No salt Iron Chef: What would the winner's secrets be?

[huiray]

3 hours ago, Pan said:

By the way, I love kombu, but I don't think I can work with it, as just half a piece of it apparently contains 90 mg of sodium.

 

Ah, I didn't think it had that much sodium in it. (I wonder what salt(s) it is in the form of...other than glutamate) (I think of konbu as having predominantly glutamic acid rather than sodium glutamate; hmm, need to check on that) Nevertheless, half a piece of konbu is all you need for a decent amount of dashi - and 90/2000 is still only a fraction of your daily allowance, and you wouldn't use all of the dashi in a single dish, unless you are making miso soup (which you can't do anyway because of the salt content of miso), or other soup-type dishes.

 

Try Inche Kabin (Nyonya-style fried chcken), with minimal salt, maybe boosting some of the other savory spices instead. (There are no other sources of sodium in this dish). Or Khong Asam (roasted pork trotter in sour soup), which has minimal salt to start with, cut back on even that and maybe use more tamarind. I suppose if you think of the MEAT itself (the pork trotters, the chicken) as having limiting amounts of Na⁺ already, then these would be iffy, yes. (Tamarind pulp has very little Na⁺, I think)

Edited January 22, 2016 by huiray (log)

[Pan]

I'll check on tamarind, but I was assuming it was OK. If I only need a half a piece of kombu for a rather large amount of dashi, then yeah, that's no problem at all. Thanks a lot for the Nyonya ideas! Do you have a favorite website for Nyonya recipes?

[huiray]

No, not really.  I do have two books on Nyonya cooking "by my side", so to speak (amongst others), which I look at from time to time - like now. :-) A book published by the Straits Times (of Malaysia) regarding PENANG Nyonya recipes, which is skewed towards Northern Nyonya; and a book from Epigram Books (Singapore), which is more Southern Nyonya. I've posted about them elsewhere here on eG. Nevertheless, I look at internet recipes, of course, but do not have a *particular* site that I favor.  Then, there are the stuff that I remember from my mother's cooking, and from other stuff in and around elsewhere.

[FeChef]

MSG is 60% lower in sodium then salt.

[Pan]

Good to know about MSG, but I feel like that's still too much sodium for me to want to deal with.

[MetsFan5]

Capers? Probably too much salt.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

The Goya capers I just bought to make tartar sauce have 380mg sodium per TBSP (per the label). The flavor really goes a long way though, so that sodium could be diluted throughout a dish, but it's still 19% of Pan's daily allowance.

 

A site I find very useful when I am on a restricted diet, which is usually calories for me, but also has much useful info regarding sodium, carb, protein, fat, vitamin, mineral and glycemic load content as well, is this one:

 

The linked page concerns winter butternut squash (scroll down past the annoying video they added to every page recently). Smithy's suggestion about winter squash is not as high-carb as you might think. Use the linked site to compare 100 grams of it to rice or baked potato prepared without salt, and you'll find that the squash is much lower in both calories and carbs. Butternut 40 cal/10g carb; rice 130 cal/28g carb; potato 93 cal/22g carb.

 

I include that info because Pan is also trying to lose weight as well as restrict sodium, and I have found butternut to be a very satisfying substitute in meals with pork or poultry instead of a more starchy, less nutritious component. It even tricks my husband.

 

Also on the Nutrition Data site, there is a nutrient search tool that drops down from the Tools menu, that allows you to select foods highest and/or lowest in particular nutrients that you choose from a drop down menu. I have used this feature frequently, however, it is skewed a bit sometimes, because things like dried herbs which concentrate nutrients can come quickly to the top of lists when the only option for comparison is 100g or 200 calorie servings. It's still very useful to me.

[Pan]

I use that site. Yeah, I like butternut squash a lot. I also like calabaza. There's a delicious pumpkin curry recipe in one of Madhur Jaffrey's books that I used to cook with calabaza every fall for my parents until my father had to go on a diet that didn't allow him to eat calabaza (I think a low-potassium diet for kidney failure).

 

I really can't use salt-pickled items like capers. I also wouldn't dare using dried shrimp. I'm really not looking to find ways to cheat. I'm scared straight (well, OK, not actually scared right now, but I sure was) and don't want to start adding salt back into my diet in any form until I've lost more weight and been able to go off some of these medications.

[Pan]

I did check on Indian tamarind, It's fine. It has 28mg of sodium per 100g, and is very high in potassium, which as far as I know is not a problem for me. I looked up asam gelugor (Malaysian "tamarind"), and there's a lot of information about it being used as a weight loss aid. Strange. But seems to be safe, too.