Want a Reason to Sprinkle Salt on your Food?
Salt has gotten a bad rep dating back from somewhere around the 50’s when no food could go without a bunch of salt and pepper. Well, all of these guys turned out to have issues with blood pressure and cholesterol to name a few. Sodium is a VERY important part of a diet. It keeps homeostasis in your blood. Turns out your cells allow water to enter and exit them with the way its permeability is. This also requires no energy as it is balanced based off of water taking its natural equilibrium state. Salt affects your blood pressure by effecting your water and blood movement, as blood cells will expand and retract.
So enough of the technical mumbo jumbo, lets get to the reason your reading this, you love salt. Man does salt make things taste good, if you don’t believe me read the back of a ‘Healthy Choice’ meal and see how much salt it takes to make it taste good! Your normal table salt is extracted from a mountain, possibly in Colorado, and is processed down to a little granule and sold to you. This salt is basically a bunch of unhealthy sodium and the reason your doctor tells you to lay off of the salt. It gives you very little nutritional value. Sea Salt on the other hand is basically salty water dried out to just get the salt out of it. The difference here is that the Sea contains a huge array of minerals, that most WOULD be in vegetables if our soils weren’t so depleted. Now I know many of you probably take vitamins, which I DO NOT, I really must tell you that eating proper food will give you proper vitamins that are assimilated properly. Rather than eating a synthetic vitamin that you pay alot of money for and basically pee most of it out, you can just change to a healthier diet (whole grains!). What you probably wont get from this diet change is the minerals you need. As I said soils around the world are very depleted of minerals in them, but the sea has them all. This is no secret, and the reason there is seaweed on all of your sushi rolls. The Chinese and Japanese eat alot of seaweed, and this allows them to intake a generous amount of minerals. Seaweed not your bag, baby? No problem, lets get back to the sea salt. Salt isn’t exactly something you should really go through really fast, so i recommend spending a little money on some quality sea salt. I have been enjoying naturally dried Hawaiian sea salt, and its great. By getting natural stuff you know its not processed and hasn’t lost its nutritional value.
So go ahead and sprinkle some salt on your dishes! I actually recommend that you cook with the salt and not really add it directly to your dish, this will help you control your sodium intake. Here is a great way to cook broccoli with sea salt and make it delicious, I do not like boiled broccoli.
Cut up your broccoli and set it aside, my measurements are based on about 3 cups of broccoli.
Heat up a wok and squirt some sesame oil in there and add some some minced garlic (ginger too if you want).
Let the garlic cook for about 5 seconds and add the broccoli. Stir this around and add 2 pinches of organic sugar and about 2tablespoons of sea salt (I actually use my palm and eye it, so im not that good at measurements, but 2-3tablespoons should be good).
Stir this around until the broccoli gets dark green, about 3-4 minutes.
Take half of cup of water and pour it in the wok and cover it. Broccoli can steam that way for 5-10 minutes. This will yield delicious crisp broccoli that is cooked through, instead of soggy steamed or boiled broccoli!