About Sodium Substitutes:

 

First off, I am not a nutritionist or dietitian. Consult your doctor if you plan to change your diet. This is a compilation of information I’ve found in various places, that I’ve applied to my own recipes.

 

Table Salt:

A tea spoon of regular table salt contains about 2315mg of sodium, so it’s very convenient that the CDC recommends that adults consume no more than 2300mg of salt per day. A teaspoon may seem like a lot, when you think about just the stuff you sprinkle on your food. But if you have a look at what’s in your pantry you might get a bit of sticker shock. Your average slice of white bread contains about 180mg of sodium. I’m talking one slice of plain bread. A few slices of ham, ca. 600mg of sodium, a couple of slices of American cheese, another 900mg, a little mayo, 40mg… Voilá, 1800mg of sodium in a very, very boring ham and cheese sandwich. Say, you top that off with a slice of chocolate cake at 400mg of sodium per portion (Surprise! Baking soda contains 1260mg of sodium per tea spoon), and you’ve got your sodium intake for an entire day. Monitoring sodium intake sucks. While I’ve spent a lot of time cussing about it, I’ve spent more time figuring out alternatives.

 

Alternative One: Other Table Salts

While Kosher Salt or Pink Himalayan Rock Salt have the exact same amount of sodium, pound for pound, as your diner style table salt, they do not have the same fine ground shape. Larger salt grains means larger air pockets, more air per tea spoon means less sodium. Depending on how roughly ground the salt is, Kosher and Himalayan Salt are about 1500 to 1800mg of sodium per teaspoon.

The effect those types of table salt have on me are more psychological than anything else. Occasionally I still want to add a couple of good wrist shakes of salt on top of a meal. Those wrist shakes come out to roughly 100mg of sodium in Kosher Salt, but 250mg in fine Table Salt. There is not much noticeable difference in taste, but my brain is satisfied that I’ve added a dash of salt to my meal.

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Alternative Two: More Herbs and Spices

I’m not joking. Simply adding more flavor otherwise to food you make will drastically lower how much salt you want to add to it. So add that extra garlic and onion, more cumin or basil!

Conversely, foods that are inherently bland will require more love to spruce them up. In Sodiumland, chicken is not the healthy alternative. Meat aisle chicken does not taste like terribly much, and requires many  more spices and flavorings compared to, say, pork. Don’t even get me started on rice or potatoes…

 

Alternative Three: Your friend Vinegar

Vinegars come in a delightful range of flavors, white wine, red wine, rice wine, balsamic, apple cider, etc. I recommend marinating meats in vinegar based concoctions instead of brining meat. It’s tastier and requires zero salt. Vinegar can also be added to a variety of different sauces to spice them up and lower the sodium. Also, go ahead and look at the sodium content of that store bought bottle of salad dressing you have in the fridge. Chances are there’s quite a bit of salt in there. Why? Just why? It’s completely unnecessary.

 

Alternative Four: Citrus

Just like vinegar, the acid in many citrus fruits is both sour and tangy. It works wonders in marinades for meats and especially fish, and unlike vinegar can also be generously spritzed over a dish. I’m sure you can think of a few dishes that call for some added lemon or lime juice, try substituting salt altogether with citrus. Who needs salt in guacamole anyway, when a little lime juice and the vinegar in a good hot sauce more than make up the difference?

 

Alternative Five: Potassium Chloride

Now we’re actually talking about chemical substitutes to regular table salt. Potassium Chloride, Natrium Chloride’s bigger metal cousin, has almost the exact same chemical structure as table salt, but zero sodium. The noted difference is, that you can unfortunately taste that it is actually a metal compound. Nonetheless, there are ways in which it can be used as a sodium free alternative to salt. Foremost, you cannot simply sprinkle it atop a finished meal and pretend it’s salt. (Sure, of course you can, but your taste buds would have to be in serious denial.) In small doses, mixed well into food, it’s a fine alternative to salt. In theory, potassium chloride can be used one to one instead of table salt. In my experience that gives food a noted metallic tinge. A better idea is to use part table salt (30%), part potassium (70%) in sauces, soups, purees, fine cut veggies... Potassium can be found at many major supermarkets, usually tucked away next to the actual salt. (Look for brands such as Morton’s or NoSalt.)

And in case you were wondering, it should not be used in brines or marinades, for the simple reason that it is pointless. The molecular structure of Potassium Chloride is too large to penetrate meat, unlike Natrium Chloride, and offers no help in acid based marinades either.

 

Alternative Six: MonoSodiumGlutamate

Hear me out! I know MSG gets a bad rap, it is entirely unwarranted (and a little racist). MSG is not exactly a Salt substitute like Potassium Chloride, since it does contain some sodium. But as the name somewhat indicates, it’s just a lonely mono sodium in all that glutamate – a teaspoon of MSG contains about 1/3 the amount of sodium of table salt. That’s about 700mg per teaspoon. Furthermore, MSG is awesome. Imagine the taste of salty bacon without the bacon (sounds weird, I know). It tastes a little salty and a little indistinguishably fatty. On it’s own, it just tastes weird. Sprinkled atop food, it tastes equally as weird. Mixed into sauces and purees and soups, it’s the bomb. Because it adds a particular depth of flavor, there is no need to double or triple the amount to make up for less salt.

Unlike Potassium Chloride, which simple doesn’t taste good when just sprinkled onto anything, MSG can be used in dry rubs for meats or fish when combined with other spices and subsequently cooked.

 

Conclusion:

This is, of course, not an exhaustive list of sodium alternatives and substitutes, but rather my introductory rambling about how to lower your sodium intake in foods cooked at home. Eating completely sodium free is impossible and not even healthy. However lowering one’s daily intake can make a big difference in cardiovascular health.

If I had to give a rule of thumb in how I personally tend to cook with these substitutes it would go something as follows: If citrus or vinegar are not enough or not an option, I use 2 parts Potassium Chloride, 2 parts MSG, and 1 part Kosher Salt. This mix is of course not recommended for every dish, but generally works well for sauces and soups.

Cooking low sodium also means cooking from scratch, which can be a hassle and time consuming. So that’s where the idea for the MothaSauce comes in handy. One big batch of already super low sodium base, to be spruced up as desired.

All other recipes featured here are simple things I like and wanted to share. Of course they are low sodium as well.