Bottled BBQ sauce is a sugar-and-salt delivery system. A popular bottled sauce runs about 340mg of sodium in 2 tablespoons — and nobody in the history of cookouts has put just 2 tablespoons on their ribs. Mine runs 23mg per 2 tablespoons, and it still tastes like a cookout. I created this sauce for a dinner at my friend Michelle's. It had to be good on ribs, and it had to be low sodium — no pressure. It was a hit with everybody at the table, including the guest who has a BBQ

I miss the Tex-Mex places — sitting there with the guacamole and the homemade chips, the bowl in the middle of the table. That bowl was never coming home with me: the tub version of that guacamole runs 140mg of sodium in two tablespoons. So I make it myself. The smart swap in this one isn't an ingredient. It's not buying the tub. Avocado never did anything to anybody; the salt truck backed up to the tub, not the fruit. A real scoop — half a cup, the way people actually eat it

These rolls reminded me of a sweet roll I made back in high school — soft, a little sweet, brushed with butter. I didn't think I'd get that roll back without the salt. Then I made them — and there it was. Some recipes you just don't make anymore. But this one came home. The original version runs about 200mg of sodium a roll. Mine run about 18mg — and nobody at the table would ever guess. Three quiet swaps do the work. The salt becomes potassium chloride, just a teaspoon and o

There used to be a sodium-free baking powder on the shelf — Hain Featherweight was the last one, and it has been discontinued, like all the rest. So I make my own. Regular baking powder runs about 400mg of sodium in a teaspoon — about 1,200mg in a tablespoon. This mix runs 0mg, and it swaps 1 for 1 anywhere baking powder is called for. It is three ingredients and five minutes: DIY SODIUM-FREE BAKING POWDER Makes 4 tablespoons · 0mg sodium 2 tablespoons cream of tartar - 1 tab

Taco night feels harmless. It's just a little packet, right? One packet of regular store-bought taco seasoning — the kind that flavors one pound of ground meat — carries roughly 2,280mg of sodium. My whole day is 1,500mg. The packet was taco night's whole problem. But the real reason I mix my own goes back to chemo. The treatments messed with my taste buds — food tasted flat, and I wanted dinner with a lot of flavor. One night I was out of Mrs. Dash and had to create my own f

Read the bottle sometime. The famous steak seasoning runs 250mg of sodium in a quarter teaspoon. A quarter teaspoon! The tablespoon you'd actually shake over a pound of steak is about 3,000mg — two days of my sodium budget, as a garnish. My blend runs about 1mg per tablespoon. Same bold, coarse, peppery rub. No salt bomb. It's the spices doing what they always did — coarse black pepper, paprika, garlic, onion, coriander, crushed mustard seed, dill seed, red pepper flakes, and

Well — not trash. Scraps. But it starts as a gallon zip bag in my freezer, and it might be the most useful thing in my whole kitchen. Here's why it matters. A cup of regular canned chicken broth runs about 860mg of sodium. My homemade scrap stock? About 40mg a cup — and that's just the sodium nature put in the vegetables. When I first went no-salt, broth was one of the hardest things to replace, because it hides in everything — soups, rice, sauces, gravy. Making my own put al

This one isn't a recipe, exactly — it's a method. And that means I will never have made the salad you make. Mine comes out of my fridge: whatever vegetables are around, whatever needs using up. Yours will come out of yours. It's supposed to be different every time. The way I actually make it: I cook some pasta. I throw in whatever vegetables are around. And over the whole thing goes an avocado dressing I mash together in about five minutes. That's the recipe. It changes every

Char siu is the sticky, glossy, sweet-savory barbecued chicken, and I refused to give it up. The problem was never the chicken. The problem is the sauce math: made with bottled sauces, a serving of this runs about 915mg of sodium — most of my whole day, on one plate. Mine runs 137mg a serving, and it still glazes like it means it. The marinade is where it happens: my homemade soy sauce substitute and my homemade hoisin (those two live in my kitchen and, for now, in the book —