500 Low Sodium Recipes (3 page)

Let me give you just a little bit of my history.

I’ve enjoyed cooking most of my life. I guess I started in seriously about the time my mother went back to work when I was 12 or so. In those days it was simple stuff like burgers and hot dogs and spaghetti. But the interest stayed. After I married my wife, we got pretty involved in some food-related stuff—growing vegetables in our garden, making bread and other baked goods, canning, and jellymaking—that kind of thing. She always said that my “mad chemist” cooking was an outgrowth of the time I spent in college as a chemistry major, and she might be right.

Then in early 1999 a cough that wouldn’t go away became a diagnosis of congestive heart failure. Rather scary, as you can imagine. Fortunately, I’m now at a point where I really don’t restrict what I do very much, thanks to a combination of medication and diet. But one of the first, and biggest, things I had to deal with was the doctor’s insistence that I follow a low sodium diet—1200 mg a day or less. I became a nutrition label reader. At first, like many people, I found it easiest to just avoid the things that had a lot of sodium in them. We had a lot of meals of plain meat, plain vegetables, and plain potatoes, pasta, or rice. But I was bored. And I was convinced that there had to be a way to create low sodium versions of the food I missed—Chinese food, pizza, sausage—so I learned all kinds of new cooking things. I researched where to get low sodium substitutes for the things that I couldn’t have any more, bought cookbooks, and basically redid my whole diet. I learned to make from scratch a number of things that were hard to find in low sodium versions. The list includes things like barbecue sauce, spaghetti sauce, mustard, salad dressings, soup (yes, I made my own “condensed cream of whatever” soup for recipes), shake and bake—in short, almost anything that I used to buy conveniently in a box or can.

Along the way I’ve learned some things: what works and what doesn’t, what books to trust, what stores carry what products, what items have hidden sodium in them. I’ve been
able to track down some sources for low sodium versions of a lot of the products I was making from scratch.

And I decided to try to share this information with others who may in the same position I was in … bored with tasteless food or ready to give up on their low sodium diet and go back to their old ways. I started a website,
www.lowsodiumcooking.com
, to share recipes and information. I sent out an e-mail newsletter with new recipes that now has almost 15,000 subscribers. And I’ve created this book.

Chapter 1
: All About Low Sodium Ingredients will discuss a lot of the things I’ve learned about creating low sodium recipes. And the recipes themselves will teach you how to have the foods that you thought you had to give up forever.

I guess the answer to that question is that there’s good news and bad news.

The first good news is that salt is an acquired taste. We learn to expect and like a certain amount of salty flavor in our foods, but we can also learn to like the taste of foods without salt. It does take some time, so you have to stick with your low sodium diet even when you really want to add some salt. Most experts say it takes about 4 to 6 weeks, and that is what I experienced. By the time I’d been on my 1200-mg-a-day diet for a month, I no longer wanted that salty taste. Today a “normal” salted potato chip tastes way too salty to me.

The second good news is that there are low sodium substitutes for almost all high-sodium foods. If you are careful, you can make a low sodium version of just about any recipe you ever made. The 500 recipes in this book will not only give you a great start on recipes that I’ve already created and taste-tested, but they will help to show you the ingredients and techniques for creating your own low sodium recipes.

The bad news is you are probably going to have to work a little more. Throwing the microwave macaroni and cheese packet (640 mg) in the oven for lunch or having the styrofoam cup of instant noodles (over 1300 mg) isn’t going to be an option. Neither is the packaged rice pilaf with almost 1100 mg per serving going to be an option for dinner. But with 5 extra minutes of chopping a few onions and adding a few spices to plain rice, you can make a rice pilaf just as good.

The other bad news is that there are a few things where there just isn’t a low sodium substitute or version. If you’ve always had corned beef for St. Patrick’s Day, you’re going to have to consider an alternative.

Finally, there is the question I’m often asked about eating out. This is kind of a good news, bad news thing too, especially with fast-food restaurants. First the good news … most fast food restaurants now post nutritional information for their offerings. And there are more and more menu items that may fit into your diet. In most cases they will be things like salads and baked potatoes and not the sandwiches and other main fare, but at least you do have an option. There are ways you can enjoy a meal away from home in most restaurants without blowing your diet. Many restaurants are very helpful in identifying low sodium choices and in making sure that salt or salt-containing seasonings are not added to your food. Many chains have standard recipes that can’t be varied. In some cases the seasonings come already mixed into the offerings. Asian and Italian restaurants are often difficult because many of the sauces are made ahead of time in big batches, so they can’t be adjusted. Your best choice there would be to ask that the sauce be omitted.

Here are a few tips that should help you get a low sodium meal at a restaurant:

• Locally owned restaurants generally seem to be better at making special-order meals than chains.

• I’ve had the best luck with grills or steak houses where you can almost always get a piece of unseasoned grilled meat and a baked potato.

• Be careful of the salad dressing. It’s best to get it on the side and only add a little or pack a little plastic container of one of your homemade ones to take along.

• Taking along a shaker of your favorite spice blend is also a good idea.

