If you’ve ever been told to reduce the salt in your diet, you may have been surprised to learn the many places where salt lurks. Even if you don’t heavily season your foods with salt, it still hides in places where you would least expect, such as crackers, cookies, sauces and marinades. Buying these foods is convenient and cost-effective, but they aren’t good for your health. In fact, you may be heavily exceeding your daily intake for sugar and salt by flavoring your foods regularly with these ingredients.
Fortunately, you can take control of your health by preparing your own recipes for foods like ketchup, spaghetti sauce and salad dressing. When you prepare these sauces, you can monitor how much salt goes into the mixes and limit preservatives that are commonly found in packaged foods. There are dozens of recipes online, and most are fairly simple to make and yield a large quantity of the recipe.
For example, you can prepare homemade ketchup using ingredients like honey, brown sugar, vinegar and a blend of spices. Start with the sauces that your family eats the most, and find recipes that will be easy to make. You can also prepare organic marinades and sauces by using organic products such as tomatoes, agave nectar and molasses. To be time- and cost-efficient, make the marinades ahead of time and store them for future use. You’ll enjoy the natural flavors of these ingredients and the fact that you’re controlling the sodium content of the foods you eat.
Of course, preparing marinades and blends is nothing new to Chef Ravi. He prepares all meals from World Gardens Café using the finest ingredients. Nothing comes from a bottle. Instead, foods are flavored with red wines, natural chicken juices, grape seed oil and olive oil. When you see how wonderful lean meats and vegetables can be when flavored naturally, you won’t ever need to do another dip in a salty sauce again.
Blog sponsored by: World Gardens Cafe
