Salting at the last second only seasons the surface. The inside of the meat tastes of nothing, and you end up correcting it at the table with more salt, which is a different and worse thing — salty on the outside instead of seasoned all the way through.

What salt actually does, given time, is a round trip. It draws moisture out of the meat, dissolves into it, and then that brine gets pulled back in, carrying the salt inward with it. On the way it loosens the proteins so they hold onto water instead of squeezing it out in the pan. So the meat comes out both better seasoned and juicier, from the same move.

That round trip takes hours, not minutes. Which means the timing is the whole technique.

The window you want to avoid

There is a dead zone in the middle, and it’s exactly where most people land. Somewhere around fifteen to forty minutes after salting, the moisture has been pulled to the surface but has not gone back in yet. The meat is sitting in a wet film, and a wet surface will not brown.

So the rule is: either salt it right as it hits the pan, or salt it hours ahead. The gap between those two is the worst of both.

Roughly how long

The bigger and denser the thing, the longer it needs.

• A big roast or a whole chicken wants the day before.
• Steaks and chops are fine anywhere from a few hours to overnight.
• Fish and thin cuts need much less, more like fifteen minutes to an hour. They take salt fast, and left too long they go firm and start curing.