
Lessons from growing up in the spice trade - Vigier
http://www.avclub.com/article/salt-grinders-are-bullshit-and-other-lessons-growi-253193
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gommm
> My mom theorizes that lots of MSG was used to cover up the fact that, say,
> shrimp was a day past its prime, and that the sick feeling was due to the
> food but got blamed on the MSG. There’s never been a scientifically rigorous
> study that’s linked MSG with any negative effects.

Totally agree with this. MSG can really bring out flavor and doesn't deserve
the bad reputation it has. I do think that a lot of American Chinese
restaurant put way too much of the stuff to cover cheap bad tasting
ingredients but used lightly when cooking good food, it's amazing.

Apart from that, I disagree with his notion that spices don't go bad. It
depends on the weather, you can get fungi in humid weather and the oils can go
rancid causing the flavor to not just be lessened but to also be bad. That
said, in places with a temperate climate and without high levels of humidity a
lot of the spices can last for years.

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davidw
I'm kind of disappointed this wasn't along the lines of "Watch out for those
giant sandworms", but it was pretty interesting just the same.

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cjslep
Pretty sure the first lesson is "Fear is the mind-killer".

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navbaker
False. The first lesson is "the spice must flow".

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shalmanese
I religiously order from The Spice House and the quality is noticeably better
than Penzey's and local spice merchants. Their Szechuan Peppercorn in
particular, is as good as what you can get in Szechuan which is rare.

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mturmon
Big agree. Their site has a depth of information and it has caused me to try
new things, like fennel pollen, different cinnamon types, and aji amarillo.
You can tell it originated with enthusiasts.

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HugoDaniel
Not all salt is sea salt.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halite)

In most places salt from precipitation (salt mines) is cheaper and more common
than sea salt (from evaporation) due to it being more concentrated (~5x to
~10x in comparison to sea salt).

And then there is fleur de sel which has much higher levels of iodine than
normal salt and is typically hand harvested by scraping only the top layer of
salt.

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mastax
> Halite occurs in vast beds of sedimentary evaporite minerals that result
> from the drying up of enclosed lakes, playas, and seas.

Sounds like sea salt to me. (or at least I think this is what the author was
arguing)

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HugoDaniel
In a way we all come from the sea :)

Lets not be pedantic, sea salt is refering to the way that the salt is being
extracted, if it is extracted from the sea or not (from the rock).

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conorcleary
Couple things: salt grinders are an alternative to putting rice in your shaker
to prevent clumping. If it's already clumped, grind it.

Also - sea salt marketed as sea salt tastes different from iodized table salt.
That's what people want, the different taste. It may have come from the same
general place (...sea), but it still tastes different. Just like McDo's fries
vs. Wendy's.... I prefer the salt that McDo's uses.

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NikolaeVarius
It tastes different because, to the best of my knowledge, sea salt is flaky
versus the beads of "normal" salt. They dissolve on your tongue differently
causing a different amount of salt taste.

They aren't different in any other way.

Also the lack of any Dune references was disappointing.

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nyolfen
seriously, it drives me crazy that people think there's any meaningful
difference between salts besides marketing. it's NaCl, sometimes with iodine
or small impurities. people buy himalayan salt because it sounds exotic, but
it's just salt.

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draw_down
To me this is like saying "what's the big difference between water and ice?
It's all H2O". As it turns out, the arrangement of the molecules has some
importance. If you put iodized table salt on top of a brownie instead of
something flaky like Maldon, you're going to have a bad time.

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Pica_soO
>Spices don’t go bad Some spices contain oils and fats. Those substances go
rancid with age like any other substance. And there are fungi.

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jarboot
Its nice to read an article like this and realize the shop in mention is a
short walk away! Such a small world.

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tedmiston
That MSG has been used as a scapegoat and isn't actually bad was new to me.

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Pyxl101
Yep. There was a bunch of unfounded hysteria around it. It has long been
classified by the FDA as among the safest of food additives, "generally
recognized as safe".

[https://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/foodad...](https://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/foodadditivesingredients/ucm328728.htm)

MSG is simply the sodium salt of glutamate aka glutamic acid, a common amino
acid. Glutamate is naturally contained in a lot of foods like cheese and
tomatoes, and is responsible for a taste of umami (the flavor of savory
foods). Parmesan cheese in particular has a lot of glutamate.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami)

MSG is an isolation of this naturally occurring substance. No research that
I'm aware of has found that anyone is "sensitive" to it or that there's
anything bad about it when consumed in normal amounts.

(I mean, if you tried to consume an _entire salt shaker_ worth of table salt,
or an entire bottle of Tabasco sauce, you might have a bad day. Same might be
true for MSG, but a dash of all of these is safe.)

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mcphage
Grinding the salt might not accomplish much, but... I still enjoy doing it. I
don't think I'm going to stop.

