Good Evening, FS Warriors! Well, the results are in, and as promised, this is my report on using dehydrated celery as a salt substitute. Before I proceed, just let me say that I only became interested in this thing called sodium when the doctors told me my blood pressure was pre-hypertensive, which is basically
borderline have to be controlled by medicine high blood pressure. This concerns me because I don't want to go on blood pressure medicine. So, when I looked back over some of my daily intake, I noticed that my sodium intake exceeded 5,000 on many days, and the recommendation by the United Health Council or whatever they call themselves these days, is that anyone over 51, or has high blood pressure, should limit themselves to 1500 mg per day, for they put themselves at risk for a stroke otherwise. Holy Crap! I don't want to hear that. So, I did a Google search and this gal claimed that this ground-up dehydrated celery has salt like qualities. So, I set out to validate her findings.
First, I cut the celery into approximately 1/2" pieces, washed it and put it in the dehydrator at 115 degrees. It spent 18 to 24 hours in there (not sure because I turned it off when I got home from work). In either case, it was dry and crunchy. Then I used my coffee bean grinder to grind it up, and it became powder. Something some of you might find interesting is that a bunch of celery is called a
stalk, and the individual parts are called
sticks. I would have called the group a bunch and the individual parts, I would have called stalks. Learn something new every day.
This is the result of a whole stalk of celery:
It didn't fill much of the salt shaker.
The taste tests: Ironically, when it came down to the taste tests, I had to stop and ask myself what it is that I put salt on that I can't live without. There wasn't that much handy. First, I tried it on an apple, but I didn't really have a tart apple that I would normally put salt on, so I put it on a regular red apple. It tasted good, but no appreciable salt taste. I then put some salt on it to make sure it would have that salty taste, and it did.
Next, I tried it on something that I always put salt and pepper on, and that was a hard boiled egg. What I normally do is peel the egg, put a mixture of salt and pepper in a bowl or saucer and press the egg into it, so it's all salt and peppery - go figure. It tasted good, but I can't really say I really tasted salt. It just tasted good.
The bottom line: I think you could call it a mild flavor enhancer, not imitation salt. But I'm going to give it a try for a while because it is all natural, and it still tasted good, without a whole bunch of other flavors to disguise what it was. It didn't taste like celery, and I guess you could say that it had a mild salt sensation.
But here's the rub: Most of the sodium in our daily intake doesn't come from the salt shaker at all, it comes from the prepackaged foods, bread, butter, cottage cheese, regular cheese, soups, etc. The stuff out of the salt shaker makes a miniscule contribution to our overall daily intake, and most of us don't even track that. When I load up a baked potato with butter or margarine and salt and pepper, it is the salt in the margarine that is really giving it the flavor. I have to rethink how I season my food, and look a lot more at the labels. I have been prone to picking out pre-packaged foods that are low cal and low fat for dieting, but hadn't even thought about the fact that they might have 800 to 1000 mg of sodium. Salt is used as a preservative and also, I think, to disguise the fact that it isn't really a flavorful recipe. Just food for thought.
And that's all I have to say about that. Toodles!
