Low sodium recipes

[prairiewindmomma]

We’re aiming for under <400mg per person of sodium per meal.

Recipes and meal ideas welcome, please. 

Edited October 25, 2021 by prairiewindmomma

[PeterPan]

Well I can tell you a pro tip from my no salt congestive heart failure relative--ANGEL FOOD CAKE. And you can mix it with a can of pineapple, etc. for variety.

Beyond that, well I tend to cook whole foods and not add salt, only what is in the broth. So it's just how severe you're willing to go. I eat split pea soup with straight water or part water part broth. 

Trader Joes has some nice salt substitutes and spice blends.

[prairiewindmomma]

I think part of what is throwing me is even if I am looking at something like chicken + veg, I am starting off with 200mg just from the 4oz chicken thigh portion if I am using chicken from Costco (preserved with 8% kosher sea salt). Even my very clean, very allergy friendly whole food meals seem to have a cumulative sodium issue. 
 

I don’t think I can hack split pea soup cooked with water. I’d rather continue living on clementines and sugar snap peas. Lol.

[Selkie]

I cook a lot and never use salt, but I use a lot of spices and salt-free blends. A whole food plant based diet is naturally low in sodium.

Chicken is one of the top sources of sodium for Americans, because it is injected full of salt and other additives before being sold.

[prairiewindmomma]

27 minutes ago, Selkie said:

I cook a lot and never use salt, but I use a lot of spices and salt-free blends. A whole food plant based diet is naturally low in sodium.

Chicken is one of the top sources of sodium for Americans, because it is injected full of salt and other additives before being sold.

Do you have some good plant based meals that are coconut free (including coconut oil), dairy free, lower carb, and nut free? Dh can’t tolerate pasta or potatoes without a glucose swing, but we can do limited amounts of beans or brown rice. We are already doing salads for lunch, so I am hoping to expand our supper time repertoire. In my earlier post I was thinking just of feeding Dh and I but if I could find meals that could accommodate everyone, so much the better.

Edited October 25, 2021 by prairiewindmomma

[lewelma]

I can't eat much of the meat/chicken in the USA because they inject it with salt.  I end up having mostly a vegetarian diet and then spending the extra money to buy salt-free meat, which in the US means that it is typically organic. They inject the meat with salt so it holds more water and they can sell it for more. 

Besides that, I use regular recipes but buy salt free can goods, and don't add any salt to any dish.

I do not season with soy sauce, tamari, fish sauce, or any seasoning pack. I season with my own mixture so I can control the salt.

For cookies, cakes, muffins etc, with American cookbooks you simply cut the salt AND sugar in half. The two balance each other, so you have to cut both and you won't notice a difference. Also, baking soda is super high in sodium. So I use baking power and just accept that some things won't be a puffy.

I do not buy processed products, like humus, salad dressings, or pasta sauces, but rather I make my own.

I do not eat cured  hams, deli meats, pickles, olives, cheese, because they have too much salt that really can't be removed. 

I don't eat soup. Soup is incredibly high in salt, and if you make it low salt, it doesn't taste all that great to most people. Kind of like bread, it has to have salt. 

I can't eat bread, but my husband makes all our bread so he can cut the salt. Store bought bread is very high in salt.  I make masa cakes every morning for breakfast (and freeze the extras), and add only a pinch of salt for 2 cakes. 

I drink a lot of water.

At restaurants, I eat mostly salad because all food in American restaurants is salty by design, and they can't remove it even if you ask.

But make sure that that 1000mg does include some iodine. I make sure that I use iodized salt, not sea salt, when I do use salt. 

Basically, I make my own food from basic ingredients and sit at about 1000mg per day. This effort plus dropping my sugar to 10g per day has gotten rid of my agonizing leg pains.

 

Edited October 25, 2021 by lewelma

[lewelma]

19 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Do you have some good plant based meals that are coconut free (including coconut oil), dairy free, lower carb, and nut free? 

This is basically all I eat except for I season with some meat in most meals. I am gluten and dairy intolerant. Plus very low salt and sugar.

Last night: chicken and bean tacos with my own seasoning so little salt. I didn't have the cheese but rather used avacado for fat. We buy the ingredients for taco seasoning from a bulk store and mix our own low-salt variety in quart size batches. Taco seasoning is great on everything!

