By Chef Alexis Hernandez
A healthy pinch
There’s a quiet rebellion that happens in my kitchen. It comes with a healthy pinch of salt—and knowing exactly how to season food properly.
It doesn’t come with protest signs or grand declarations. It comes with a healthy pinch of salt.
I have a British friend named Chris. He’s a photographer.
He has a sharp eye, can build just about anything with his hands, and still cannot cook to save his life.
One day I had just come back from the gym and stopped by his place.
He was in the kitchen with a pot of chili and asked if I wanted to taste it.
He was proud of it, but he was also setting me up.
He already knew what I was going to say.
Of course I said yes.
I stood there by the stove, took a bite, and before I could answer, he sighed.
“Yeah, yeah. You’re going to say it needs salt.”
He wasn’t wrong.
He had added canned tomatoes that were not in the original recipe, and the extra acidity had thrown everything off.
I reached for his Himalayan pink salt, added a reasonable amount, less than I would have used if it were mine, and handed it back to him.
He took another bite and stopped.
“Oh. That’s good.”
The funny part is Chris goes back for seconds at my house all the time. If my food were really that salty, he’d let me know the polite way.
He’d say, “No thank you, I’m satisfied with the portion I just had.”
He didn’t say that.
That is the thing about salt. It doesn’t hide flaws.
It brings a dish into focus.
Without it, most food isn’t terrible. It’s just flat.
And I’m not interested in flat.
If you’re wondering how much salt to add, start small, taste, and adjust.
That’s the difference between guessing and actually seasoning.
The lesson I never forgot
Years ago, in culinary school, one of my chef professors handed me a spoonful of soup and asked what I thought.
I said it tasted good.
He looked at me and said, “I haven’t seasoned it yet.”
Then he added salt, stirred the pot, and handed me another spoon.
That second taste changed everything.
The soup didn’t just improve. It opened up. That was the moment I understood seasoning was not decoration.
It was part of the structure of the dish.
Later, when I worked in a French restaurant during school, I saw the same thing again and again.
Food could be technically right, beautifully made, and still not finished.
Salt was often the difference.
Why people are afraid of adding salt to food
People talk about salt with a kind of suspicion, like it’s something to fear instead of something to understand.
But after years in professional kitchens, and after feeding thousands of people, I trust what seasoning does.
I trust the hand, the taste, the adjustment.
That does not mean more is always better. It means enough matters.
One of my professors used to say, “You don’t want anyone reaching for the salt. You want them to taste the dish and think it’s perfect.”
That stayed with me.
Not art. Craft.
People like to say food is art.
Maybe.
But art gets to be vague. Art gets to be open to interpretation. Salt is less forgiving than that.
Salt is craft.
It is the part of cooking that asks whether you were paying attention. It takes what is already there and brings it into focus.
It makes the difference between food that fills the plate and food that actually tastes complete.
So yes, I probably salt more than some people think I should.
And no, I have never had anyone send a dish back because it was too salty. At least not to my face.
But if they ever did, I’d be polite. Then I’d wait for the chance to taste their food. And if it was bland, well. Case closed.
The way I still do it
I don’t measure salt into a tiny bowl.
I pour it into my hand. I add some. I taste. I decide.
Maybe that’s all I mean when I call it resistance.
Not drama. Not performance.
Just the quiet act of refusing to let food leave the kitchen tasting less like itself than it should.
