- Meredith Hayden, 28, is a private chef based in the Hamptons.
- Celebrity chefs frequently share cooking advice online.
- Recently, she shared her thoughts on salt.
A celebrity chef exposes the most common mistakes most people make when it comes to salt, revealing basic errors that can make your food taste subpar.
Meredith Hayden, 28, is a New York City-based private chef who rose to fame while documenting her busy days preparing meals for designer Joseph Altuzarra in the Hamptons.
She frequently brags about her culinary skills and shares plenty of advice for fellow foodies on social media, where she is known as @wishbonekitchen and has garnered over 1.1 million followers.
Recently, the chef took to Instagram to detail the mistakes people make in the kitchen, especially when it comes to using all-important condiments.
In the viral video, which has garnered more than 21,000 likes to date, Meredith detailed the four types of salt you should use in cooking and showed how to best flavor your food.
She captioned the video, “Let's talk about perhaps the most important ingredient in the kitchen: salt.”
The chef pointed out that while most people use a salt shaker to season their food, they should use their fingers.
“The theory is that it's physically impossible to use a salt shaker to season food to the required level.
“You need to put the salt in a little dish so you can grab it with your fingers because that's the only way you're going to get enough salt.”
“If you stood there using the salt shaker, it would take too long and you wouldn't be able to salt your food enough,” she explained.
She took viewers on a journey through her best salts before going into detail about the different types of salt you might have in your kitchen and their uses.
“Have you ever been making a recipe and wondered why you need Diamond Kosher Salt? Today we're going to tell you all about it,” she said, sitting behind a selection of kosher salts, sea salts, Maldon salts and unrefined salts.
She began by explaining that Diamond Kosher Salt is “widely accepted among chefs as the gold standard.”
“It's very affordable and minimally processed; the only ingredient is salt.”
“That's why chefs choose to use Diamond Kosher salt and call it out in their recipes, because one tablespoon of Diamond Kosher is different from one tablespoon of any other kind of salt,” she explained.
Meredith adds that whatever type of salt you keep in your kitchen, it should be Diamond Kosher salt.
However, when it comes to seasoning meat, the celebrity chef revealed that he prefers to use ultra-fine sea salt.
“Large salt grains don't stick to meat, so I like to use ultra-fine sea salt when seasoning meat.”
“I wouldn't use it to season pasta water or anything where the salt will dissolve, because the texture isn't as important,” she added.
And when texture plays an important role, the chef confesses to opting for Maldon salt, which is a little more expensive than other salts but gives dishes that extra punch.
“Now, texture becomes important when you've finished your meal, and that's when I reach for the flaky sea salt. Maldon isn't cheap; this is very expensive.”
“It's expensive because you're paying for the texture – you want to see the grain and feel it in your mouth, so it should really only be used when finishing food and sprinkled on top as the final step,” the personal chef explained.
Finally, if you want to add salt to a dish but don't like the texture, she revealed that she uses unrefined Italian sea salt.
“I don't think you need to go out and buy sea salt that's harvested off the coast of Italy,” the chef and content creator admitted.
At the end of the video, she adds: “Again, you don't need all four of these types of salt, just Diamond Kosher Salt.”
