By Anna Olson
One of the most challenging lessons you learn when attending cooking school is how to season foods properly since it can be so personal, and using salt is at the heart of this lesson. It’s also common to find recipes written for the home cook that specify measurements for every ingredient, but then you are left with vague instructions to “season to taste”. So what happens when you need to reduce salt in your dishes in order to follow a low-sodium renal diet?
I have good news – removing salt from your food does not mean removing flavour. As a chef, I’ve learned to appreciate how we taste and enjoy food and layer flavours. When my Dad was diagnosed with kidney disease, my Mom stepped up as cook and caregiver to adjust the family diet, and I helped by giving her some tasty tools to season food without needing to add salt.
Non-salt seasonings can serve as background notes and bolster the primary tastes in a dish and round out flavours, while others add sparkle up front, whetting your palate and inviting another bite. Here are some seasonings that help accomplish this as you prepare your low-sodium meals at home:
To add early in the cooking process:
Fresh thyme
Fresh rosemary
Bay leaf
Lemon or orange zest
Mild paprika
Chili flakes
All of these seasonings are best added early on when making dishes like soups, stews or roasts, since they mellow as they cook. They add lovely background notes to your food without overwhelming the primary elements. Chefs learn that adding thyme and bay leaf to a chicken stock or a roasting chicken somehow makes the chicken taste more chicken-y. Use a vegetable peeler to peel a few strips of lemon or orange peel to add to a liquid (or use a microplane zester for fine zest). You can place slices of lemon under a roast to let the aromatic oils in the zest infuse into it at it cooks. Paprika adds a subtle seasoning and pretty colour to dishes, and peppers are very kidney-friendly. Chili flakes can add a spicy kick to dishes, but even just a pinch can make other flavours bigger without adding too much heat.
To add right before serving:
Fresh parsley
Fresh basil
Fresh chives (or green onion)
Fresh lemon juice
Delicate fresh herbs like parsley, basil and chives are best added immediately before serving a dish to maximize their seasoning power, since their flavour dissipates when cooked for too long. Parsley is an underutilized herb – in addition to adding colour, it gives dishes a flavour vibrancy yet is more neutral than fresh basil. Chives add a subtle onion flavour to season a dish, and green onion can be used in its place. But lemon juice is the real secret to seasoning without salt. A squeeze of a little fresh lemon juice into any cooked dish right before serving has incredible power. The tartness wakes up flavours and also your palate, yet it fades away quickly leaving you open to taste all of the other components in your dish.
And as a baker, please know that you can omit the salt in almost all of your baking without hurting the workability of a recipe. Except for yeast breads, where the salt controls the fermentation of the yeast, salt is there in baking for the same reason it is in cooking…to season. So you can leave out the salt and instead add a little extra vanilla extract, lemon zest or a pinch of nutmeg.
Lean on these seasoning tips when cooking dishes at home, and if you’re going out to eat and asking for no added salt to your meal, remember to ask for a few lemon wedges on the side, so you can add your own flavour sparkle.