Salt redux

If you haven't read the multi-part special feature on salt in the Globe and Mail, have a look. The series was first published during the summer, but is still available on their website and well worth examining.

In case we need reminding, Canadians consume on average twice the amount of salt required for a healthy diet. While we've become obsessed with monitoring our fat and sugar intake, we continue to scarf down 3,092 mg of sodium daily. Low fat and "healthy" choice prepared foods such as President's Choice Blue Menu products have up to 600 mg of sodium per serving, almost half-way to the 1,500 mg per day quota for optimal health. A diet high in sodium is particularly detrimental to individuals who have high blood pressure or are prone to hypertension. (Watch this narrated video diagram on how salt affects your body.) Clearly, if consumers were as attentive to the negative health impact of salt as they are to the effects of sugar and fat on their waistlines, manufacturers would be forced to redefine what constitutes a "healthy" choice.

The Globe feature includes a number of interesting articles. Who knew, for instance, that you can limit your salt intake by seasoning your food at the end of preparation rather than at the beginning? Apparently, we require less salt to taste when we salt previously unsalted food at the table verses food prepared with salt. Also amusing is Dave McGinn's The Sodium Diaries, a daily blog devoted to his efforts to stick to the 1,500 mg per day quota, which he fails miserably. I guess no one pointed out that if you want to stick to the daily limit, you can kiss eating prepared foods goodbye: everything from instant oatmeal to canned tuna, our ideas of "healthy" choices, contain heaps of salt.

The bottom line, as always, is that healthy living requires commitment and forethought. All we can hope for is that over time, our governments will consider excessive salt intake a national health crisis, as it did with smoking in the 1980's, and will throw its weight behind the awareness campaigns, incentives and bans this issue deserves.

The Salty Truth

The Globe and Mail gives us a report of this year's nutritional winners and losers. I was interested by the section on nutritional information in Canadian fast-food chains, particularly the statement that a Kelsey's fajita dinner contains 4,550 milligrams of sodium. Given my interest in salt, as well as a family connection to the Kelsey's franchise, I was intrigued by this number. I realized, specifically, that I had no idea it means. So, I did some digging.

According to Health Canada, the average adult requires 1,500 mg of sodium per day for basic functioning and recommends daily consumption of no greater than 2,300 mg. They also stress that Canadians on average consume twice the sodium they require for good health.

But, how much sodium is in salt? My first guess was to translate the Kelsey's figure 1:1, which sits at just shy of a teaspoon of salt. That seems excessive by my taste, but I'm a salt lightweight, so I figured the average taste buds would want more.

Then I learned the actual conversion. Every teaspoon (6 g) of table salt contains 2,400 mg of sodium. That means that the Kelsey's dish contains almost TWO teaspoons of salt. By comparison, I would use that amount of salt for a huge pot of soup, enough to feed 8-10 people. That's a lot of salt!

The Health Canada link above gives lots of tips on how to avoid excess salt intake, such as ordering salad dressings on the side in restaurants and consuming more fresh, unprocessed foods. Of course, if you cook your own food from these fresh ingredients, you'll only add salt to your taste, which in my very un-scientific opinion is the true measure of how much you really need.

Seasoning with salt

Learning how to season your home cooking with salt is your secret weapon. Food over salted is, of course, too salty. But under-salted food is tasteless and boring.

The first meal I cooked for my husband -- the dish we call “carrot and vermicelli” -- is famous only for being the blandest meal I ever made. The soup, inspired by the rice noodle pho we enjoyed at the Vietnamese restaurant near where we worked, was my offering to my then boyfriend of my skills as a potential life partner. My version was cooked rice noodles, shaved carrot and ginger, green onion, chicken breast and chicken stock from a can.

I remember preparing our meal in my tiny apartment kitchen so carefully. I assembled all the ingredients, thinly and evenly slicing the carrots, following the package directions on the vermicelli, and unwrapped the Japanese noodle bowls and chopsticks I had bought for the occasion. The result was beautiful to behold: a tangle of rice vermicelli beneath modest slices of carrots and chicken resting in broth and garnished with onion and ginger. It tasted, however, like carrot peelings with a vague hint of starch. I provided soy sauce for the seasoning, and toasted sesame oil for pizazz, but to no avail. I think we ended up ordering a pizza.