Night before: Stir-fry with salt free chicken, with TONS of vegis, seasoned with onions, garlic, and ginger. My family added some soy sauce to theirs. I eat it over wild rice because it is less dense than brown/white rice. I buy wild rice in bulk, cook it in bulk, and freeze it. Then I just take out the portion I want. Wild rice does take over an hour to cook, so cooking it in bulk saves time and energy.

Before that: Chili with salt free meat and salt free tomatoes. I bulk it up with onions, peppers, and beans. I make my own crackers out of masa.

Edited October 25, 2021 by lewelma

[Selkie]

1 hour ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Do you have some good plant based meals that are coconut free (including coconut oil), dairy free, lower carb, and nut free? Dh can’t tolerate pasta or potatoes without a glucose swing, but we can do limited amounts of beans or brown rice. We are already doing salads for lunch, so I am hoping to expand our supper time repertoire. In my earlier post I was thinking just of feeding Dh and I but if I could find meals that could accommodate everyone, so much the better.

Here are a few sites that have loads of plant based recipes and are sure to have some that would work for you.

https://monkeyandmekitchenadventures.com

https://www.forksoverknives.com

https://minimalistbaker.com

 

[Kareni]

Do you have a Trader Joe's nearby? We purchase a number of their products such as ~

NSA tuna

Sesame seed bagels (190 mg each). Some brands are over 500mg each. Some of the other TJ styles are much higher.

Gyro meat (140mg per slice)

Pita bread (80mg each, I think)

Low sodium chicken broth

English muffins (~80mg each)

They also have a NSA marinara and salsa, but my husband can no longer eat tomato.

Regards,

Kareni

[Kareni]

My husband bakes with Ener-G brand baking soda and baking powder; both are sodium free. (The other popular lower sodium brand, Hain Featherweight, is high in potassium which we try to avoid.) Be aware that you must use twice the standard amount and some items do not brown.

https://www.ener-g.com/search?q=Baking+soda

Regards,

Kareni

[Kareni]

We have looked at all our local stores to find low sodium products.

Lindsay brand sells some low sodium olives. (My husband uses these on homemade pizza.)

We've found a brand of chicken, Sanderson's, that has 80mg/four ounce serving.

We found a low sodium bacon (albeit a somewhat sad bacon, but it's better than nothing) at Whole Foods (their house brand) that is about 85mg per slice.

Whole Foods has a very good assortment of NSA canned beans in their house brand; they are quite affordable.

Whole Foods also sells some NSA frozen edamame.

Regards,

Kareni

[73349]

I wonder if you could use a site like allrecipes.com with a recipe finder including ingredients A, B, and C but excluding X, Y, and Z.

O hey you might be able to do pineapple-black bean bowls. Roasted sweet potatoes (these need a few more minutes than the other veggies), onion, bell pepper, and pineapple with a little sunflower oil; cooked black beans (don't add salt, but cumin and a squeeze of lime juice); salsa/guac that meets your needs. My note says the recipe is modified from The No-Meat Athlete.

[73349]

Here's a pretty good vegetable broth with no salt. I freeze it in wide-mouth pint jars.

[kbutton]

On 10/25/2021 at 1:28 PM, prairiewindmomma said:

I think part of what is throwing me is even if I am looking at something like chicken + veg, I am starting off with 200mg just from the 4oz chicken thigh portion if I am using chicken from Costco (preserved with 8% kosher sea salt). Even my very clean, very allergy friendly whole food meals seem to have a cumulative sodium issue. 

Do you have access to farmed meat at all? Venison or wild game? 

For things like sausage, you can use your own herbs or spices and control the amount of salt. 

On 10/25/2021 at 8:43 PM, Kareni said:

We found a low sodium bacon (albeit a somewhat sad bacon, but it's better than nothing) at Whole Foods (their house brand) that is about 85mg per slice.

If you can buy from a butcher or farmer, a fresh side (not smoked or cured) of bacon tastes like pork steak. It's not salty at all. 

On the veggie side, I eat cabbage salads a lot and make my own dressing. https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/basil-balsamic-vinaigrette-5489843  I use very little salt in the recipe, and it tastes fine. Another option is to salt the salad to a level that is in the salt budget, and leave the salt out of the dressing entirely. 

