Why is it always salty?

Occasionally I will buy pre-seasoned meat from the store. Invariably, the predominant taste that comes through is salt. I am not talking about a little salt to enhance flavour, I am talking salt with hints of other flavours.

This most recently happened a few days ago when I bought some Tandoori seasoned chicken legs (save me the trouble of buying, or better still, mixing up, some Tandoori seasoning). As is my habit, I washed the meat. Yes, I wash my meat from the store (a little hard with ground meat, so I prefer to avoid it for the most part) - even seasoned meats. While the aroma during cooking was pleasant, the promise of tantalizing flavours was crushed with the reality of salt.

bleh.

Comments

tin-tin said…
i really don't notice coz it's cooked by other people already when i eat it. i don't know if it's the fault of the cook or the vendor. hehe
I've noticed that with the microwave instant oatmeal so now I make it from scratch! Guess they think it will help preserve it but yuck!
Barbara said…
Kosher meat is salty because salt is used in koshering it, but I didn't think salt was added to other types of meat. I agree there is nothing worse than too much salt! You can always add...
Richard said…
tin-tin: while food cooked by other people is often good, I still prefer to cook for myself, because I like the taste of my own cooking.

MOI: I haven't noticed that with teh instant oatmeal. Mind you, I hav enot had oatmeal in ages for breakfast. The oatmeal we fill the kids with seems to have plenty of sugar in it.

barbara: I thought meat was kosher because of the way it was slaughtered and handled (obviously these are important factors). I did not think that salting was one of them.

Granted, if I know the food is salted (like salted fish), then I cook differently with it.
Barbara said…
Check this out. The bottom line is: The salting is used as an aid to the fire to facilitate extracting the blood.
Richard said…
While I knew that Jews are forbidden from consuming blood I didn't realize that they went an extra step to extract as much blood ass possible from the meat by using salt - I assumed appropriate draining of the animal was sufficient.
Matt said…
You just reminded me of the fact that I couldn't eat sausages in the U.S. because they were always too darn salty.

How Americans can eat their hot dogs is beyond me.
Richard said…
matt hotdogs and similar sausages (bologna) are pretty gross. I prefer European (preferably Polish or German) style sausages. There is a very nice Polish butcher who makes great sausages near where I live in Ottawa.

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