Because I have probable Meniere’s disease, I’m advised to follow a low-salt regime. I’ve never really liked super-salty foods, and salt my cooking less than is advised in recipes, but now I’m cutting even that back.
But criminy, there are some foods that are a waste of time if they haven’t a good couple of shakes from the shaker. This morning I cooked unsalted scrambled eggs and home fried potatoes, and they were both like eating nothing at all. Sorry, Dr. EENT, but I had to put a little salt on each of these foods in order to make them edible.
I’m doing okay with everything else, though. Unsalted tortilla chips, unsalted peanuts, unsalted celery sticks, no problem. Barely a shake of salt in the taco meat and the guacamole for lunch today, no problem. But eggs and potatoes? Gimme the shaker.
I feel your pain. I’ve been trying to cut down on salt for health reasons for a while and it’s been a real challenge. Almost all my favorite home recipes have a fair amount of salt in them. I was using an app that measures everything that was in my food and I was above the recommended amount of salt almost every day.
For a while I worked in a restaurant baking pies and would watch the cooks prepare food. I was amazed at how much salt, fat, and sometimes sugar they put in food to make it taste better. That makes perfect sense since their goal is to get you to come back again, and again. After about six months of consciously limiting salt intake it became a lot easier for me to cook food without it. Every once in a while I would add a little salt at the table, but that became rarer for me.
Hang in there and give it a chance. You will get used to eating less salt and eventually you will be able to avoid it easily. It just takes time.
How about using MSG? A very effective flavor enhancer with 1/3 of the sodium by volume of salt. The old stories about headaches and MSG allergies have been largely or completely debunked.
It’s sold at the grocery store under the brand name ‘Accent’, or you can buy a big-ass container of it online like I did:
I do have a container of Knorr “polvo de pollo” (Hispanic chicken bouillon powder) that seems to be mainly MSG with a little added chicken flavor. Maybe I’ll add a little pinch to things in place of salt.
I’m not yet on a low salt, or low fat required diet, but I can see it coming down the line.
In the meantime, I’ve doubled down on two food options that help -me- at least, though it’s just not the same as salt when it comes to milder-flavored starches, just as you mention. And I’m sure I’ve said the same in previous threads, so…
Acid. Vinegar, lemon, citric acid, adding any of these to a dish can limit my cravings for heavy salt. Not eliminate, but I can use less than half the salt I would otherwise without the acid. But for me, this only works well on lighter-flavored foods, like some fish and poultry. And it doesn’t work for eggs at all, but…
Heat. Capsicums in all their glory and intensities. Adding a bunch of spicy (to your tolerance, not mine) chiles, either whole or into a homemade sauce (double points if adding acid!) allows at least an equal reduction in salt use for me. Though again, I advise roasting them, adds a bit of natural sweetness and mitigates the “grassy” taste of some raw peppers.
A technique, though not an ingredient that may help is over-browning. This is absolutely a two-edged sword, because it can intensify flavors you don’t like, or don’t want, but the extra browning can add additional flavors that help with bland starches. Searing noodles in a wok instead of adding as much low-sodium soy sauces, extra browning on potatoes, both can work for me, but it’s easy to not pay attention and go from “extra brown” to burnt, just like in making a Roux.
If you are going low salt there are a couple things to keep in mind. You really need to be cooking your own food and not eating in restaurants. Restaurants and fast foods add a lot of salt and sugar, because it tastes better.
Processed foods have two ways to control what is called water activity. I have expound on this before and will not go into it again, it is a food science thing. To control bacterial growth and keep it fresh.There are two ways that are used to control water activity, the cheapest is salt, costs almost nothing, the other way is to use sugar which costs a lot more.
Any item you see on the shelf that is low salt or low sodium is probably loaded with sugar. Just be aware of that. They didn’t just leave the salt out, they replaced it with sugar.
I’m not yet a low salt eater. But I am low carb & especially low sugar.
As I was adapting to nil sugar I found spicy was my replacement.
Used to oatmeal w sugar or syrup? Try oatmeal w tabasco or … as your heat preference dictates. Even if you’re not generally a spicy-hot fan, the teeniest smudgen will replace salt.
My GF uses nil salt and is not a fan of hot. She puts lime, not lemon, on salads, meats, eggs, etc. So there’s another substitute to rry.
I also recommend trying hot sauces and spices. To me, the chile can help bring out the flavors similar to how salt does. My guess is that the chile interacts with my tastebuds and has them firing more than they would otherwise. Try something like Tabasco initially. If you like it, there are a whole variety of chile sauces with different flavors. You don’t necessarily have to go super hot. Just a little bit to wake up your tastebuds might be enough.
You might try some less processed foods as they tend to have more texture and flavor. Try steel cut oats instead of rolled oats. Try whole grain flour instead of white flour.
I was on a very very low salt diet for a year as a kid, and when we came back to civilization, commercial food was next to inedible.
From that experience I understand that you can taste and expect salt in everything you eat, and if I could taste the salt in bread, you can taste it’s absence.
I quickly got used to normal levels in commercial food, and for the next 30 years anything salty was a special treat. The home diet was “no added salt”. I can assure you that when you are accustomed to it, unsalted eggs and unsalted potatoes have enough flavour. If you are adding salt to meat (!), you’ve got a long way to go yet.
I have been on low salt for a couple decades. I agree with the OP about eggs, but I have gotten used to salt free potatoes. I like hot foods, so a couple sprinkles of hot peppers helps a lot. But I do use some salt (and some salt is absolutely necessary).
If you must use salt, try using popcorn salt (buy it or grind your own salt finely). You can get by with sprinkling just a tiny bit because there’s so much more surface area to it.
Have you tried the salt substitutes which replace some or all of the sodium chloride with potassium chloride? These are readily available in most supermarkets.
I find them reasonably acceptable for most purposes.
I have been eating a low salt diet for years. It may suck now, but you will eventually get used to it. At some point, restaurant food is going to start tasting disgustingly salty to you.
The idea of putting salt on scrambled eggs seems disgusting to me. Home fried potatoes though, I’m with you there.
One thing my doctor told me was that it is better to put salt on afterwards than to cook the foods with salt. You will taste the salt more when it’s on the surface of the food, so you’ll effectively get the same taste with a lot less salt.
Going completely salt-free can be bad for you. Make sure your doc is checking your sodium levels.
I had a bad experience with potassium supplements. They gave me irregular heart rhythm and spells of feeling faint. I stumped a cardiologist before figuring out the problem on my own.
Today’s breakfast will be unsalted eggs and only one small smoked sausage, plus rice and slices of mango.
I’m a major Asian restaurant-aholic, and it’s going to be tough cutting down on the ramen, pho, xiao long bao, and Thai basil shrimp with salty fish sauce.
Some of that you can learn to cook yourself. And if you cook it yourself, you can use a lot less salt. Although cheap ramen basically tastes like salt…
And going “completely salt free” is impossible. Sodium exists in just about everything.
I actually need extra sodium, so I do salt my food. My father, and his mother too, both had >1 hospitalization for critically low sodium levels, and mine trend low, so I have likely inherited this and have had no issues, sodium-wise.
After one episode, when she was living at a nursing home, Dad said, “Next time I visit, I’m going to bring a bottle of salt tablets with me, and give them to her nurse and tell her to make sure my mother takes them.” I told him that was a very good idea, but he couldn’t do that because they would have to be ordered by her doctor.
I’ve actually tried potassium “salt” out of curiosity. It tasted like road salt to me. (No, I don’t eat road salt, but you know when you touch something and then lick your fingers for another reason? That.)