In article >,
"J. Clarke" > wrote:

> On 3/12/2010 2:25 PM, Krypsis wrote:


> > I steam vegetables without salt. I don't leach all the nutrients out by
> > overcooking.
>
> So let's see you make steamed gumbo.

> > I prefer my vegetables slightly crisp, not limp.
>
> And if you get slightly crisp with salt you get rock hard without it, or
> else overcooked.

> > Perhaps you would like to give us a detailed explanation of said
> > chemical processes. It's easy enough to make the claims but I'd like to
> > see you justify them. There is sufficient evidence that excesses of salt
> > does long term harm.
>
> Find a copy of "On Food and Cooking" (any decent library should have it
> and it's usually on the shelf at the major chain bookstores), look in
> the index under "salt", read all the entries.

Got out my second edition, author Harold McGee, 2004. I was too lazy to
look up every reference to salt. Everything that referred to salt and
vegetables was between pp 278-296. For cooked vegetables, all that I
saw was a reference to softening them slightly when cooked in salt. Of
course, when you are steaming, if there is no contact between the liquid
water and the vegetables, there *is* no salt, since it doesn't
evaporate. For pickled (fermented) vegetables, the amount of salt is
crucial because that controls which organisms grow. For the kind of
pickles that most of us actually eat now, there are no organisms, and
they are preserved by refrigeration or heat treatment.

The idea that vegetables which are cooked to slightly crisp with salt,
would be either rock hard or overcooked when cooked without salt seems
absurd, and certainly wasn't supported by the cite.

--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA