zowie! imagine the sodium

[lauradi7dw]

Every Monday the Yahoo homepage has a week's work of dinner entrees. I look them over every week even though they don't tend to be anything I'd eat. I was struck by this one - the idea of deliberately adding salt to something containing bacon and parmesan cheese is amazing to me.
http://food.yahoo.com/recipes/martha-stewart/recipe2850017/spaghetti-carbonara

Comments

[miraclaire.livejournal.com]

yeah, that seems like it would be a lot of salt. My tendency is to add no or minimal salt while I cook things and let people decide for themselves whether to add salt when it's served.

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

Why does salt need to be added to pasta when it's being boiled? I like salt. A lot. But even I don't do that. Does it accomplish something?

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

I looked on The Straight Dope and found this:

>>I've always been told to salt the water before boiling pasta. My mother says it's to add flavor, the Food Network says the iodine in salt locks in flavor, others say it raises the water's boiling point. I've also heard salting water keeps vitamins locked inside vegetables. When should one salt the water before boiling something, and why? — David, via e-mail

I doubt iodine affects the taste of food much. When UNICEF was trying to boost iodized salt in developing countries, local food producers resisted, fearing it would make their wares look or taste funny. So UNICEF researchers did tests to see if volunteers could tell if food had been prepared with iodized salt. Answer: no. Salt does raise water's boiling point, but you'd need a full ounce per quart to raise it one degree Fahrenheit. I can find no evidence that any reasonable amount of salt will impact vitamin retention. So listen to mom: the only practical reason to add salt is for flavor.<<