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How do we build flavor without salt?
The key is to enhance with other natural flavors:
1. Work with fresh produce and fresh ingredients.
2. Use your aromatics! You can add more garlic, onion, and dry spices than you probably think.
3. Herby flavor is better than no flavor and tastes excellent!
4. Balance the flavors that you have. Pump up the acid, sweet, and spiciness of the dish.
How do we resist the urge for takeout?
We learned to cook our favorite takeout dishes, but made them low sodium:
Meal planning helps us cook a variety on dishes throughout the week, so it feels like we are eating a different cuisine everyday.
Other low sodium resources available are focused strictly on the sodium amounts and not necessarily the variety of the cuisine nor the tastiness of the food.
What about the foods we love?
Lets face it; who doesnt love bacon?
Know your high sodium foods. This may take time at the beginning. Nutrition information is on the food label. If you are buying fresh produce or proteins, you can look up the sodium amounts on USDA Food Data Central https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
Eat these higher sodium foods in moderation. Moderation meaning have one serving every two weeks/month or carefully measuring the ingredient when using it (no free pouring these ingredients). You will savor the bacon that much more when you have it.
Know your sneaky sodium foods and try to reduce the sodium in this catagory as much as possible. Anything processed probably has added salt in it: store-bought bread, canned foods, prepared meals, frozen foods, store bought sauces and dressings, cheeses, deli meats, sports drinks, and snacks.
Many of these store-bought foods can be made salt-free at home. We cannot live without bread and bread does rise and bake normally without added salt when made at home. Additionally, look for the low sodium alternatives and "no-salt added" products in the store. We want all the sodium to be intentional. We would rather spend our sodium points on very flavorful ingredients like bacon, worcestshire and fish sauce than on bread and canned beans.
What if a component of the plate is bland?
Have you tried sauces or dips?
For example, french fries are bland without salt. Sauces and dips will help make those french fries really tasty.
Check out the sauces and dressings section for recipes. You can top some of these sauces on pretty much anything and the salad dressings are good for tossing on plain vegetables.
Our Low Sodium Essentials
Appliances:
Bread Machine. Making bread is incredibly inconvenient and messy. We have found bread machines very easy to use and makes great sandwich bread and doughs. No more sneaky store bought bread sodium. Load up the ingredients and select a setting to start. Our bread machine also has a delayed start function, so we can add the ingredients to the machine the night before and set the machine to start baking at 4am. Bread will be ready when we wake up.
Instant Pot. Making stocks and using dry beans is also low hanging fruit to reduce sodium. Instant pots speed up the time to make these to 40 minutes. Stocks usually take 8 hours and dry beans require overnight soaking. No more canned broth and beans.
Canning Equipment. This is mainly for canning tomato sauce and other sauces, but we use this equipment to home can our fruit too. Canning equipment is only necessary if you have access to large bulk purchases of produce.
Pantry:
Less Sodium Coconut Aminos. Replaces Soy sauce and does a very good job. We tried using other soy sauce replacement recipes using vinegar and molasses, but none taste remotely similar to soy sauce to us. We use Coconut Secret Coconut Aminos.
Vegetarian Fish Sauce: Uses Shitake Mushrooms for the added umami and savoriness.
Low Sodium Worcestshire Sauce: Adds some savoriness only with less sodium.