Why are leafy greens (kale, spinach, et. al) so often oversalted?

February 8, 2013 9:27 PM

Asking for a friend, although I'd love to know if anyone has a revealing insight. Why do cooked greens from chefs who otherwise salt their food moderately often arrive at the table too salty? Why do I oversalt my greens at home!?

Does the hot liquid surrounding the greens release its salt onto the greens as they cool? Do cooks salt by the large volume of uncooked greens before they cook down? There must be an explanation! TIA for your responses to a inconsequential but vexing puzzle.

posted by alexandermatheson to food & drink (22 answers total)

Are you talking about southern style greens? They are typically cooked with bacon or ham hocks, which are salty.
posted by Wordwoman at 9:33 PM on February 8

I think it depends what we're talking about when we talk about "greens".

If we're talking about southern-style greens, typically they're cooked with a little bacon or ham as well as possibly garlic and some other seasonings. So salt is just one of several flavoring elements. This type of greens preparation might taste too salty to some people because it's so intensely flavored, in general. I imagine it's especially easy to over-salt if using a cured pork product as the base. That said, if you find yourself guilty of this, you can probably use the old cook's trick of putting a potato into the water to soak up some of the salt.

If we're talking about health-food style ultra-minimalist greens, which are just greens and water (and maybe a little oil to facilitate sauteeing), my guess is that people over-salt because there's very little else to do. A heavy hand with the salt is immediately obvious, and there's no real way to fix it by either correcting the seasoning or doing the potato trick. Once it's done, it's done.

Also, some greens are bitter, so people overcompensate by adding too much salt. Additionally, people trying to eat more greens as part of a healthy diet might over-salt to make up for the loss of flavor they detect (since fast foods and junk tend to be so over-salted in general).

Oh my god, I just wrote a damn novel on salting greens.
posted by Sara C. at 9:35 PM on February 8 [15 favorites]

Yeah, I'm not seeing much of an answer to this other than technique/preference. You don't really explain what you're calling "too salty," either. Are we talking full-on inedible? Is it just you, or are other people at the table also complaining? As has already been pointed out, greens are often-to-usually cooked with things that're kind of salty in the first place. But there are also other recipes(eg. beer for liquid) that turn out on the sweet side.

Do cooks salt by the large volume of uncooked greens before they cook down?

This logic doesn't really work, either, if we accept your saying that these cooks otherwise don't oversalt. Even if this were the case(during recipe development at most), once the greens turned out salty, according to whoever, you'd would assume the amount would be reduced unless they just liked it that way.

One possibility I can think of is that the salt content, whatever it may be, would concentrate a bit over time, as the batch is worked through. But that would require knowing if the greens were just made or are leftovers, etc.
posted by Su at 9:48 PM on February 8

I cook and eat greens (primarily kale, various sorts) a few times a week -- it's our simple veg to go along with whatever else we are eating. I cook the greens in a pan with a whisper of oil and nothing else, and sometimes I am startled by how salty it tastes. I think they just have a salty flavor on their own! I have no explanation. I thought it might be the oxalic acid, but I just looked it up and kale has a small amount compared to spinach.
posted by stowaway at 10:08 PM on February 8

Greens that are a little too salty are still satisfying. Undersalted greens aren't very compelling at all, and just adding salt to them at the table doesn't quite make the magic happen.
posted by desuetude at 10:09 PM on February 8

I used to have chard in my back yard. I didn't particularly like it because it tasted salty before I ever salted it. I think they just absorb it from the ground.
posted by aniola at 10:12 PM on February 8 [2 favorites]

I salt under the impression that I'm brightening and enhancing whatever flavor is in there. Despite being fairly generous with the salt, I've never felt that they are too salty. I cook chard, kale and spinach with olive oil, usually some garlic and a few red pepper flakes in the oil. Then SALT!
posted by amanda at 10:13 PM on February 8

Personally, I like greens with a generous amount of salt, but I like salty foods in general. A more general explanation might be that greens are bitter, and salt suppresses bitterness.
posted by Orinda at 10:17 PM on February 8 [1 favorite]

My experience is that cooked unsalted spinach has a slimy mouthfeel, and salt gets rid of that.
posted by jamjam at 10:17 PM on February 8

Because salt helps the veg to wilt when cooking, so likely, this is an oversight in professional technique.

