The Mouthful
Posts
Use More Acidity, Not Salt

Use More Acidity, Not Salt

to level up flavor. + natural wines, mac & cheese science, & more.

Jess McIntosh, Ethan Chlebowski & Keith McBrayer
June 08, 2025

Good morning. Want to brighten up your cooking at home? Add acidity! This week we’re going over why acid is just as important as other seasonings.

COOKING PROTOCOL 🍳

Use more acidity in your cooking

One of the biggest reasons restaurant dishes taste better than homemade is acidity. You might think its just salt and butter, but chefs are masters in balancing and brightening their dishes with sour ingredients, even if you don’t realize it.

Why?

In Samin Nosrat’s seminal SALT FAT ACID HEAT, we learn that of the 5 tastes, acid (sour) is the one that makes our mouth water the most. When we eat food seasoned with an acidic element, saliva production increases as a reflex to balance the sour taste.

This, in turn, allows us to better enjoy and taste the entire bite of food as we chew.

Acidity also cuts through salty or fatty foods (think of a squeeze of lime over a carnitas taco, or a glass of wine with a ribeye), which lets you continue to enjoy rich foods without them becoming heavy.

So clearly adding acidity is important. How do you do it? Here’s 4 ways:

1) Add a squeeze of citrus or a splash of vinegar to dishes at the end of cooking. When you season to taste with salt and pepper before serving, think if the dish could be improved with a little more brightness.

If you want to hear it from a Michelin-starred chef, The French Laundry’s Thomas Keller recommends keeping a small squeeze bottle of white wine vinegar (fairly neutral in flavor) next to your salt.

2) Incorporate pickled items: onions, giardineira, pepperoncini, kimchi or other fermented/pickled goods for a sour kick.

3) Leverage fresh tomatoes or fruit for as an acidic element or garnish. This is why salsa or chutney can bring plates to life.

4) Provide hot sauces or dressings so guests can add their own kick of vinegar to food.

TLDR: If you feel a dish is lacking something at home, it is often not salt or spices, it’s acidity!

RECIPE RECOMMENDATIONS ✅

Brighten these recipes with acidity…

Brighten up your cooking this week with these dishes, all of which have an acidic element that will teach you about cooking with that extra pop of flavor:

FOOD TRENDS 🚀

Natural wines

Q: What’s the deal with natural wine? How it is different from any other organic wine?

A: Natural wine is made with the philosophy of not adding or taking away anything from the wine. Natural wines have soared in popularity for their funkier flavors and novel aesthetics, like orange wine.

From the vineyards to the cellar, everything involved in natural winemaking focuses on keeping the wine as close to its natural form as possible. Even at the end of the winemaking process, the wine is usually not filtered, which can result in sediment pieces that settle in the bottle.

Growing organic grapes is seen as a prerequisite for making natural wine, meaning that all natural wines are organic. However, not all organic wines are natural since organic wines often still make use of additives or filtration.

Our take: Natural wine seems to be a way forward for sustainable winemaking, as it reduces its impact on the environment and consumers. It’s exciting to see wine, a product that’s steeped in so much tradition, start to evolve and push forward.

READER Q&A 🧠

3 ingredient mac & cheese clarification

Question: “For your three ingredient mac & cheese recipe, can't we boil the macaroni in milk instead of water? So we will get evaporation of the milk and one step less than water and then evaporated milk” - Ravand

Answer: This question is referencing the classic stovetop base mac & cheese recipe where you boil pasta, add evaporated milk, and then mix in grated cheese.

While you might be able to get away without using evaporated milk, we can’t widely recommend it:

If you use regular milk to cook the pasta, you might not reduce the milk to the same level of concentration of evaporated milk, which has a very high concentration of milk proteins which are necessary to emulsify the sauce.
Additionally, you would have to carefully stir and monitor the pot to ensure the milk doesn't burn or curdle (evaporated milk resists high heat better).
Then, to be safe, you’ll need another emulsifier to make the sauce creamy — a roux, corn starch, or at least 50% American cheese (which contains sodium citrate, a potent emulsifier).

So for the average home cook, it's a lot simpler to advise just using evaporated milk + cheese, but an advanced home cook could pull off evaporating the milk yourself or incorporating different emulsification strategies.

Have a culinary question? Reply to send it in for a chance to be featured and get your question answered.