If the final taste test of your dish renders the need for extra seasoning, there’s a tastier salt substitute you should try. The canned fish you should be using to bring salt and umami to any dish is brown cured anchovies. The epitome of “small and mighty”, anchovies are the tiny tinned fish that pack a powerful punch of flavor.
Brown cured anchovies get their coloring from being packed in salt during the curing process. Most salt-cured anchovies are then packed in oil when they’re tinned. So, not only can you use the anchovies themselves, but anchovy oil can also be used as a liquid seasoning. The tiny cured anchovy filets almost melt into frying oil, sneakily instilling a savory saltiness to pasta sauces. But for the purposes of a finishing salt substitute, you’ll need to break the filets down first, sprinkling them over a finished dish as the final touch. Since the filets are delicate, they’ll take no time to dice or crush; dice them with the blade of a knife or crush them into a paste with the knife handle like you would with a clove of garlic. That way, they’ll still be visually imperceptible to anchovy naysayers.
Finely dicing or crushing the filets facilitates their dispersal throughout the dish, so that every bite of the dish receives that umami-salt upgrade. Instead of making crushed anchovies the foundation of a cooked dish, sprinkling them fresh out of the can preserves the intensity of their flavor.
Ideas for anchovy-salt
Using anchovies as a seasoning salt will elevate all kinds of savory dishes, from sauces, to vegetables, to grilled meats. Even though crushed anchovies are usually incorporated into scratch-made pasta sauces as a foundational seasoning, you can add crushed anchovies as a finishing salt to store-bought pasta sauces after tossing them with the pasta. Diced anchovies would work perfectly to complement the caramelized flavors of roasted vegetables; they’d bring an umami punch to the bitter notes of roasted Brussels sprouts or the sweetness of these honey-glazed carrots.
Stir them into creamy and mild whipped ricotta to spread over crostinis or sprinkle them over these deviled eggs. You could crush them with fresh garlic into a paste to spread over Spanish pan con tomate to enhance the umami-richness of tomatoes; we even have a recipe that calls for placing Spanish marinated anchovy fillets over pan con tomate to make it into a meal. Finish grilled cuts of steak or portobello steaks with diced anchovies instead of coarse salt for an elegant main course.
