How to 'Add Salt to Taste' and Stay Within Recommended Guidelines
Registered dietitians at heart-health focused hospitals will come down hard on salt. It's part of their job description.
The recommendation is 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day. This will help reduce cardiovascular and hypertension risk. Cutting your sodium intake to 1,500 milligrams per day is the gold standard for people with hypertension.
Registered dietitians can recite that in their sleep.
But since there are 2,360 milligrams of sodium in just a teaspoon of iodized table salt, you don’t get much salt to use when seasoning a new recipe you're whipping up from scratch.
Dietary Recommendation for Adding Salt to Taste
So when the recipe says “Add salt, to taste” most dietitians have a simple response: Add none.
Chefs and cooks in the culinary community may disagree. Yet the new dietary guidelines for Americans say that “Most of the sodium consumed in the U.S. comes from salt added during commercial food processing and preparation, including foods prepared at restaurants.”
Cooking at home from scratch — not dining out or going out — can help you apply the “salt, to taste” approach in a healthy way.
How to Stay Within Guidelines for Sodium
If you are trying to stay within the recommendations, keep these ideas in mind:
- Look for recipes with lean cuts of meat, lots of produce and spices for flavor. These ingredients should have very little sodium.
- Set your sights on ⅛ of a teaspoon. Measure this amount out and pour it in your hand. Look at it. This is your starting point. If you know how one-eighth a teaspoon of salt looks in your hand, you'll be better off.
- When prepping ingredients, make sure to take a look at the nutrition facts to see just how many already have sodium and how much. Remember, the less ingredients with labels, the better.
- Adding spices and seasoning your dish — those are not the same thing. Spices like black pepper, chili powder or oregano add their own flavors. While seasoning (with salt) is designed to enhance the flavor of the ingredients, recipes with many spices might not require as much salt.
- Some chefs and cooks might disagree. That's OK! You're not serving 400 customers in a dinner rush. You're cooking for you and your family. Both their approach — using plenty of salt to make dishes "pop" — and yours "cutting salt to cut sodium" are valid.
Learn more about how much sodium is in your diet.
Adding Flavor with Salt Requires Finesse and Timing
No two dishes are the same. So don't apply a single approach with the use of salt. Instead, remember these tips:
- Season your dish with salt in stages as each add can drastically change flavor or moisture. Letting your meat rest with a little salt on it, adding a little salt before roasting or sautéing vegetables or boiling grains in salted water would be examples of when you can make a bigger impact with salt. But remember: no more than ⅛ teaspoon each time you add.
- Taste the dish regularly through the cooking process.
- Salting food at the very end is when you want the actual flavor of salt, such as French fries, chips and popcorn. If you’re trying to reduce your sodium, avoid this step.
- Learning to properly season your food requires trial and error. Just because it says “add salt to taste" doesn't mean you must.
If you try these approaches but still struggle to eat healthier because everything is bland, you can start adding pinches of salt, with the golden rule of only ⅛-teaspoon each time, earlier in the cooking process. It can truly help.
Learn more about diet and heart health:
