Recipes  

you_are_are Home » Special Feature » 6 Ways to Bring Flavour to the Holidays

6 Ways to Bring Flavour to the Holidays

In collaboration with
Windsor

Looking to bring some flavour to the holidays? Then let your most essential seasoning—salt!—play a larger role this season than simply sitting in a shaker at the dinner table. With the help of our partner Windsor, we’re sharing below a few ways salt can enhance your favourite holiday recipes, from ensuring a moist turkey or fish, to adding a colourful touch to your cocktails, to making dessert all the sweeter.

What’s the difference between salts?

It’s the grain size that matters!

 

• Fine grain includes table salt, fine sea salt and fine Himalayan pink salt. It is best for blending, baking, sauces and marinades. This grain size dissolves evenly and enhances flavour in a dish.

 

• Coarse grain includes coarse sea salt and coarse Himalayan pink salt. It is best used as a finishing salt, adding texture and a burst of flavour.

 

• Kosher is the preferred salt of chefs. It is ideal for all cooking and prepping needs and its unique grain size brings out the right balance of flavour.

1. As a crust

Cooking fish for the holidays is common in many cultures. What’s the best way to cook it to ensure a moist final result? A salt crust! Encasing fish with a salt mixture helps insulate it, making sure it cooks evenly. While the recipe does call for 3 cups of coarse salt (mixed with egg whites), your meal will absolutely not taste overly salted; rather, it will taste beautifully seasoned. Also, the presentation will be a hit with the family over the holidays!

2. To cook pasta

Pasta acts as a side or main dish in many homes during the holidays, whether in a pasta salad or a lasagna. We all know to always salt our water with fine sea salt before cooking our pasta, but do you happen to know why? It’s because the pasta absorbs the flavour of the water, giving your recipe more flavour.

3. In a dessert

Is there anything better than a sweet and savoury dessert? There’s a perfect balance of flavours, like in the tart below, where the chocolate wonderfully complements the nutty, salty pecan crust. And that generous sprinkle of coarse Himalayan salt on top absolutely transforms this treat—it enhances the chocolate taste and adds a burst of flavour! 

4. In a rub

The secret to a juicy holiday turkey? A salt rub! Our recipe calls for table salt, but we also highly recommend that kosher salt be used here. (Refer to this conversion chart to ensure you use the proper amount!) Kosher salt’s large coarse flakes are great at extracting moisture from the surface of the bird, which is then reabsorbed, ensuring a tender turkey...and crispy skin! Just sprinkle evenly throughout and rub both underneath and outside the skin.

5. In pastry

Whether you’re serving sticky buns for holiday dessert or homemade croissants for a family brunch, there’s another important ingredient in these pastries aside from butter and sugar, and that’s salt! Salt is used to enhance the flavour in pastry and other baked goods, as well as to strengthen the gluten in the dough and ensure that perfect golden colour. 

6. In a cocktail

Looking to add an aesthetic touch to your pre-dinner cocktails? Look no further than salt on the rim of your glass! It’s not only pretty, but the salt also brings balance to all the contrasting flavours of the ingredients in the cocktail: sweet, bitter, tangy, sour… We used fine table salt because it’s uniform and thus combines well with the fine chili powder. Another way to enhance the flavour of cocktails is by adding salt directly into your drink, such as the fine pink Himalayan salt in this pomegranate Moscow mule. 

Salt is certainly a seasoning to always have handy, and with many varieties out there, it’s advisable to have more than one kind in your pantry. After all, choosing the right salt for your recipe will make you a better cook and will make this year’s holiday meals tastier!

This article is a collaboration between RICARDO and Windsor.