Beginning the low-salt journey

[Mike Nolan]

Yes, welcome back Mike.

[cwcdesign]

Me three - welcome back Mike!

[cwcdesign]

I like salt, but I have found recently that I have been cutting back, just trying to use it to enhance the flavor rather than blindly throwing it in. I find that Ina Garten uses a lot of salt so I almost always halve the amount in her recipes.

I also use kosher salt a lot, even in baking, but if a recipe calls for a teaspoon of salt, I’ll do a teaspoon of kosher salt, even though “they” say you should use more kosher because of the size of the crystals. I haven’t checked the nutritional values but I wonder if a teaspoon of kosher salt has less sodium than a teaspoon of table salt. It probably wouldn’t be much, but hey

[BakerAunt]

Most of us are salt junkies because so much of what we have been eating contains a lot of salt. I'm glad that we are exploring ways of cutting it back. When I made my roast yesterday, I sprinkled it with Tsardust seasoning from Penzey's, which was either a free sample or came in a gift someone gave me. We liked the flavor in stew. I looked at the ingredients, and on that one, the first listed is salt. Sigh. The roast did seem slightly salty to me; I also used 1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce and 1 Tbs. tomato paste, so I know that those have salt. I did not add any salt. I will look at the ingredients on the Tsardust and see if I can emulate some of the flavors without the salt. I think that the cinnamon, which I would not think to use with a roast, is one of the flavors we are liking in it.

[Italiancook]

I checked the poultry seasoning yesterday before using it. Was surprised to see that nutmeg is one of the ingredients. So I guess I like nutmeg on chicken.

[Mike Nolan]

Most of the cooking schools teach cooks to add salt several times throughout the cooking process, it's no wonder that their recipes are incredibly salty! Alton Brown, whom my older son adores, is one of the worst offenders. Some people, myself included, often refer to the Culinary Institute of America as the Sodium Institute of America.

It cracks me up to see something labeled as 'healthy' in the store and then see that it has 900 or more mg of sodium per serving. I'm especially leery of the 'low fat' versions of foods, because they often have higher salt content that the regular versions. (I guess it needs more salt to replace the fat taste.)

Graham Kerr, who many of us may remember from the Galloping Gourmet shows back in the 70's, had a heart attack and subsequently revised and republished a lot of his recipes to lower both the fat and salt content. But I don't think those later books sold as well, because they were a bit preachy.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Alton Brown has changed quite a bit since his Good Eats days. He found he was getting fat and unhealthy. He has supposedly changed his cooking/eating habits quite a bit since then but I haven't seen him doing anything new other than being a host of shows where others cook.

A chef I knew years ago advocated taking all your spices and dividing them in 3rds and adding them at the beginning, middle, and end of cooking because adding spices at different times effects the flavors versus adding them all at once. I'm not sure if his recipes were too salty or not. But if you decide you want a tsp of salt or 12 mg and then divide it in thirds you wouldn't be adding extra salt. He trained at the CA Culinary Institute.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm not sure what you meant, Aaron, but a teaspoon of salt is about 5690 milligrams (2300 mg of sodium), not 12.

Some aromatics need to be added later in the cooking cycle because they either dissipate if added too soon or turn bitter if cooked for a long time. Vanilla is always added at the end, and basil will turn bitter if added too soon. By contrast, bay leaf needs to be added early in the cooking cycle, because it has to be cooked a long time to extract the flavor.

Onion if added early will caramelize and turn sweeter, if added towards the end it retains more of the sharp ohion flavor.

Salt is a complicated ingredient, it has culinary purposes beyond just flavor. Because it is hygroscopic (it absorbs water), it affects the food it's added to. For example, it is commonplace to 'sweat' vegetables like zucchini or eggplant by sprinkling them with salt to extract the moisture. What I don't know is whether if you then rinse them off if that removes most of the salt. I'll have to do some research into that.

Similarly, adding salt to bread dough will tighten the dough considerably. Kidpizza/Cass is one of many bakers who recommend waiting until towards the end of the mixing cycle to add salt to bread.

[skeptic7]

Mike;
How do you deal with recipes that call for brining foods? America's Test Kitchen seem addicted to the procedre. I mainly ignore it. I look at recipes that call for coating beef or chicken with kosher salt a day before roasting and just skip the procedure. I had a recipe that called for grinding juniper and fennel and allspice and peppercorns and rubbing that on a beef brisket. This was actually quite tasty but the flavors didn't penetrate very far in. ATK claims that brining makes meat more juicy.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't brine foods, so it hasn't been an issue for me. Many marinades are also a bit on the salty side, but I haven't done much of that lately, either.

Alton was big on brining, too, I wonder if he's changed his mind on that? Graham Kerr wrote a few books after his wife's stroke and heart attack on his 'minimax' approach to cooking, but I don't think they were big sellers, the one I looked at was a bit preachy. (One thing I've found in my own cooking is that my wife doesn't like it if I talk about how I'm not using salt, so instead I've been just talking about the spices and techniques I'm using to add flavor. She hasn't noticed that I cut the salt in my honey wheat bread in half.)

I suspect brining doesn't really add that much salt, because it only penetrates the surface a bit. Injection of salty broths could be a bigger problem with things like turkeys.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I found a couple of interesting articles on salt.

One is how salt and pepper became SALT and PEPPER.

The other is about how our taste buds dull with age...<sniff>

I had another question that someone who is better at chemistry than I can answer. If I remember my high school chemistry correctly when you combine an acid and a base the reaction leaves you with water and a salt. Since baking soda is usually sodium bicarbonate when it mixes with an acid does it release sodium into your dish and if it does is it enough to be significant?

[Mike Nolan]

By definition a salt is what you get when you combine an acid with a base and the hydrogen in the acid is replaced by the metal (or cation) in the base. (NaCl is a salt, but there are many other salts.) There can be other by-products when you combine an acid and a base. (For example, combine vinegar and baking soda and you will get lots of carbon dioxide.)

According to the cardiology web sites, I'm supposed to count all forms of sodium, including things like sodium bicarbonate and the small amount of sodium present in flour. That's why I just bought some low-sodium baking powder to try out.

[BakerAunt]

Combining vinegar and baking soda helps keep the sink drain pipe clear. 🙂

I actually started reducing the salt in recipes that call for baking soda. For my cornbread, I cut the salt in half.

[Mike Nolan]

I find pouring a cup of bleach down the drain every few weeks works pretty good, too. But if you have a septic tank, I'm not sure if that's recommended or not.

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