Similarly, many professional chefs and line cooks drink and smoke, which supposedly dulls the palate, so we always want more salt than non-smokers can find tolerable.

Lastly, fat cuts salt, so there is a tendancy to season (salt) all dishes similarly, when in fact, there is less salt necessary for wilted and sauteed greens, because they don't bring any fat to the party by themselves.

In short, it is a common mistake. I'm SURE I've been guilty of it myself professionally from time to time. My solution often has been to under-season (less salt) an adjacent dish on the plate, hoping you won't notice the seasoning fuck-up I committed with the greens.

Sorry.
posted by jbenben at 10:31 PM on February 8 [3 favorites]

Oh. Because Kale and Chard are so burly, I'll def accidentally over-salt them in hopes they breakdown quicker. If I over-salt something delicate and easily wilted like baby spinach - I'm just a careless or shitty cook.

Hope my explanations helped!
posted by jbenben at 10:33 PM on February 8

I came in to say that greens tend to be bitter (hello co-supertasters!) and salt helps alleviate the bitterness.
posted by deborah at 10:43 PM on February 8 [1 favorite]

More often than not, even in finer settings, it's a mis-calculation. The stuff reduces much more than anticipated, kale just as we'll as spinach. If one salts after what's in the pan at the start (if ham hocks are involved, if one salts at all at the beginning...), the end result will inevitably be over the edge.
posted by Namlit at 11:56 PM on February 8 [1 favorite]

Because they don't know how to cook the greens they're preparing.
posted by cmoj at 12:03 AM on February 9

Maybe salt is "grown in". Occasionally, I taste salt in raw celery.
posted by Cranberry at 12:13 AM on February 9

(Actually celery is naturally quite high in sodium. I don't think the same applies to leafy greens though).
posted by peter1982peter at 1:02 AM on February 9

I cook greens 2-3 times a week, and I have found that I tend to oversalt them if I salt before they have cooked down. I'm an intuitive cook, so I look at the amount of food and add a portion of salt that seems commensurate - but the volume of pre-cooked greens is what, 5, 6 times that of the cooked portion? So if I wait until they have cooked down, then I tend to add a lot less salt. Maybe this is what is happening?
posted by dirtmonster at 4:44 AM on February 9

I like my greens very salty. That's why I put a lot of salt on them.
posted by mskyle at 6:09 AM on February 9 [1 favorite]

Another reason for over-salted everything came about with the advent of funny gourmet-style types of salt together with a chef's I-know-my-stuff attitude. One needs to taste what one's concocting, salt ain't that same now and tomorrow. Even various batches of the same type of fancy salt can vary.
Especially in in some wannabe upscale places, I've encountered food that was more or less encrusted with these the-initiated-guest-simply-craves-them crystals. Last time a portion Käsespätzle in a restaurant in Bremen (my fault. Wrong city for Spätzle) that was simply inedible. But I've seen a fair amount of veggies treated that way, too.
posted by Namlit at 6:56 AM on February 9

Chinese broccoli's often served with salty oyster sauce. I'm guessing it's a worldwide tendency and the answer is "because it tastes good".
posted by zadcat at 9:00 AM on February 9

Seconding that it draws out the bitterness: a technique to de-bitter vegetables like eggplant is to sprinkle salt on them and let them sit for a while. The water that the salt draws out often takes many of the bitter compounds with it. So it could be that the restaurant is doing this and isn't rinsing the greens off before cooking them, or it's salting the water they're cooked in to do this.

I find dark green leafy vegetables overwhelmingly bitter and almost inedible on their own, and developed the habit of salting the hell out of dark green salads I was served to compensate, which made sense when I alter learned about using salt to combat bitterness.
posted by telophase at 2:29 PM on February 9

Enlightening, thoughtful answers! Thanks, all! Plenty of explanations to, ahem, chew over.
posted by alexandermatheson at 10:54 PM on February 9