Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
A visionary new master class in cooking that distills decades of professional experience into just four simple elements, from the woman declared “America’s next great cooking teacher” by Alice Waters. In the tradition of The Joy of Cooking and How to Cook Everything comes Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, an ambitious new approach to cooking by a major new culinary voice. Chef and writer Samin Nosrat has taught everyone from professional chefs to middle school kids to author Michael Pollan to cook using her revolutionary, yet simple, philosophy. Master the use of just four elements—Salt, which enhances flavor; Fat, which delivers flavor and generates texture; Acid, which balances flavor; and Heat, which ultimately determines the texture of food—and anything you cook will be delicious. By explaining the hows and whys of good cooking, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will teach and inspire a new generation of cooks how to confidently make better decisions in the kitchen and cook delicious meals with any ingredients, anywhere, at any time. Echoing Samin’s own journey from culinary novice to award-winning chef, Salt, Fat Acid, Heat immediately bridges the gap between home and professional kitchens. With charming narrative, illustrated walkthroughs, and a lighthearted approach to kitchen science, Samin demystifies the four elements of good cooking for everyone.
Stats for nerds
53recommend
76mentions
69people
2017–2025years
78% recommend21% neutral1% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- This. As someone for whom food & bev was a career for 18 years and now it's a dedicated hobby Suderman is the Salt Fat Acid Heat of booze. It's graduating past memorizing recipes and into theory and framework.
Also please God pour out that old vermouth, get a new one and put it in your fridge.
- As far as fundamentals, I recommend Nosrat's Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat [0]. To be clear, I've only read the salt and fat sections so far. Nosrat talks about different kinds of salt and the appropriate time to apply them (or not, if the ingredients are salty). Likewise, she describes the differences between, say lard and butter, or butter in different states (cold, room temperature, clarified). She also strongly argues for tasting the food throughout the process and building an intuition for how to improvise, thereby.
[0] https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat/Sa...
- This is true on the web, but not in print. Salt Fat Acid Heat is a gorgeous book and the beauty just doesn't translate well to .epub
- As a former professional baker for 2 decades, from corner bakeshops to a hippie co-op to a large scale dessert manufacturer with worldwide distribution - as soon as I saw the recommendation to use volume instead of mass I closed the tab, nothing of value could be there.
Baking is both an art and a science. If you're a home baker you can ignore the science, if you are trying to make money you have to understand at least the basics of the science/physical behavior of your materials.
I take a more intuitive/heuristic approach to cooking, and the single best resource I've found for cooking confidently & authentically by the seat of one's pants is Samin Nosrat's "Salt Fat Acid Heat". I've yet to find a similar guide for baking, and don't think one could exist given the narrow range of actually useful parameters.
https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/
Reading down in the comments - ratios can be useful conceptually, but for production baking the actual size of the batch vs. the mixer, oven and other tools make all the difference. Gravity plays a part in, say, how a moist dough behaves in a 5 lb. vs. a 250 lb. batch, same for how things bake/burn in a full vs. partially full oven, same for depositors, extruders, sheeters, etc.
- Steak is the one thing I can get consistently better than restaurants. It's all thanks to the book "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking"
It's a text book size cookbook. The author experiments different cooking methods and documents, taste tests.
It boiled down to seasoning the steak over night so the salt extracts juices and tenderizes. Getting the temperature just perfect using a thermometer (I have a Ninja Foodi Grill that does it automatically).
The quality and thickness of meat also matters. I get mine at Costco or Sam's Club.
My pasta game is a lot better too. Main thing was to stir as the pasta cooks.