The ingredients you use have a significant effect on the amount of sodium in recipes. In many cases you’ll have to make a choice about ingredients that can make the difference between a recipe that is low in sodium and one that isn’t. This chapter will help you understand what low sodium ingredients are, where to find them, and how to determine whether ingredients are indeed low sodium (since some of these nutrition labels can be somewhat misleading).

low sodium ingredients are one way of reducing the amount of sodium in a recipe. (Another way is leaving out things that are high in sodium, like salt.)

Low sodium ingredients can take several forms. The simplest case involves being choosy about what ingredients you buy. Many items now are available in “no-salt-added” versions. This includes things like canned vegetables and beans, broths and bouillon, and spice blends.

In other cases you may be able to find a slightly different product that is meant as a replacement for high sodium ones. There are sodium-free versions of items such as baking powder and baking soda that traditionally contain a lot of sodium.

The last category of low sodium ingredients is those you make yourself. Some items are just impossible to find in a low sodium version or are much more expensive. In those cases you may want to consider making your own low sodium version. I’ve included recipes for some of these in
Chapter 4
: Basic Ingredients (Can’t Find It? Make It!).

A number of salt substitutes are available on the market. In many cases, these products replace the sodium chloride with potassium chloride. This has several potential drawbacks. Some medical conditions may require you to limit potassium as well as sodium, so these products would not be acceptable. Also, potassium chloride tends to have a metallic aftertaste that many people object to. Some of the newer products have other ingredients in addition to the potassium chloride, so the aftertaste is less noticeable.

I’ve personally never used salt substitutes. In the first place I wasn’t fond of the flavor. I also thought that they might interfere with the process of getting used to the taste of food without salt. I don’t really know if it’s true or not, but it seemed to me that in order to lose the desire for salty flavor, you should give up everything that is salty tasting, even things such as salt substitutes that do not contain sodium. You’ll need to decide whether these products are right for you, with the help of your medical professional.

The first place to look for low sodium ingredients is in your local grocery stores. I can’t tell you what may be available at your local market, wherever in the world you may be, but I find a number of low sodium ingredients locally. I shop at several of the large supermarket chains, a couple of discount clubs, and one local store. I buy many of the items I use at one of these places. They all carry different things, but between them I find quite a few low sodium items. I also stop by my local health food store occasionally. Since many of the manufacturers involved in organic products also tend to make salt-free ones, you’ll find health food stores to be a good source, especially for spices and canned products. Any of these stores, either the grocery or health food ones, carry what they think will sell, and the store manager has some discretion in choosing those items. So letting your store manager know that you want low sodium items stocked may help. I’ve seen cases where a manager will order something new for you and others where they don’t, because they feel the space could be used for something that more people want. It never hurts to ask.

Another great source of low sodium foods is stores that specialize in organic and gourmet foods like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. If you live near one of these, or some similar store, you should definitely check them out. You can get a list of locations from their websites.

I’m going to mention a couple of online sources because they carry a large variety of low sodium items. First is Healthy Heart Market at
www.healthyheartmarket.com
. They specialize in low sodium items and carry some things that you probably didn’t even know came in low sodium versions. Pete Eiden, who founded Healthy Heart Market, is a congestive heart failure patient who saw a need to provide low sodium products for people like him who needed to maintain a low sodium lifestyle. He is a great guy, and actually got me started sharing this information when he published one of my recipes in his newsletter. You can read his medical story on his website. Healthy Heart Market ships to the United States or Canada.

The second online source that I use often is Salt Watcher at
www.saltwatcher.com
. Gayle Michler, the founder, is a registered nurse who saw a need for easy access to low sodium products. She also carries a large variety of all low sodium items, including some deli items and cheeses, as well as other hard-to-find items. At this time Salt Watcher only ships to the United States, but you might want to check the site to see if that has changed since I wrote this.

The service at both of these sites is great, the prices and shipping costs are reasonable, and the selection is extensive. Besides that, it makes good sense to patronize those places thatare striving to make a living providing the products that we all need and often find difficult to locate. It’s a win for both sides.

If you haven’t already done this, I would suggest that one of the most useful things you can do is to take an hour or two and spend them just wandering up and down the aisles of your local supermarket, picking up things you would normally use and reading the labels. Take a pad of paper and pen and take notes, so you can remember what low sodium items you found. Not only will this get you started in thinking about how much sodium is in certain foods, but also if you check different brands or types of the same food, you’ll often find that one has a lot less sodium than the others.

Some things are almost always high in sodium.

• canned vegetables

• prepared foods like canned soup and chili

• packaged mixes

• frozen meals and entrees

• cured meats like ham and bacon

• sauces and salad dressings

You may find low sodium versions of some of those if you look. Our local stores here in southern Maryland, for instance, all carry no-salt-added canned tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste. low sodium versions of other items like chili and soups are harder to find. As always, read the labels carefully.

The following are the rules for sodium labeling in the United States established by the Food and Drug Administration.

FDA Rules for Sodium Labeling in the United States