried part of a plant, whether it's the seeds, bark, buds, roots, or what have you. So, while unlike herbs, spices are already dried and will still go stale in a relatively short amount of time.

The best way to ensure your spices are fresh is to avoid pre-ground spices altogether and simply grind your own. You should assume that any pre-ground spices are already stale before you even buy them. That's how quickly the essential oils will evaporate.

The solution: Get a cheap coffee grinder and grind your own spices. Whole seeds or buds or berries or whatever they are will stay fresh longer, and then you'll only grind what you need right when you need it. In fact, many stores these days offer bulk spices, where you can buy only what you need. You could buy literally a single nutmeg if that's all you needed.

The right way: Grind your own spices in a spice grinder or coffee grinder.

You Forgot The Lemon

Lemon juice is undoubtedly a seasoning, and it's especially wonderful when it comes to adding brightness to the mild, delicate flavors of fish and seafood.

The same is true for vegetables: As a general rule, if it tastes good with melted butter, it'll taste good with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice on it as well. Veggies like asparagus, green beans, broccoli, beets, brussels sprouts, and mushrooms are particularly amenable to the welcome burst of citrus and astringency that fresh lemon provides. It's practically a must in homemade salad dressing. 

Chicken also cries out for lemon: whether it's the juice in the marinade/sauce or a whole lemon sliced and lovingly situated in the bird's body cavity before roasting.

Lemon also performs its tangy magic in sauces and soups—not so much as to make it lemony, but just enough to wake up the palate, even in dishes where you might not think of adding lemon, like tomato sauce, or, yes, mashed potatoes.

The right way: If a dish seems to be missing something, before you reach for more salt, add a squeeze of lemon.

You Added MSG...

...Or perhaps more correctly, you added MSG unintentionally.

MSG (short for monosodium glutamate), is a seasoning derived from an amino acid. It's naturally present in foods like mushrooms and parmesan cheese and is the source of a flavor called umami, sometimes described as "savory," "meaty" or "earthy."

It also enhances other flavors, as if it somehow has the ability to unlock unused flavor receptors in your tongue. Food undoubtedly tastes better with MSG.

So far, so good. MSG has gotten a bad reputation, with people blaming it for any number of physical symptoms. However, a close look at the research behind MSG's effects on the body in a culinary context reveals very little evidence behind those claims.

The point here isn't to say that MSG is good or bad, but merely to say that you ought to at least be aware of when you're adding it. For instance, anytime you use products like Accent, as well as many other seasoning salts, bouillon cubes, and packaged spice and gravy mixes. 

The right way: If you're going to use MSG, you should do so knowingly, not by accident.