The Cadence of Salting

When you salt matters as much as how much you salt.

Salt at the wrong time and you’re fighting the food. Salt at the right time and you’re working with it. The difference between watery eggplant parmesan and the good kind comes down to 45 minutes of patience. Same principle applies to a tough versus tender steak.

What Salt Actually Does

When salt hits cells, osmosis kicks in. Water moves from inside the cells to the saltier environment outside. This concentrates flavors and changes textures. The question is whether you want that to happen, and if so, when.

Harold McGee explains the mechanism in “On Food and Cooking”: in vegetables, cell walls are held together by pectin molecules. Think of pectin as the glue between cells. Calcium ions act as cross-links that hold these pectin molecules together. When sodium ions from salt come along, they push the calcium ions out of the way and break those cross-links. Without the calcium holding things together, the pectin starts to dissolve and the cell walls soften. That’s why salted vegetables release water and become more tender.

In meat, salt works differently. It penetrates between muscle fibers and breaks down the proteins that make meat tough. This broken-down protein can hold onto more water when the meat cooks, which is why properly salted meat stays juicier.

Understanding this means you can stop following recipes and start making decisions.

Salt Early: When You Need to Draw Out Water

For eggplant, zucchini, cucumber, cabbage, and tomatoes, salt 30 minutes to a few hours before you cook them.

The goal is removing excess moisture that would otherwise dilute sauces or create a watery texture in the finished dish. Slice your vegetables, toss with about a teaspoon of salt per pound, and let them sit in a colander. After 30-60 minutes, water pools at the bottom. Rinse quickly and pat dry before cooking.

This works because the salt concentration gradient pulls water out of the vegetable cells faster than it can be reabsorbed. The result is a denser texture and more concentrated flavor.

Kenji López-Alt uses this technique for tomatoes in panzanella, salting the chopped tomatoes to extract juice through osmosis, which he then incorporates into the vinaigrette. Waste not, want not.

For eggplant, you’ll read a lot about how salting removes bitterness. Modern eggplants are less bitter than the older varieties your grandmother complained about. What matters now is moisture removal. The drier surface texture improves browning during frying or roasting, which turns out to be more important than solving a problem that doesn’t exist anymore.

Salt During Cooking: Build Flavor as You Go

For onions, peppers, mushrooms, and most things you’re sautéing, salt as they hit the pan.

The salt pulls out moisture that helps them cook more evenly and seasons each layer as you build the dish. Onions salted at the beginning of cooking release their water, which then evaporates, allowing the natural sugars to caramelize. Salt added at the end sits on the surface without integrating into the cooking process.

The difference is chemical: caramelization requires heat and time, and moisture needs to leave before browning can occur. There’s no shortcut here.

Mushrooms demonstrate this clearly. Salt pulls water out of the cells, they shrink and release their liquid, then once that liquid evaporates they can brown. Without salt early in the process, mushrooms steam in their own moisture and the Maillard reaction never happens.

America’s Test Kitchen confirms this approach for watery vegetables, noting that pre-salting during cooking helps achieve better browning and texture. Good to know I’m not making this up.

Salt Late: Keep Things Crisp

For roasted vegetables, green salads, and anything you want to stay crunchy, wait until the last few minutes.

When roasting vegetables, salt pulls out water that prevents the Maillard reaction. If you salt too early, the vegetables steam in their own moisture rather than browning.

Holding salt until the last 5-10 minutes gives you caramelization first, seasoning second. This timing principle mirrors López-Alt’s guidance for steaks: salt immediately before cooking, or wait a full 40-50 minutes. The window in between creates surface moisture that inhibits browning. Timing matters, and the wrong timing is worse than no timing at all.

Green salads have thin, delicate cell walls. Salt them more than 5 minutes before serving and osmosis pulls water out, collapsing the structure. Salt right before serving and they stay crisp. This one is unforgiving.

Blanched green vegetables like asparagus or snap peas should get salted right when they come out of the water. The residual heat dissolves and distributes the salt, but not enough time passes for significant water loss or texture degradation.

Salt Way Early: For Meat and Deep Penetration

Meat follows different rules. Salt penetrates slowly through muscle fibers, which is why the 40-50 minute minimum exists.

Salt a steak and wait 45 minutes to an hour. During that time, salt initially pulls moisture to the surface through osmosis. Then, as it sits, that salty liquid gets reabsorbed back into the meat along with the dissolved salt. The salt breaks down muscle proteins, which helps the meat retain moisture when it cooks and gives you a better crust.

López-Alt’s research at Serious Eats showed this clearly: steaks salted 40 minutes before cooking retained more moisture and had better browning than steaks salted 10-20 minutes before. The worst option is salting 5-15 minutes before cooking. That’s exactly when surface moisture is at its peak and hasn’t had time to reabsorb.

For thick cuts or roasts, salt even earlier. A whole chicken can be salted the night before. The salt has more distance to travel, so give it time.

Salt Overnight: When You Want Flavor to Penetrate

Salting overnight changes the game for anything where you want deep seasoning or where salt acts as the foundation of a marinade.

For dry rubs on large cuts of meat, overnight salting ensures even distribution throughout. The salt continues the osmosis-reabsorption cycle, and by morning the seasoning has fully integrated. This works for whole chickens, pork shoulders, or large roasts.

