So, I knew that I was going to have to do some major food prep planning - lots of cooking in quanitity and freezing to avoid grabbing fast food when work goes into overload for two months in a couple weeks. I will be working 10-14 hours days 7 days a week - okay, I have three whole days off in 60. But I am still trying to take some weight off. All well and good and I had some planning done and a couple things pre-made.
Yesterday my husband got a diagnosis that means he need to immediately go on a low-sodium diet (it may also end his aviation career, but that is another thread). Now I need to find some healthy, tasty recipes I can make in 6-8 meal quanitites, that freeze well, and are low-sodium. Running out of time…
So, anyone want to offer up or point me toward some of their favorites? I’ll be cooking up a storm this coming weekend.
How low sodium? Do you have a recommended daily allowance?
Assuming it’s an amount above “none”, you ought to be able to meet it by simply staying away from processed foods and adding the minimum amount of salt to whatever you’re cooking - just enough to make it taste OK and no more. Processed foods are really the culprit. I don’t know how they do it. Frozen stuff like Stouffer’s and the like are the worst. They always seem to taste like they need more salt, but when you look at the ingredients they have some absolutely huge amount of it in there.
Pasta with red sauce can be made low-salt, just buy the canned tomatoes without salt. Same with chili, make sure the ingredients you use are low-salt and you’re good to go. Meat is also easy to make without adding a lot of salt - a steak with a cooked vegy on the side is good for you, easy to make, and he can add or not add salt to taste. The one thing you’ll want to watch with meat is that pork is very often soaked in a brine before selling it, and sometimes chicken, too. Don’t buy those varieties.
Soups freeze well and you can buy pretty good low-salt stock (Swanson’s makes a good one, in the antiseptic boxes).
Wow… this is tough! I was going to recommend making pesto, because it freezes beautifully and you can put it on so many things… but then I thought about the parmesean cheese. So I googled around for a minute and found this awesome website from the USDA. It gives you the exact nutrient compositionfor a ton of the foods we eat. Looks like parmesean has about 450mg of sodium per ounce. So that is probably right out. Although you might be able to find low sodium parmesean.
Most of the things I might make specifically to freeze (enchiladas, chili, stew, lasagna/baked pasta) probably all have variable sodium content depending on how you make it, and I have never really thought about the sodium part.
Also what Athena said… stay well away from cans/jars of food. You can make an incredibly tasty pasta sauce with WAY less sodium in one of the jars. And when I make my own chicken stock, I never add salt.
Another note - even canned beans and vegetables have plenty of added sodium! Either look for “no salt added” cans (and check the label to see if there’s any other source of sodium) or start from dried beans/fresh veggies.
Look into potassium salt as well - my husband uses versions of this mixed with spices to add more flavor and cut the sometimes-bitter taste of the potassium salt. (It’s better when mixed into food rather than sprinkled on top of a dry food, so that it dissolves some.) There’s a no-salt brand that we like but I can’t recall the name of - it’s like the Goya Adobo seasoning blend, but I think Goya only does a low-salt version, not no-salt.
Recommendation is <2000mg per day. Doable, but not at all easy with pre-packaged food. Going to need to read a lot of lables and stay almost entirely away from eating out or frozen food. Even a lot of sodium-reduced food has way too much, especially soups.
Looking at things with stronger spices to make up for losing the salt. I see some options on various websites, but was hoping that there might be some cooking Dopers out there who have needed to learn to cook and live with an ongoing low-sodium diet that I could grab some quick tips from.
On the plus side, my husband is not terribly picky about food - if I make it he will eat it. On the minus side he hates to cook for himself and if left to his own devices is likely to fall back on fast food.
Mr. Athena definitely watches his salt intake, as he’s had blood pressure issues at times. So I do watch the salt that we put in things.
That said, if you’re cooking from scratch, I think you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to make very tasty food without a lot of salt. Just don’t go overboard and think you can’t put ANY salt in things - you have to have some, or it will taste bland. But a little bit goes a long way. Even pesto, as llcoolbj77 mentioned - you don’t need much to give things a lot of flavor, and I’d be really surprised if you couldn’t fit that in your diet. Pasta with pesto and a side of bacon and salt-covered peanuts and pickles? Nope. Pasta with pesto and a salad tossed with homemade vinaigrette? No problem.
Soup is another thing that’s easy to make fairly low sodium if you start from scratch - but I’ll grant it’s time consuming, and may be beyond your ability to make, now. If you start by making your own stock, it’s very easy to have a nice, savory soup without huge amounts of sodium in it. (And, IMNSHO, it ends up tasting better, too, than the canned stuff. Not cheaper, though - especially not if you count your labor as part of the cost.)
What I’d do in your situation is make up some chilis. Get straight ancho powder, and use that instead of pre-packaged chili powder mixes, to give you the basic flavor, then add salt, garlic, and other spices to your taste. If you use beans in your chili (as I do) pay the premium for the no salt added cans. Usually these will be found in the organic/health food section of the grocery stores I frequent.
Here’s something else - Penzey’s, a place that offers incredibly high-quality spices, has an entire page of salt-free spice blends. I can attest to the quality of all their stuff, I pretty much get all my spices from them, and they’re wonderful. Even non-foodies notice, I get comments all the time like “wow, I’ve never tasted anything quite so cinnamony before” when I bake with their cinnamon.
I bet you can find a few in there that look interesting.
Mr. Cake should be doing at least some of the sodium tracking. If the aviation career means that he is on the road a lot, he is going to have to watch his own intake when you are not there to do it for him.
When you are there:
If you mean recipes for scratch cooking, just make them without salt, and add salt to your portion at the table.
Fresh fruit is good, usually eaten plain, and fast-food places with salad bars will often have it available.
Think of the sodium limit as an allowance. Negotiate what the spending priorities are.