You're probably not using salt properly when you cook. Here's how to do it right.

• There's a good chance you're not using salt properly when seasoning your food.
• Salt should be added throughout the cooking process and there are different kinds of saltiness.

Time for a bitter culinary truth: That single pinch of salt you add to your meals when they're nearly done cooking is doing nothing to upgrade the flavors of your dish.

In fact, you might as well have waved those crystals over the top of the pan, using only the power of thought to season your food.

I learned this lesson while working as a galley assistant on a charter boat in my teens, during which the head cook would always sample what I'd cooked. The first time, she stood me aside, seized what seemed like an ocean's worth of salt, and threw it in the pot. I was shocked. But she never had to do it again because that fistful made every ingredient sing and dance across my brain like a pig in stilettos.

My initiation into Salt Club was complete and I've never under-seasoned a dish since.

This anecdote highlights the second rule of Salt Club: Use enough salt in the first place, which is probably more than you think.

But there are other mistakes to keep in mind when it comes to seasoning, too.

Adding salt is a process, not a final touch

"You have to understand that salting isn't just about adding a pinch of Maldon here and there," said chef and restaurateur Simon Couth, whose career started in the 1980s at the Montreux Palace Hotel on Lake Geneva, Switzerland.

"You have to think about salt and what it does to each part of the meal. It's about seasoning from the outset. When I was cooking classical French cuisine, my mentors would be angry if our sauces weren't seasoned from the start — they could taste it immediately."

The next lesson, then, is about tasting and adjusting after the addition of each ingredient, rather than following a recipe down to the last comma splice.

For example, if you're making anything that involves onions, leeks, or shallots, then you should sprinkle them with salt as they cook, which helps extract moisture faster and gives a more even browning.

Taste and adjust after adding wine or tomatoes and after arguing with your partner about whether toast or crumpets are the better vehicle for butter. Once everything is added, taste and season your dish periodically as its character changes over time.

Of course, the amount of salt you'll want is down to personal preference — something Couth said he had to grapple with after leaving a professional kitchen where the salinity of each dish was predetermined by the palate of the head chef.

"Recipes which specify exact qualities of salt are about someone else's taste rather than your own," he said. "When you're cooking for yourself, getting the confidence up to know what you like is very important."

Part of building up that confidence forms the third lesson ...

There are different kinds of saltiness you can work with

Samin Nosrat's phenomenal book "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" explores this idea in breathtaking detail.

In a nutshell, Nosrat emphasizes that it's worth thinking about what sort of saltiness you're after — meaty, smoky, light, vegetal — and use saline ingredients such as soy sauce, hard cheeses, and cured meats to add nuance to a dish.

If you're nervous about this, I recommend you start by breaking up a few canned anchovies with your onions when making a ragu. You won't notice any explicit fishiness, just a background depth you won't get from salt alone.

Carbs should be salted way more than you think

Rule four is all about those carbs.

You should use "cupfuls" of table salt to season large quantities of pasta water, said Couth.

Salting water for pasta, gnocchi, potatoes, and other grains enables the carbohydrate to be seasoned from the inside out as it absorbs the cooking water. The salt eliminates any blandness in the final dish, and builds up that depth from the very start.

As a guide, your pasta water should offer five-star accommodation for most fish — as salty as the ocean and utterly undrinkable.

And don't forget to think about how the salt impacts your food's texture

The last thing to bear in mind is that salt affects the water content of food via osmosis, which can have delicious consequences for texture.

The best way to demonstrate this is to allow your meat to spend some private time giving itself to a whole bunch of salt (possibly flirting with some herbs and spices, too) before you cook it.

This process, dry brining, draws out surface water but locks in internal moisture, resulting in a perfectly crispy skin or sear, and a well-seasoned, moist middle.

Even a good dusting of salt on your joint of meat half an hour before it sees any heat will make some difference — but for better results, let the meat and salt begin their romance slowly and dry brine for a few hours.

Now you're initiated as a Salt Club student, it's time to take to the kitchen, channel your inner Salt Bae, and turn up the seasoning until that pig in stilettos dances across your brain, too.