4 Ways to Cut Back on Salt

They can take the salt from my cold, dead (probz sodium overdose :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:) hands.

But maybe helpful for thems who need to cut down.

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I’m with you. All my favorite foods are savory, and skew a little salty. People can have all the chocolate, and I’ll hoard all my chips and crunchy savory snacks. It will be right next to my trucks of bread and carbs.

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Plain herbs and spices helps a lot. But I often use way less salt than some recipes call for. Depends on the dish. You can always add some near the end if your taste-test proves bland. Harder to take away, other than adding more of everything except the salt.

Commercial herb/spice blends often have salt first on their ingredient list (including my beloved Penzeys blends). So I’ll look at a mix if I’m interested in it and note the ingredient list and its order and try and come up with my own - cutting WAY back on the salt.

Most commercial rubs you buy are salt-forward, and are usually WAY WAY too salty for me. I’d rather make my own and control it.

Processed foods - I try and avoid them 80% of the time, maybe more. But I’ll have a frozen pizza on occasion, or a Rana fresh pasta item. I don’t often buy deli meats - usually enough for 3 sandwiches in a given week, but then I will go for months without buying them.

But you will take commercially made bread and bagels from my cold, dead hands.

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I don’t think I’ve ever measured salt, sugar, or other spices/herbs I add to my food. But I rarely follow recipes :slight_smile:

I measure for baking. But if something calls for a tsp of dried thyme, 1/2 tsp of salt, 1/2 tsp ground pepper, etc., it’s all poured into my palm or on to a mise dish - all done by eyeball. And with herbs, I often add a good bit more.

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I trust my eyeballs, but not my baking skillz. I hate measuring shit.

My PIC does the baking, and he is def a recipe follower :slight_smile:

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It must be 25+ years since I took the plunge to cut back on salt (even before I stopped smoking and drinking alcohol). I no longer cook with salt, nor do I add to my own plate. I found I missed it for about the first month but, after that, It’s been fine. Now if something comes salted, I find it’s pretty much all I can taste.

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Wow. I can’t imagine not using any salt, ever, but I suppose one can get used to almost anything.

Glad it works for you and your palate.

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I’m the exact opposite: The amounts called for in a lot of the savory recipes I look at are way too little for my taste. America’s Test Kitchen especially; I regularly need to double whatever is specified in their recipes. I drink a lot of water and do a lot of cardio, so I hope I’m offsetting any damage, but I’m definitely well above the RDA for salt consumption and have no plans to stop. (Blood pressure is well within normal range!)

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I’m definitely a fan of salty vs. sweet, but the one thing that helped me cut back on salt was being without it. A few years ago, we had a really bad water leak in our house and had to move to a residence hotel for a couple of months. We had a kitchenette and ate variety of things I cooked, and prepared foods from a local market. I kept forgetting to buy salt and finally stopped thinking about it. I realize that the prepared foods had plenty of salt, but I really cut back on adding salt to everything like I used to, and it changed my palate. Since then, I still use a little salt on things like meat, pasta water, and eggs, but way less than I used to. I wouldn’t recommend this experience, but it worked!

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From the article:
While you can cut back on table salt when cooking, [about 70 percent] of the sodium you eat comes from packaged, prepared or restaurant foods.

I find a lot of prepared foods way too salty. When I cook, I salt lightly during the cooking process and almost never add salt at the table. In many cases, I find using about half the salt called for in recipes is sufficient for them to taste good.

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I cook from scratch 99% of the time, so I’m not really worried about the sodium in prepared, packaged, or restaurant foods :slight_smile:

And while I may salt generously, it still doesn’t amount to … unhealthy amounts.

I am trying to cut back on salt, primarily for the parental unit, but I’m also hoping to benefit. I am often frustrated by recipes that serm healthy in every other way, but have a ton of sodium per serving in them. Then i took a look at the box of iodized salt in the kitchen and figured it out. Even a tiny bit of salt contains a lot of sodium. So even if you don’t use packaged food, if you use any bit of salt (like salting chicken), that’s a good part of it.

Anyway, we’re cutting a lot of packaged things out, and looking for good substitutes, but it very frustrating sometimes. One of the comments suggests getting bread at a bakery for lower sodium bread: I had been getting some really good rye bread at an out of town bakery before we started to try and cut sodium. So, the next time I was there, I asked about sodium and it was loaded with it! More than double, or maybe even triple, the regular bread we bought at the store.

Also condiments: not just ketchup, bur everything!

An endless amount of work. I have to figure out what to do about soy sauce. Even the low sodium soy sauce isn’t. We don’t use it a lot anyway, but sometimes it will be a major component of a recipe I want to make.

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that any restaurant food will automatically be very high in sodium, so I figure besides minimizing those meals (better for me and the parental unit anyway), I should do my best at home.

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some more ideas here

Lower salt dining out, post salty meal recovery

Low-salt cooking

Low Sodium

Sodium in cold cuts

Help me with low sodium meatball recipe

Less Salty Take-out Food in the Greater Toronto Area

I barely use any sea salt or table salt at home.

I keep modifying my cooking style, and what I order when I’m dining out.

I actually need to increase the amount of sodium in my diet.