I eat a lot of fresh veggies steamed and plain. I didn't grow up with super salted food, though I know how easy it is to overdo it with just a few things if you are obligated to be super careful.

IIRC, mustard is not high in sodium, so if you like mustard, you might find new uses for it. 

I also think your taste buds will change over time, or you'll find enough low sodium things you enjoy that you can channel all the sodium budget to a few things you really miss. 

[kbutton]

On 10/25/2021 at 1:28 PM, prairiewindmomma said:

I think part of what is throwing me is even if I am looking at something like chicken + veg, I am starting off with 200mg just from the 4oz chicken thigh portion if I am using chicken from Costco (preserved with 8% kosher sea salt). Even my very clean, very allergy friendly whole food meals seem to have a cumulative sodium issue. 

I just put Purdue ground chicken in my Aldi cart, and it appears to have 125 mg. of sodium per 4 oz. I don't know what their regular chicken is like sodium-wise, but it might be a relatively sodium-friendly brand. 

[prairiewindmomma]

32 minutes ago, kbutton said:

I just put Purdue ground chicken in my Aldi cart, and it appears to have 125 mg. of sodium per 4 oz. I don't know what their regular chicken is like sodium-wise, but it might be a relatively sodium-friendly brand. 

I really, really wish we had Aldi here. Perdue is supposedly also carried at Kroger brand stores, so I'll have ds take a look next time he's out shopping for me. Thanks!

[PeterPan]

On 10/25/2021 at 1:28 PM, prairiewindmomma said:

I don’t think I can hack split pea soup cooked with water.

Fwiw, your taste has to down regulate. You'll get used to less salt.

There's a low sodium tamari for when you want that flavor.

 

[PeterPan]

1 minute ago, prairiewindmomma said:

I really, really wish we had Aldi here. Perdue is supposedly also carried at Kroger brand stores, so I'll have ds take a look next time he's out shopping for me. Thanks!

Yeah, it's always the pricepoint. I can go to my local amish/mennonite store and get meat with no injections, easy peasy. 

[prairiewindmomma]

The local meat processor and their farm connections are booked out through 2022. I checked last year.  I can pick up meat at the farmer's market from really high end processors but that's beyond our price point for every day eating. I could get salmon--it's fall chinook season--maybe I should finish emptying out the freezer this month and then just go out to the pier and stock up. 

[PeterPan]

1 minute ago, prairiewindmomma said:

I could get salmon--it's fall chinook season--maybe I should finish emptying out the freezer this month and then just go out to the pier and stock up.

I wish I had chickens to offer you. We could trade. I LOVE wild salmon, the stronger the better.

[prairiewindmomma]

I don't know that I have a super salty palate.....we had been eating fairly cleanly before....it's that losing that last tiny bit is a tradeoff I'm not happy about making. 

I'm also having a hard time getting my body to make the shift and be happy.  I had a sweet potato for breakfast and I was starving a few hours later. I'm not juggling all of the balls well, and I don't have a ton of time to tradeoff into spending more time in the kitchen.

I need to buckle down and get this all sorted, this one just hurts more than going dairy free, or cutting out sugar, or some of the other things I've had to do over the years.

[prairiewindmomma]

2 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

I wish I had chickens to offer you. We could trade. I LOVE wild salmon, the stronger the better.

I'm rather disgusted by meat generally, but my body needs it or it goes anemic and downhill fast. Fresh wild salmon freaks me out, tbh.

[PeterPan]

1 minute ago, prairiewindmomma said:

it's that losing that last tiny bit

Maybe you don't have to go so far? This is comraderie and maybe only one person needs to go that far? 

I mean, mercy, the nutritionist I used (and remember, this was mcs/cfs and food reactions things people say can't be cured) and she just said don't use salt. No broth, no stock, no salt, no nothing. So that's what I did. My dh, well he wasn't so happy. So he got concessions like a jar of spaghetti sauce to put on top of his (plain, no salt) wild rice.

After I had done that a number of years, she was like oh you could cook the wild rice in a can of chicken soup, you know, lol. I still tend to go easy on it, just using some broth or whatever for that latent salt.

