The trick to cooking with little to no sodium is to use strong flavors that aren't salt to excite and stimulate your taste buds. Acids work particularly well, such as lemon juice or vinegar, and so do hearty herbs and the sharper-tasting spices.
To make this salmon as flavorful as possible, I poached it and topped it with a sauce.
My poaching liquid was full of goodness: carrot, onion, celery, the juice of a lemon and that lemon's peel. The fish only took a few minutes to cook.
What made the salmon such a low-sodium treat was the sauce I served it with, a kind of simplified tzatziki. I started with plain Greek yogurt and stirred in some lemon juice, chopped cucumber and salmon's favorite herb, dill.
It was luscious. It was fabulous. It was delicious.
And maybe it needed just a little bit of salt.
Low-Sodium Salmon With Cucumber Dill Sauce
4 ounces plain Greek yogurt
Juice and peel of 1 lemon, plus 2 wedges of lemon
¼ cucumber, diced small
½ teaspoon dill
2 (4-ounce) salmon filets
¾ large onion, roughly chopped
1 rib celery, roughly chopped
1 carrot, roughly chopped
Pinch salt, optional
An hour before cooking, combine yogurt, juice of 2 lemon wedges, cucumber and dill in a small bowl. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Rub fingers over top of salmon fillets to detect pin bones, if any. Remove with tweezers.
Fill large skillet with water to a depth of around 1 inch. Add onion, celery, carrot and the juice and peel of 1 lemon. Bring to a simmer. Move aside some of the vegetables and lemon, and gently add the salmon; the liquid should completely cover it. If it doesn't, add more water. Cook at a simmer until fish is thoroughly cooked and flakes easily, 5 minutes per inch of height.
Drain and serve with the cucumber dill sauce. Taste and season with (just a pinch) salt, if necessary.
Nutrition information: Each serving contains approximately 260 calories, 30 g protein, 11 g fat, 10 g carbohydrate (6 g sugar), 72 mg cholesterol, 113 mg sodium and no fiber.
Food on 02/19/2020