In marinades, salt does most of the heavy lifting. While acids and aromatics contribute flavor, salt is what drives those flavors into the meat. Without salt, most marinades just sit on the surface. A marinade with salt penetrates because osmosis pulls the liquid into the muscle fibers as they break down.

Some dishes actually taste better the next day because salt needs time to work. Chili, stews, and braises continue to season as they sit. The salt redistributes through the liquid and solids, and flavors that seemed separate become unified. Refrigerate overnight and the same pot that tasted good yesterday tastes better today.

This also applies to salads with sturdy vegetables. A kale salad massaged with salt softens over a few hours as the salt breaks down cell walls. Cucumber salads with salt and vinegar improve after sitting overnight. The salt pulls out water, concentrates the vegetables, and lets the dressing penetrate.

Brining: Wet and Dry

Brining means getting salt into meat over an extended period. There are two approaches: wet brining (salt in water) and dry brining (salt directly on the surface). They work differently and produce different results.

Wet Brining

Wet brining submerges meat in salty water. A basic wet brine is about 5-6% salt by weight (roughly 3/4 cup salt per gallon of water). The meat sits in this solution for hours or overnight. The salt concentration in the brine is higher than inside the meat, so osmosis pulls the salty water into the muscle fibers. Unlike dry salting where moisture is drawn out then reabsorbed, wet brining adds water directly.

This makes wet brining useful for lean cuts that dry out easily. Turkey breast, pork chops, and chicken breasts benefit because the added moisture gives you more margin for error when cooking. The salt also breaks down proteins, which helps the meat hold onto that extra water.

The downside is dilution. Wet-brined meat has more water, which means flavors are less concentrated. The skin on poultry stays soggy because of all that absorbed moisture. For something like a Thanksgiving turkey where you’re optimizing for moist white meat and willing to sacrifice some flavor and crispy skin, wet brining makes sense. For a steak where you want concentrated beefy flavor, it doesn’t.

Wet brines can include sugar (which adds flavor and helps browning), aromatics, and spices. But salt does the structural work. Without salt, you’re just soaking meat in flavored water that won’t penetrate.

Some cooks use a shorter, higher-concentration wet brine (8-10% salt for 1-2 hours) for thinner cuts. This gets salt into the meat quickly without adding too much water. Others equilibrium brine, using just enough salt to reach the target final concentration (usually 1-1.5% salt by total weight of meat plus water). This prevents over-salting but requires precise measurement and patience.

Dry Brining

Dry brining is just salting meat heavily and letting it sit for hours or overnight. The term “dry brine” is somewhat redundant since this is what the overnight salting section already described, but the name stuck because it distinguishes the technique from wet brining.

The process: salt the meat (about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon per pound), leave it uncovered in the fridge for 8-24 hours. Salt pulls moisture to the surface, dissolves in that moisture, then gets reabsorbed along with the salty liquid. No added water, no dilution.

Dry brining concentrates flavors rather than diluting them. It also dries out the surface of the meat, which is exactly what you want for crispy skin on poultry or a good crust on roasts. The salt penetrates deep, the meat stays juicy, and you don’t sacrifice flavor or texture.

The advantages over wet brining:

• No dilution of natural meat flavor
• Drier surface means better browning and crisping
• No need for a large container or gallon of water
• Less mess, less fridge space

The disadvantage: dry brining doesn’t add extra moisture, so it won’t save you from overcooking a lean cut as effectively as wet brining will. For most applications though, dry brining is the better choice. The exception is when you genuinely need that moisture insurance policy, like with a large turkey you’re worried about drying out.

Salt Twice

Some vegetables benefit from salting at two different stages: once for structural changes during cooking, once for surface seasoning at the end. Greedy, but effective.

Roasted root vegetables demonstrate this well. Light salt before roasting helps them release moisture and concentrate sugars during cooking. Finishing salt added after roasting provides immediate flavor on the surface.

The first application changes the vegetable’s structure and moisture content. The second provides salt crystals that hit your palate directly. One does the work, the other takes the credit.

Braised greens follow the same pattern. Salt during cooking penetrates and seasons throughout. A small pinch before serving adds brightness that would otherwise be lost in the braising liquid.

When Not to Salt

Sometimes you skip it:

• The cooking medium is already salty (soy sauce, stock, cheese)
• You want the food to absorb flavor from something else first, then add salt
• Dietary restrictions
• You already brined the meat (no need to salt twice)

What This Actually Means

The timing of salt application is about controlling osmosis and the Maillard reaction. Sometimes you want fast results, sometimes you want salt to work slowly over hours.

Understanding what happens at each stage lets you choose the right approach. Do you need water drawn out or retained? Do you want concentrated flavor or preserved texture? Do you need it to brown or stay tender? Should flavors penetrate deep or stay on the surface?

These questions determine when to salt. The mechanics are the same whether you’re salting a tomato, a steak, or a marinade: osmosis, protein breakdown, moisture management, and time. Salt immediately, salt in 45 minutes, salt overnight. Each timing produces different results. Once you understand the mechanism, you can predict the result and make the right choice without following a recipe. Which is the point of learning to cook in the first place.