A line cook in Portland once told me 'salt is a feeling, not a measurement'

We were prepping for a huge wedding party, and I was seasoning a vat of soup to the exact gram like I was taught. He just walked over, dipped a spoon in, and said that. He didn't even look at the recipe. It made me stop thinking of the kitchen as a lab and start trusting my own taste. Anyone else have a simple piece of advice that flipped a switch for them?

3 comments

3 Comments

perry.skyler2mo ago

Salt is a feeling" is a great line until you ask that guy why the fries taste like the ocean... some feelings are wrong, man.

nora_park722mo ago

But is it really that big of a deal?

mila_sullivan8d ago

perry.skyler nailed it though - that line gets thrown around way too casually. The "salt is a feeling" thing works great when you've been cooking for years and can just taste the difference between properly seasoned and a salt lick. But for beginners? That's how you end up with someone thinking "feeling" means aggressively dumping kosher salt into everything because they watched a TikTok chef do it. The real trick is understanding that salt actually changes how your tongue perceives bitterness and sweetness, not just making things salty. Like a pinch of salt in coffee or on watermelon - it's not about making those things salty, it's about using the feeling to balance other flavors out.