Just as the salt you use is a personal choice, so too is how much of it you add to your meals. My taste buds are fairly sensitive to salt, whereas my husband, who can scarf down plates of olives and hunks of asiago cheese, likes his meals saltier.

As you cook, you will learn how salty you like your food to be. I add salt to a dish based on the number of servings, measuring approximately 1/8 tsp ground salt (or 1/4 tsp large flakes, or one generous pinch) per serving. I provide salt at the table for additional seasoning to suit individual tastes.

I remade carrot and vermicelli the other night, tipping my imaginary toque to my first lesson in seasoning. I cooked the noodles, put a handful in a large soup bowl and ladled in a cup and a half of hot homemade chicken broth. I cut pieces of leftover chicken breast and sliced the carrots and green onion. (I was out of ginger.) Then, I salted everything with Maldon and added garlic chili oil for pizazz. It was wonderful.

With the leftover cooked noodles, I made this simple and delicious noodle salad for an afternoon picnic. I used chicken simply because it's what I had in the fridge, but you could use pork tenderloin, steak slices, tofu cubes, or leave out the protein altogether. Here is the recipe:

CHICKEN, RICE VERMICELLI AND LIME SALAD
Serves 2

1 cup cold leftover cooked rice vermicelli
1 cup cold cooked chicken, sliced or pulled into thin strips
1 large peeled carrot, sliced into ribbons with a potato peeler
2 green onions, chopped
1 Tbsp chopped fresh herbs (try cilantro, basil, parsley, mint or combination)
1 small yellow zucchini, sliced into thin discs
2-3 leaves swiss chard, sliced into ribbons (discard stems)
zest and juice of one lime
1 Tbsp flavourful oil (I used chili garlic oil. Toasted sesame would be great. Light olive oil would also be fine.)

Combine ingredients in a bowl, toss and serve.

NOTE: To make chili garlic oil, buy a 500mL bottle of light olive oil, open the lid and break back the inner plastic pouring guard with a knife. Add to the bottle 5-8 peeled garlic cloves and 3-6 red chili peppers cut in half lengthwise. Before adding the garlic, mash them a bit using bottom of a heavy can or mug to release the juices; the cloves should be broken open but not completely pulverized. You can also use dried chilies. Let the oil steep for several days to reach maximum potency. If it's too strong, add more oil; too weak, add more garlic/chilies.

Salt

There is only one ingredient in great cooking that is indispensable: good natural salt. Table salt -- the iodized variety, that nasty collection of mean, uniform crystals -- imparts a sour, metallic taste to food that is unnecessary and to my mind unforgivable. Salt should enhance and support the natural flavours in a dish, not smack those flavours into submission.

I feel for ingredients when they are unfairly overwhelmed by bad salt. I think of tomatoes growing on the vine, developing their redness, their tangy sweetness, preparing themselves for their day in the spotlight, only to be relegated to fifth fiddle.

There are many opinions on the kind of salt you should use in your kitchen:

Martha Stewart: “Coarse kosher salt has the best taste to my way of thinking. It imparts a better taste and consistency and it enhances natural flavor. I use it in all my recipes.”

Robert Carrier: “I prefer rough-ground seas salt, gros sel. I find food cooked with sea salt is far superior to food cooked with ordinary powdered salt, so I always have quantities of glistening white flakes on hand to grind into casseroles and salads.”

Nigella Lawson: “I want my salt to be Maldon.”

Alice Waters: “I keep two kinds of sea salt close by: a very coarse one sold in bulk (the gray kind, with its high mineral content, is especially good) for salting boiling water and brine, and a finer, flakier one for seasoning and finishing dishes.”

Giorgio Locatelli devotes three pages of his massive Made In Italy to the lowly mineral, with “natural sea or rock salt” as his preference.

As you can see, selecting your salt is a personal choice, however iodized table salt is not on the menu. I use two kinds of salt at home: Maldon salt for seasoning and finishing, and kosher or coarse sea salt for salting potato and pasta water, depending on what’s available in the supermarket.

Food is precious. Throw out that old box of table salt and buy some natural, non-iodized sea salt and notice the difference. You will like it.

Next post: Seasoning your food.

References: Feast (Lawson), The Martha Stewart Cookbook (Stewart), The Robert Carrier Cookbook (Carrier), The Art of Simple Food (Waters)

Photo: I keep my Maldon salt in a salt cellar by Mario Batali's cookware line. It has two compartments. I use a pestle to grind the salt in the top for baking.