We have all heard about how the food at restaurants are made tasty and addictive by additions of sugar, salt and lots of fat. But even the slightest amount of additional salt at home can make food inedible or at least noticeably salty. How do restaurants manage to hide the saltiness/sweetness/oiliness in the food while making it addictive? Only thing I could think of is that they balance flavours out – make it more spicy or tangy. Though how they make so much extra oil taste ok is beyond me.
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How salty something tastes depends on how quickly the salt interacts with your tastebuds. If you use table salt on your food, it is all right on the surface and blasts your tongue with salt flavor, rather than being distributed in the food, enhancing the foods flavor. One example would be a steak that was salt brined overnight, which absorbs the salt throughout all of the cells, vs salting right before cooking, and the salt is only on the surface.
Also, people don’t realize how small an amount of salt, “A LOT” is. 1 teaspoon of table salt is 2,300 MG. Which is the full day’s recommend salt. So, at home, you may be adding WAY more than you think.
For sugar, it is the same thing with salt. However, we can tolerate a lot more sugar than salt.
For oil, depending on the food, some things will absorb oil, and some won’t, so you won’t always notice how oily something is, compared to if it was all just pooled on the plate.
One other major thing that affects our tasting of these flavors is the temperature of the food. Hot food will make the flavors more prominent, and cold will dull it. Have you ever drank a room temp soda or melted ice cream? It tastes way sweeter than when ice cold. So, knowing how to season food based on the desired temperature is something chefs/cooks know how to do.
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