How to cook with less salt without sacrificing flavor

Of all the various dietary needs, limiting the amount of sodium in recipes is among the most common. The good news is that if you’re eating mostly home-cooked food, you’re already well on your way to reducing your salt intake, as more than 70% of Americans’ dietary sodium comes from packaged or prepared food, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

The next step is to be mindful about how you’re making that from-scratch fare. Reducing (or eliminating, if necessary) salt is about more than refraining from grabbing that shaker, though. Beginning with your trip to the grocery store and up to the point you season your food at the end of cooking, there are plenty of opportunities throughout the process that can help you be smarter about salt. Here are a few tips.

Buy no-salt-added products

Standard pantry ingredients can contain sodium — sometimes large amounts — you might not know about unless you scrutinize the labels. Common culprits include canned tomatoes, broth or stock, canned beans, tomato paste, and other canned vegetables. No-salt-added versions of these types of products, however, are readily available.

Choose reduced-sodium options

No-salt-added isn’t the only option for store-bought staples. Plenty of ingredients are available in reduced- or less-sodium versions. The best example is soy sauce. My standard bottle is always one with less sodium, and I have never found the seasoning lacking. Trader Joe’s reduced-sodium soy sauce contains 530 milligrams of sodium in 1 tablespoon. By way of comparison, Kikkoman’s regular soy sauce has 960 milligrams in 1 tablespoon. You can also find less-sodium options for jarred marinara, broth and stock, cheese, canned beans, and salsa, among others.

Rinse canned beans

If you’re not starting with no-salt-added canned beans, fear not. A quick rinse can make a significant difference. Cook’s Illustrated commissioned a lab to see how much sodium you can eliminate simply by rinsing canned beans. Looking at cans of store-bought cannellini, pinto and black beans, plus chickpeas, the lab found that draining and rinsing them cut the sodium by about 100 milligrams per ½-cup serving, roughly 25%. Others have put that number as high as around 40%.

Make your own pantry items

If you want to control or eliminate the amount of sodium in certain ingredients, it’s best to make your own. At the top of the list are beans and broths/stocks. I find that store-bought no-salt-added broths often range from bland to downright offensive, whereas you can make a richly flavored option at home from nothing more than vegetable scraps or picked-over bones and carcasses.

Add salt smartly

Depending on your own health situation, cutting back on sodium may not mean not using salt ever. So focus on getting more bang for your buck, flavor-wise. As Samin Nosrat says in her book “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” it matters when you use salt. “Add it in the right amount, at the right time, in the right form. A smaller amount of salt applied while cooking will often do more to improve flavor than a larger amount added at the table.” So, salt your meat in advance, sprinkle some on your vegetables before roasting and add it to the water in which you’ll be boiling vegetables, pasta and grains. That way you’re giving the salt time to work and season from within.

Try other assertive flavors

Nothing is an exact replacement for salt. (Some people find alternatives such as potassium chloride too metallic, and it’s best used in consultation with a physician since it can be problematic in the presence of certain medical conditions.) Still, you can experiment with other flavors, either in conjunction with less salt or in place of it. Consider citrus juice or zest, vinegar, herbs and spices. Especially at the end of cooking, a hit of vinegar or lemon juice can brighten and sharpen a dish when you might otherwise add salt.

In addition to the above suggestions, these spices or seasoning blends can perk up a dish:

• Sumac.

• Za’atar. Some blends include salt, so read the label.

• Everything spice. You can make your own and leave out the salt.

• Toasted sesame seeds.

• Shichimi togarashi.

• Crushed red pepper flakes.