When to Salt
Cooks everywhere have varying opinions on when to salt food when cooking with salt and pepper. This debate is especially contentious when grilling steaks with the many opposing sides each insisting that it's best to salt a couple of days prior to grilling, a couple of hours before, right after grilling, or on the table while eating. One of the most entrenched opinions held by many chefs and home cooks alike is that salting too early dries out food.
Many home cooks attest to the fact that salting too early will only result in a puddle of juices oozing out of the meat, leaving the meat stringy and wasting prime cuts. Traditionalists therefore recommend grilling without salt and adding it right after grilling or at the table.
The more scientific salt advocates, on the other hand, insist that salt actually has an osmotic cell-changing effect on meat which allows it to hold in more moisture, thereby making it more juicy. Salt is also said to dissolve the sticky myosin protein in meat to help hold ground meat better. It is because of this that salt advocates of this persuasion recommend salting early and salting liberally. The rule of thumb is that the bigger the food item, the earlier it has to be salted. That can mean anywhere from a couple of hours before grilling to a couple of days depending on who is doing the advocating.
When to Pepper
Although less contentious than the "when to salt" debate, cooks also have varying opinions on when to use pepper while cooking. Some say that since pepper is heat sensitive, putting in pepper before grilling or cooking is a waste since you lose the flavor from the heat. A comfortable majority on the other hand insists that pepper needs to be cooked into the food so that its flavor melts into the steak or whatever food item it is put in. The more technically inclined point to the fact that the melting point for pepper's core component is high enough to allow the flavor to migrate deep enough into the food item before it escapes, therefore making the meat more flavorful. To put it simply, the heat cooks the pepper into the food to provide a depth of flavor you cannot achieve by sprinkling pepper on a dish after it is cooked.
How Much Do You Really Need?
When cooking with salt and pepper, beginner cooks often find themselves agonizing over the common instruction to "season to taste." While the reason for this is clear enough for anybody who has been cooking for a while, it can be daunting for a first-time cook who simply does not know where to start with "season to taste." The only real answer to this is to start with very little and to season throughout the cooking process keeping in mind that using too much seasoning is a bigger danger than using too little. With the perfect amount of seasoning, a dish tastes perfect, but with too much the rest of the flavors become overpowered.
It is easy to know when you need more seasoning anyway as under seasoned food tastes flat. As most veteran cooks know, salt does not simply add saltiness to a dish, but is also instrumental in allowing other flavors to come out better resulting in a more complex and full-bodied dish. So salt and season gradually, with a final adjustment just before serving for that perfectly salted and seasoned dish.
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