The Truth About ITALIAN SEASONING | How Italians Actually Use Herbs & Spices

You'll never find a product called "Italian Seasoning" in Italy, and for good reason! These blends of herbs and spices mix a ton of different ingredients together and ruin any real, Italian flavor your food might have. Less is more when it comes to seasoning, so today Eva is sharing some tips and tricks for using herbs and spices like an Italian. Stay tuned to learn when NOT to use basil, and other handy guidelines for Italian flavor! If you enjoy this video, please give it a thumbs-up and subscribe to the channel. It helps a lot! -------- ITALIAN SWORDFISH STEAK RECIPE - https://www.pastagrammar.com/post/sim... "EGGS IN PURGATORY" ITALIA SHAKSHOUKA RECIPE - https://www.pastagrammar.com/post/how... We've since found some Calabrian oregano on Amazon! You can try it yourself here (affiliate): https://amzn.to/3GGhdJT -------- FOLLOW US Website/Recipe Blog - https://www.pastagrammar.com Instagram -   / pastagrammar   Facebook -   / pastagrammar   Snapchat -   / pastagrammar   Twitter -   / pastagrammar   VISIT ITALY WITH US Italian Food Tours - https://www.pastagrammar.com/tour SUPPORT US Merch Store - https://teespring.com/stores/pasta-gr... Shop Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/shop/pastagrammar 00:00 What Is Italian Seasoning? 01:31 How Italians Use Salt & Pepper 04:52 How Italians Use Peperoncino 06:53 How Italians Use Garlic 08:11 How Italians Use Parsley 10:05 How Italians Use Sage 12:10 How Italians Use Rosemary & Thyme 13:38 How Italians Use Marjoram 15:27 How Italians Use Oregano 17:42 How Italians Use Basil 20:22 How to Season Your Food Like an Italian 26:14 Pasta Grammarian in Action! #italianseasoning #italianfood #recipe -------- PAUL'S SODIUM ANALYSIS Eva says the normal serving is 80g of dry pasta. What happens when we cook it? Well, there are three things that can happen: 1) We can take the pasta out of the water about two or three minutes early and put it into the sauce to do the final cooking and to cream it – mantecatura it – all together. When I do that, the pasta comes out of the pot at about 205g. (Note that I don't drain the pasta in a colander. I just scoop it out, and it's still quite wet when it goes into the sauce.) That means the 80g of dry pasta has absorbed 125g of salty water. With pasta water that is 1% salt by weight, the pasta has absorbed about 1.25g of salt. But each bit of the salt is made up, remember, of one atom of sodium and one atom of chlorine. The atomic weight of sodium is about 23 atomic mass units (amu), and the atomic weight of chlorine is about 35.5 amu, so by weight there is a lot more chlorine than sodium in your salt. For every gram of salt in your pasta, there is just under 0.4g, or about 390 milligrams (mg), of sodium. That means your serving of pasta will have about 488mg of sodium before it goes into the sauce. Compared to a lot of other stuff you can eat, that's pretty low. If you finish your pasta in a tomato sauce made from canned tomatoes, you'd add about 140mg of salt per serving from the tomatoes. So except for any other salt you add, your finished serving of pasta with tomato sauce will have about 608mg of sodium. 2) We can cook the pasta al dente, as we would for a pesto, for example. When I do that, the pasta comes out of the pot at about 235g. This means al dente pasta has picked up 155g of salty water, 604mg of which is sodium. So other than any salt added to the pesto, a serving of al dente pasta with pesto will have around 600mg of sodium. 3) We can overcook the pasta into a disgusting slop pile (that is, we can make a mappazzone). When I wasted some perfectly good pasta to test this, it came out of the pot at 264g. The 80g of dry pasta absorbed 184g of salty water, of which a whopping 718mg was sodium. If you add this slop to a sauce made with canned tomatoes you end up with 858mg of sodium total per serving. So properly prepared pasta will have a bit over 600mg of sodium per serving. If you overcook your pasta this figure goes up to perhaps 860mg of sodium per serving or even higher. Compare this to a serving of Chef Boy-ar-dee mini ravioli: 1,000mg of sodium Nalley's chili: 1,130mg of sodium A cup of milk: 125mg of sodium An English muffin: 250mg The normal baker's percentage for salt in bread dough is about 2%, or about 780mg of sodium per 100g of dough, or about 3.2 ounces of baked bread. We have to conclude that home cooked dry pasta has a LOT less sodium in it than almost any prepared food that you'll find.