Does salt prevent water from absorbing nutrients and falvours from food?
A long time ago, I read somewhere, that there is a very specific reason, why we put salt in the water for cooking pasta: The point is to hinder the water from absorbing flavor and nutrients from the pasta. With soup its the other way around: We want to absorb the flavors into the water, which is why we salt it only at the end.
The explanation was, that salt "ionizes" water, which somehow makes it less likely to absorb things.
Is there any truth to this theory?
Source:
www.finecooking.com/article/the-science-of-salt
Quote:
Because pure water draws salts and other soluble nutrients from the
interior of vegetables, salting vegetable cooking water also minimizes
nutrient loss.
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This theory is news to me. I would be curious of its origins. From what I know, salt is added to pasta water to make pasta taste good... works for soup too! The reason to add salt at the end when making soups and sauces, is that evaporation occurs when using longer cooking times. If you add salt at the beginning, the end product could end up being over-salted due to evaporation and concentration of flavors.
By the way, dissolving salt in water does not make its atoms ionize (your salt is probably already ionized), and tap water also likely already contains ionized atoms from naturally occurring mineral salts.
While I linked the explanation for "ionized water" above, I will point out that there is some controversy, and not much science, supporting the health benefits of ionized alkaline water...or whether "ionized water" really has any meaning at all. Perhaps this is related to the origin of your theory.
As a chemist, I'd say that you have it all wrong.
You add salt to pasta water to have the salt infuse into the pasta. So as the dry pasta absorbs water, salt comes into the pasta too. Salted pasta tastes better than unsalted pasta.
Salted soup tastes better than unsalted soup. Salt enhances our perception of the flavors in the soup, but it does not extract the flavors.
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