Food culture Home and Corparate

At home when my mom cooks I'm not usually home but when am there I notice that when she makes rice she puts in a pot of water first and boils it for a while. After that she drains the water out of the pot by putting it into a bowl that allows the water to come out and leaves the rice in the bowl. While she soaks the rice in the pot what I notice is that she puts salt and other seasonings into the pot while it boils. One day I ask her why she does that and she told me to give it flavor and I was surprised  to find out that is how some of the food we eat get flavor. Also when she makes the chicken I notice that the water she uses to cook the chicken with is used as the gravy and she also puts seasoning into the pot to give the gravy flavor. The people in the U.S. do their food similar to the way my mom does it but they also do it based on how there religion looks at different ways to make food. What I also notice is that people use different ingredients to make their food taste a certain way and I think its interesting the different ways people use different "chemicals" to give their food taste.