Settle a gumbo argument

I guess you may get some salt from sausage and chicken stock but past that, if you dont add salt idk where it would come from

Depends on who's cooking and where. In a restaurant it almost certainly would have a fair amount of salt with the sausage, stock, seasoning, and everything else. But at home, he could make it pretty low sodium

I use low sodium chicken broth. If I had serious hypertension I'd use water.

None of the veggies, roux, cayenne or file delivers any sodium. The sausage is delivering the salt.

Spaghetti and sauce not only are high salt but raw ground meat to make meat balls has more salt than raw chicken in making gumbo. I found that out last year when I started reading the nutrition labels on raw meat.

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However it won't be as tasty low sodium without hot sauce

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I never put hot sauce in gumbo. I use cayenne. Of course, I'm not talking restaurant. I make gumbo at home.

Silly debate---if you're making both dishes from scratch, you can control exactly how much sodium is in each one. Both can be as low-sodium as you'd like.

I make chicken gumbo with bone-in chicken cooked in the gumbo, not boneless chicken plus stock. (You fish out the chicken and debone it, returning the meat to the pot before serving.) The only added salt is from sausage/andouille/tasso, and you could certainly find a reduced sodium version of your favorite smoked meat product. Skip the salt when cooking rice and the whole shebang is pretty darn low salt.

I would tend to agree with you, but I don't add a lot of salt and use a whole unseasoned chicken carcass for stock and Jacob's andouille which has never struck me as having a high salt content. A lot of bottled or canned spaghetti sauces have a ton of salt and sugar as well. Like most things in life, it depends.

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I'm not sure how you can make spaghetti and meat balls with pasta sauce low sodium. All 3 bring sodium.

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Dude, two words: scratch cooking. I made egg noodles this weekend--100 g flour per egg--with no added salt. Delicious. Get off your a** and make a simple, from-scratch tomato sauce using no salt added tomatoes, onion, fresh basil, and whatever else you like: again, no added salt.

Plain beef has around 60-80 mg of sodium per serving, so the meatballs deliver a little hit, but again, this dish is very easily reproduced with very low sodium. Seasonings don't add salt: onion, garlic, oregano, basil, plain bread crumbs, egg, etc. A tiny pinch of good quality grated pecorino over the final dish won't break the sodium bank if you strip the salt out of the components.

If you're avoiding salt, you must avoid packaged foods. It's pretty easy to reduce salt if you actually cook things from scratch.

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Jacob's andouille which has never struck me as having a high salt content.

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It may not have struck you, but all sausage has a tremendous amount of sodium unless of the low sodium variety. Most sausage is 450 to 500mgs per serving and I doubt anyone actually sticks to the one serving of sausage. One serving is just about 2.0 to 2.5 inches.

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It may not have struck you, but all sausage has a tremendous amount of sodium unless of the low sodium variety. Most sausage is 450 to 500mgs per serving and I doubt anyone actually sticks to the one serving of sausage. One serving is just about 2.0 to 2.5 inches.

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True but the sodium in 6 servings of sausage is distributed in the roux and portioned out by bowl. SO you could keep the salt percentage down just by not eating multiple bowls.

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Dude, two words: scratch cooking.

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Dude, let me tell you something about my friend, UAW.

He is 67. He is 5-6, 200 with lower forward belly fat like he swallowed a basketball. He is a HS drop out who worked painting cars for GM.

He does not cook. His wife does. But her menu items are severely limited. He does not eat any vegetables. Unless you count rice, potatoes and corn as vegetables.

He does not eat seafood. Not because of any allergy. Because he thinks fish, shrimp, crabs, etc 'taste like crap.'