Who doesn’t love the sweet and salty taste of a chocolate covered pretzel? Or salted caramel ice cream? Or salt on an apple? Wait, what? I recently Google-landed on a list of “12 Weird Fruits You Should be Salting.”
The title was a bit misleading as most of their suggestions had to do with pairing fruit with combinations of ingredients, one of which happens to be salt. There was sea salt, honey, and cheese with grapes. Another idea was to use flavored salts like pineapple with chili salt. Pineapple with a smoked salt; I could imagine that working. It would be reminiscent of pineapple and bacon or ham, like Hawaiian pizza.
Salt is a flavor enhancer. It also acts to balance out bitter on our tongues. For instance, radishes by themselves are, in my opinion, delicious, but can be bitter depending on growing conditions. Sprinkle slices of radish with a little salt and the bitterness fades to reveal the vegetable’s earthiness. Bitter greens like kale and frisee can be tamed with salt.
Interestingly, sometimes it’s better to use salt than sugar to sweeten things up a bit. I used to dump a spoonful of sugar on a grapefruit half, until I learned that my mother-in-law salts her grapefruit. My father-in-law salts his cantaloupe. I have always salted my watermelon.
Taste Test
In my “if I could do it all over again” daydream, I’d be a scientist. I indulge this fantasy when I can by doing little experiments. Being very curious about this idea of salting fruit, I set up a taste test and asked my family to be guinea pigs. They were not looking forward to this taste test the way they look forward to my cookie taste tests.
All three of them refused to grant permission for me to photograph the tasting session: it was early and they were still in their pajamas.
This was probably a good thing because then you would have seen one of them (who shall remain nameless) spitting out several of the test subjects!
We quickly learned that only a very tiny pinch of salt was needed on each piece of fruit. Like just a few grains.
Overall, salting fruit didn’t go over very well in our house. We were mixed in our reactions which ranged from pretty good, to eh, to neutral, to bad, to the previously mentioned gag. The type of salt had little effect on our results.
The winners, such that they were, were cantaloupe, orange, and peach. No one joined me in my love of salted watermelon.
A true scientist would repeat the experiment with different samples of the same fruit and with taste testers who bring a better attitude. Maybe they should be blindfolded and not told about the variable. There was some serious tester bias going on!
As for the salted Granny Smith apple suggestion from the article that raised my eyebrows in the first place? My husband declared that salt made it taste like a potato. It kind of did. But the even funnier part? It tasted like an unsalted potato!
Recipes
The Weird Fruits to Salt article did inspire me to seek out a few new fruit recipes. Here are three that I tried, with the common theme of salt as a key flavor enhancing ingredient.
I dug out my mandolin slicer to make ribbons of cantaloupe for this salad. Yeah, too much work! (Cubes would have been much easier.) But it looked great and tasted even better. The combination of cantaloupe, feta cheese, red onion vinaigrette, and sage, sprinkled with coarse sea salt was very unexpected, unique and devoured by all my taste samplers at home and at work. I never would have thought to put sage with cantaloupe! Sage always feels like a fall and winter herb to me. I stand corrected. Recipe link in caption.
Typically, I spend most of summer not so patiently waiting for ripe homegrown tomatoes to use to make caprese salads. You know those, right? Juicy, fragrant, salted tomato slices layered with fresh mozzarella cheese and basil leaves, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Well, now I’ll distract myself until tomato season with this Salted Peach Caprese Salad. (Serve with or without a little simple balsamic vinaigrette – 2 parts olive oil to 1 part balsamic vinegar, whisked together)
Since I want everyone to love salt on their watermelon as much as I do, I have to give a shout out to the simple, refreshing Watermelon, Feta, Mint Salad.
No recipe, just toss it all together, add a pinch of salt, of course, and drizzle with balsamic glaze or reduction (both can be found in the aisle with the vinegar).
Balsamic glaze and/or balsamic reduction can be used as a finishing touch on salads, meats, fruit, sweet potatoes, caramelized onions, and more.
A Family Link
Curious about why I’ve always salted watermelon, I called my mom. Turns out my butter-loving grandparents were also salt-on-fruit-loving-grandparents. This did not surprise me. What did surprise me was my mom’s confession that she used to salt apples. You think you know a person…
