Help on controlling salt levels in soup

I don't put any salt in initially. When the soup is ready, then I season (salt) to the taste I desire.

As liquid evaporates, the salt concentration increases.

It is simple to add salt, it is impossible to remove salt.

In your case, I'm with Pete. Salt only as you serve it to yourself so you always get just the right amount.

For your particular sensitivities, it would probably be worth the time to measure your portions and measure the salt so you can develop a repeatable serving that meets your needs. With practice, you'll be able to eyeball it quickly and accurately.

Well, again, you're asking questions that are the opposite of how cooks do things in soup and stock.

You'll find lots of bad information on how salt travels into cells via osmosis (It doesn't) and so on. You're asking more about general diffusion and some of that would be covered in brining, but may also not be what you want for making soup. Probably too salty.  You might also look at "koshering" your meat before hand which is basically a washing, rubbing with a coarse salt, let stand refrigerated for an hour and wash the salt off. Not good for small cuts of meat though.

I don't know of a source that documents this information in the way you want. I think you're on your own to figure this one out.

IIRC my chem classes correctly, NaCl (salt) is an ionic molecule that disassociates into Na and Cl, both ions, in water.  It is not absorbed by anything. Both ions are very reactive and do not "bind" to much of anything. Salt in water and salt in food reacts in the same manner, i.e. a salty liquid and a salty food react similarly.

To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing that can reduce the salt content of a liquid besides dilution, i.e. adding more water. Though there are numerous anecdotes about raw potatoes or other root vegetables absorbing salt, I have never seen any scientific verification of this.

Salt is easy to add, it is virtually impossible to remove once added.

BTA,WTHDIK, I am not a chemist, nutritionist, medical doctor, bio-chemist, just an engineer turned cook, with a modicum of management skills.

Cholrinated,

Since we don't know how salty you want things, it's impossible to give you specific advice.  You're going to have to learn by experience according to your own tastes.

Your health and cooking theories are so wildly divergent from the way nearly anyone else does things, you're going to be on your own for a great many things.  I'm not saying you're wrong, but think it's a mistake to expect much help if you continue to reject it on the basis of distinctly unusual and minority hypotheses. 

As to salt in soup -- salt dissolved in solution is salt dissolved in solution.  Once the salt is completely dissolved, concentration is the only consideration, and not timing.  You don't season for "layers of flavor" with soup as you might with some other sort of cooking.  If you say completely dissolved salt added later in the process makes you physically uncomfortable I won't argue with the validity of your experience. but am left baffled. 

Have you received any satisfactory answers to any of the questions you've posed here on CT?  There's nothing I know about cooking which can help you. Perhaps also going to the people who educated you about nutritional health, and asking them for cooking advice might help

BDL

Ahhh this is the same guy that wants very fatty meat and soup.  Could this be a troll situation?
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by boar_d_laze 
There's nothing I know about cooking which can help you. Perhaps also going to the people who educated you about nutritional health, and asking them for cooking advice might help

 

BDL

The salt will disassociate in the water, whether the water is in the vegetables, meat, or wherever. The concentration will be the same over time.

Even if you brine the vegetables or meat, once immersed in water, the concentration will balance out to the same level throughout the soup, stew, or dish. In fact, the principles underlying brining rely on this characteristic. The salt ions will move from a higher concentration to a lower concentration until the concentration is equal throughout.

Start the soup the night before.  Use your taste and experience to slightly undersalt the soup as you cook it.  When it's cooked, finish salting it to taste.  Put a lid on it.  Let it cool down.  Put it in the refrigerator overnight.  Reheat the soup, lid on.  The salt will be in everything equally.  To be clear, the term "everything" includes the chicken and the vegetables.

If you want relatively crisp and fresh vegetables in your soup, when the soup is cooked, strain it, pick the chicken out of the solids and return it to the soup.  Then, you may either cut fresh vegetables and let them sit in the pot overnight; or, before reheating the soup, cook your vegetables lightly in well salted water, and add them to the soup when you reheat.  Again, the salt will be diffused equally. 

If you were to use less fluid and the same amount of salt and everything else, the soup would indeed be more salty.   The "saltiness" of a liquid is determined by the concentration of salt. 

"Diffusion" is the name of the tendency for solutes and other liquids blend equally in liquid form, and for gasses to blend equally with other gasses.  Here, we're talking about dissolved salt in particular.  Salt normally diffuses very quickly in water, but may take a little longer to penetrate denser solids in the water.  You may hear the term, "osmosis" applied.  "Osmosis" is diffusion across a semi-permeable membrane, only plays a small role at most in what you're trying to accomplish.

If you want more fat in your soup, use fattier meat; and/or add fat in the form of bacon, bacon-grease, lard, chopped pork fat, chicken fat, butter, olive oil, or cream, etc.; and don't defat or defat less thoroughly. 

More salt and fat in your soup are your express goals.  These "techniques" are the best and most straightforward ways to accomplish them.  As far as the salt, overnight is significantly more time than needed.  But you can rest assured every bit of your soup will be salted equally, and you seem to want both assurance and clear rules.     

I wish you much luck with your cooking, gastronomy and health,

BDL

You can simmer potatoes in the liquid if it's too salty or boil pasta in it.  The potatoe trick was OK but it was often just easier to make another batch of soup and mix it in.

A good tasting soup, IMO, has bursts of flavor.  You should not make the veg salty, the meat salty, the broth salty, etc.  That just make it taste like you have a mouthful of seawater.

Your the one adding seasalt, dont add any salt at all. The chicken sometime is pumped with a saline solution. Like a Butterball Turkey