Salt brings out the flavour of the food. However, with the health craze of the last 30 years, people use salt less, so an amount of salt that would have been perfectly reasonable for nearly everyone 20 years ago now tastes like oversalting to many.

At least, that is my theory.

(And, what on earth is Viking smoked salt? Salt smoked over a Viking cremation?)

Why do chefs oversalt? For the same basic reason that owner complained about last week. Ego.

To succeed as a top-flite chef requires a very large one and it will come through in all manner of actions such as dictating how much salt is enough.

Following the direction of others, let alone a house recipe, is antithetical to their entire approach to the work. He is the chef.. therefore he knows best... therefore it is the exactly correct amount of salt.

Perhaps it's just a difference in sensitivity to salt. I more often find restaurant food to be undersalted.

I believe in moderation in moderation.

I've always felt that salt and seasonings grow stronger and more pronounced with time. That is you're making a sauce and it tastes flat, so you add salt until it is to your liking. Then the sauce sits and the salt seems permeate and develop. The next time you taste the sauce it seems over salted.

My other theory is that many cooks smoke, so their sense of taste is diminished resulting in a tendency to over salt.

This may just be hearsay, and I’m not trying throw smokers under the bus, but I’ve heard that chefs who smoke tend to over salt because their taste buds are weakened as a result of smoking. And as we know, due to the stress of the restaurant industry, many chefs do indeed smoke. Just what I’ve heard.

Assuming it's not your imagination (and I think that's a safe assumption, even though I rarely, if ever, encounter the oversalt problem), then I offer the following reasons for oversalting:
1. If many many chefs/cooks do this, they've been trained to do so.
2. Kickbacks from Morton, et al.
3. They're salting for palates like mine, ones that have, after years of bad habits and shallow thinking, lost the finer ranges of saline sensitivity.

I don't know if it is true or not, but it is interesting:

Thomas Edison is reported to "testing" anyone he was thinking about hiring. He would invite them to have a bowl of soup with them...and anyone adding salt without first tasting the soup failed his test.

Edison didn't trust anyone making decisions based upon unfounded assumptions. How did they know the soup need more salt? They couldn't...unless they tasted it first.

Pre-salting is just dumb if you ask me.

"But it always puzzles me why chefs don't err on the side of slightly underseasoning if they are going to have salt and pepper on the table.

I have heard of restaurants where the chef has removed salt and pepper from the tables. "Do not adjust your food. We will control the salt level. We will control the pepperiness." (With apologies to Rod Serling)

I actually have some of the "Australian Murray River" salt pictured above, though not from Salt Traders. Mine is called "Murray River Apricot Salt" and describes it as "Delicate peach colored (not apricot?) flake with a wonderfully mild flavor. Crystals melt quickly & evenly, ideal for cooking and baking. Source is the Murray River in the snowy Australian Alps. All natural from underground brine deposits in the Murray Darling Basin." Tastes like salt.

I have been known to "decrust" salt manually from french fries.

I wonder if the "Jewel of the Ocean" salt comes from an older brother of the "Jewel of the Nile"?

It's a plot by the salt cabal to fatten their coffers.

Dan, I've heard that Edison story, too, and always liked it. But I have no more idea than you do whether it's true.

And Hal may be on to something with the salt sensitivity theory. My step-mom is very sensitive to the taste of salt and finds many things over-salted, while I have quite the opposite problem, though I rarely add salt to much besides potatoes, which were born to be salty.

I have noticed that EL very often complains about dishes being over-salted in her reviews, whereas I almost never find a dish too salty. I love and adore salt, but now that I have a medical condition that requires limiting salt, I find that steering away from processed foods does the trick for the most part. Maybe if we ate out more often I would find this more problematic.

My sister once dated a guy who took her home for dinner. The food was terribly bland, so my sister timidly asked if she could have salt and pepper, only to have the mother say "Everything is Perfectly Seasoned." End of discussion.

I love salt in and on most foods but I too pick the salt off of pretzels. I just don't like it on there!

I'm of the twice seasoning school. I season as I begin the cooking process, and then taste and adjust seasoning at the end of the process.

I've never oversalted, but I have over-garlic powdered once when the lid came off and all the contents into the stew I was making. Luckily, I was able to spoon most of it out and save dinner but it was pretty garlicky flavored.

Bucky and Joyce, they do sell unsalted pretzels. I actually look for the well-salted kind because they just don't taste right without it. Just like the reason cannibals won't eat clowns: they taste funny.

As an extra added bonus, the finalists for the Third Annual Peeps Diorama Contest are out. As they used to say in Chicago, Vote early and vote often.

Oh, Joyce W., you just reminded of the time I accidentally dumped a pile of pepper in the soup--oops!

Dahlink, sometimes the accidents that happen in the kitchen are much more interesting conversation than the successes, aren't they?

I know my sister and I still laugh about the time mom blew up the roast because she forgot to punch holes in the roasting bag!

Joyce, that sounds like a very interesting technique for making roast beef hash.

Lissa, that's sort of like my HR dept saying "making lemons into lemonade?"