I'd make sure the lengths you're going to are *necessary* and necessary for everyone involved. I mean, I eat split pea soup straight (just water), cornmeal straight (just water), on and on, and for normal purposes I kinda don't sweat things. If it calls for salt in a recipe for the stove, I start lower. If it calls for it in baked goods, I usually use the amount it says. 

I drink diluted cranberry juice (a natural diruretic) to make up the difference. The nutritionist had this theory that salt kills enzymes, and frankly I was too sick to argue. 

[PeterPan]

5 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

I'm rather disgusted by meat generally, but my body needs it or it goes anemic and downhill fast. Fresh wild salmon freaks me out, tbh.

Really? Reel 'em in and bonk 'em, yum. Maybe try in an omelette. Or you can bake and flake, mix with mayo and veges to make salmon salad for lettuce wraps.

Bake it with the skin side up.

Edited October 27, 2021 by PeterPan

[prairiewindmomma]

10 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

Really? Reel 'em in and bonk 'em, yum. Maybe try in an omelette. Or you can bake and flake, mix with mayo and veges to make salmon salad for lettuce wraps.

Bake it with the skin side up.

The first time I saw a live worm in the meat I was pretty sure I was done forever.  At least when I buy descaled frozen bits I'm not worried about something wriggling.  I'm a total wimp. 

[bolt.]

When I had to go lower sodium, I found it much easier to adjust my breakfast and lunch meals to under 100mg at breakfast (sometimes almost none at all) and around 200mg at lunch. Then I didn't need to make major changes to most of my supper meals. The changes I made to my supper meals were basically just eliminating all packaged foods, limited use of canned foods, sauces, and dressings -- and not salting anything until it's on the plate in front of me. I think 900mg is plenty to be working with when you are cooking from scratch?

But we aren't in identical situations. I only had to go down to around 1800mg, and your target is tighter with 1200mg.

At first I went all-out and did everything as low-sodium as possible (because I was a bit shocked) but it turns out that my real diet is a lot more relaxed. I can even eat out (without restricting myself for that one meal) if I eat my lowest sodium options all day that day, and don't choose eating out more than once per week. It blows the daily budget, but evens out over the week.

I also had that feeling of, "Well first I'm trying not to eat much fat, and then I'm cutting sugar, and *now* I'm cutting *salt*!!! What is there left to eat????" Which hit me pretty hard. The truth is that you can't cut all the things. I needed to give myself permission to ease upwards in the fats and sweets (trying to end my stupid diet mentality) and enjoy food. (I also noticed that *by* limiting my fats and sweets I had been pushing myself to salt as a flavour profile, which may have started the problem in the first place.)

My breakfast options are: (1) oatmeal, fruit, yogurt and/or low salt nuts, (2) crepes made from homemade mix using salt substitute, with fruit (3) cereal and milk, with fruit, yogurt and/or low salt nuts, (4) French toast made from home made lower sodium bread, with fruit.

My lunch options usually revolve around a rice or barley bowl with bits of leftover meat and frozen veggies, plus fruit and a little cheese on the side. Sometimes I have a sandwich (open face or half), eggs on toast, or other bread-based options, but usually those are a bit indulgent once you add up meat, cheese, spreads, etc. I rarely have soup, because broth is salt heavy no matter what you do, but sometimes I do make some space for a home made soup.

[kbutton]

23 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

Bake it with the skin side up.

Details needed. We broil with skin down, but I know that baked is probably better for you.

[PeterPan]

34 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

a live worm in the meat

Yuck!!!

[prairiewindmomma]

Just now, PeterPan said:

Yuck!!!

You've never seen it? Most wild fish have nematode issues.  In salmon it's usually roundworm.

[PeterPan]

4 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

You've never seen it? Most wild fish have nematode issues.  In salmon it's usually roundworm.

Look, I'm Peter Pan. Everything happens MAGICALLY. I haven't cleaned a fish since I was 10 and will probably keep it that way. I've reeled 'em in and bonked 'em and some dude cleaned them. When they got to me, they were nice happy dead fishes, frozen, nothing wiggling. 

All kinds of things come with worms. I've been ok so far. Maybe just tell people you won't clean fish anymore? Don't raise chickens or then you won't be able to eat chicken either.

It's like when I saw my dog poop on the cat's head. I KNOW that cat cannot clean the top of his head properly and I'm NOT putting that cat under running water. But I still like my cat. 😄