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Hi, newbie sausage maker here.
I'm doing my very best to stick to a low sodium diet. .. Blood pressure squeaky.

Looking at some of the recipes here seem to require a significant amount of Sodium Chloride.
Cannot Potassium Chloride be used instead?

And hopefully in smaller amounts.

Peter

Hi Peter and welcome.

There are numerous low salt recipes about, but bearing in mind that the average rate for home produced is about 2% and shop bought somewhere around 8% you are well on your way to lowering your intake.

I have read that you can substitue pottasium chloride but it is usually mixed with sodium chloride due to its taste.

Bearing in mind that pottasium does unusual things to the electrical side of the heart I personally especially with my medical problems would steer clear, very recent opinions are that salt as we know it is now not as bad as we were led to believe, however that could change again next week.

Kind Regards Gazza.

Thanks, Gazza.
So can we make a sausage with much less salt then?
It seems reading that it's necessary to react with the protein to achieve an eatable result?

But it's the amount of salt that concerns me.

Look at this link http://www.localfoodheroes.co.uk/weblog/pivot/entry.php?id=131&w=my_weblog and set your amount of meat to 750 grams in the calculator.
That results in 12.5 grams of salt!
OK that's for, what, 25 sausages which means 500mg salt/sausage.
Two sausages, (OK, I'm mean), results in one gram.

My heart is racing already.

You sig made ROFL.

Hi, welcome.

Looking at the nutritional information on a few web-sites, I can see that a low sodium diet must be a problem. This sausage recipe has 1.25% salt (12.5gm salt with 750gm meat makes 1000gm sausage). Many commercial sausage contain far more salt - even though the government have set targets of below 1% recently. Having a modest 150gm portion with plenty of veg etc (no added salt) will give 1.875gm salt in a meal. I was surprised that this is less than (say) a Weight Watchers Red Thai Chicken Curry with Jasmine Rice! You'd expect their stuff to be healthy! The level is also not much higher than in tinned oily fish - even when not in brine!

However, that is not the issue here as you want a lower sodium sausage - not excuses.

You can reduce the salt in the recipe - just replace it with an equivalent amount of cornflour to keep everything in balance. I'm sure that you could also replace some of the salt with potassium equivalents or even a propriety low sodium product. Whether this will affect the development of the protein in the meat (myosin), I'm not sure - I've read something about it somewhere but can't find the source now. It's certainly worth a try. Freeze the sausage for storage or use immediately as the preservative effect of the salt may be reduced/lost.

Oh, just so nobody gets confused - I'm talking about fresh sausage here.

Please let us know how you get on.

Phil

added 19.47:

You may also be interested in this thread:

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=6670

A recently-concluded study at Loyola University followed 3000 patients over 15 years studying sodium intake and blood pressure. What was found was that the ratio of sodium to potassium intake was more important in controlling blood pressure than the amount of sodium. The recommended dietary intake ratio is 2.35:3 potassium to sodium, based on the study.

A 13-year study of 7000 patients conducted by Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York, concluded in 2005, found that reducing dietary sodium intake below 6 grams per day had no additional impact on blood pressure, and increased the risk of heart disease.

From these studies, new recommendations for potassium and sodium intake, absent complicating medical factors that affect processing of potassium and sodium, are emerging. The Loyola study resulted in recommendations of 4.7 g/day of potassium and 6 g/day of sodium, which seems to be independently backed by the NY study. Worth discussing with your doc.

I'm going to be experimenting with normal salt content in my sausages, but using a ratio of 44% potassium chloride to 56% sodium chloride. This should reduce the sodium in my sausages by nearly half, without compromising the flavor or chemistry of the salt.

ETA: In low-sodium fresh sausage I've made for others, I was able to reduce salt to 1% of meat block, and have it still be satisfactory in texture and flavor, especially if you dissolve the salt in a little water to disperse it more evenly throughout the sausage.

Thanks Phil and Tom for the wise words.
But as Gazza said, the health decision issue with sodium & potassium will probably change next week/year...

However, in the meantime I would like to come to a decision regarding salt/sodium.

Would you please also explain what you meant by, "..salt to 1% of meat block.."
1% by weight possibly? i.e. 1Kg meat, 10 grams salt?

As to the surveys, I am pretty well always sceptical. For a start I have an Oz friend who spent his working life as a statistician and made me aware of what can be done with numbers.
Secondly I am somewhat sceptical of the 'ideal' figures for my health.
For instance, Fiona Bruce I seem to recall has extremely low cholesterol but all her family have long healthy lives.

vagreys wrote:I'm going to be experimenting with normal salt content in my sausages, but using a ratio of 44% potassium chloride to 56% sodium chloride. This should reduce the sodium in my sausages by nearly half, without compromising the flavor or chemistry of the salt.

Just a couple of thoughts - the wedlinydomowe site advises not using more than 30% potassium chloride in the salt mix otherwise there will be a noticeable difference in taste.

PorkinPossum - Vagreys has quoted a % of the meat - I used a % of the whole sausage. This is probably because Vagreys is in the US where the use of fillers in sausage is less common. In sure that a good British Banger can still be made with even less than 1% sodium in the total sausage.

HTH

Phil

PorkinPossum wrote:...Would you please also explain what you meant by, "..salt to 1% of meat block.."
1% by weight possibly? i.e. 1Kg meat, 10 grams salt?

1% by weight of the meat and fat, yes. Slightly less than 1% of the final product (in a US-style sausage).

...As to the surveys, I am pretty well always sceptical. For a start I have an Oz friend who spent his working life as a statistician and made me aware of what can be done with numbers.
Secondly I am somewhat sceptical of the 'ideal' figures for my health.
For instance, Fiona Bruce I seem to recall has extremely low cholesterol but all her family have long healthy lives.

I wasn't suggesting these findings were the ideal. I mentioned these two studies because they were long-term studies of large populations, and their conclusions might be worth discussing. I'd be more skeptical of the results of a study involving a drug trial, than studies looking at the effects of widely available commodities like salt, but I certainly don't consider their conclusions to be absolute. The idea that the ratio of potassium to sodium is more important than the absolute amount of sodium in the diet makes more sense than an "ideal" amount of sodium for BP control in all patients. It also makes sense that there could be a minimum level below which reducing sodium intake would offer no appreciable additional benefit. I've been on a reduced sodium diet for 30 years, and if I don't have to be, then I'd like to know that. I'm definitely going to talk to my docs about it.

wheels wrote:...Just a couple of thoughts - the wedlinydomowe site advises not using more than 30% potassium chloride in the salt mix otherwise there will be a noticeable difference in taste.

Thanks for that heads up. The Marianski book doesn't mention that in its discussion of low salt formulations. Good to know.

...Vagreys has quoted a % of the meat - I used a % of the whole sausage. This is probably because Vagreys is in the US where the use of fillers in sausage is less common. In sure that a good British Banger can still be made with even less than 1% sodium in the total sausage...

That hadn't occurred to me as a reason to use % of final product. I'll keep that in mind, in the future. Thanks, Phil.

You could try MSG .Not well looked upon by some but if used sensibly then for certain a lower sodium solution.

Jim

PorkinPossum wrote:Hi, newbie sausage maker here.
I'm doing my very best to stick to a low sodium diet. .. Blood pressure squeaky.

Looking at some of the recipes here seem to require a significant amount of Sodium Chloride.
Cannot Potassium Chloride be used instead?

And hopefully in smaller amounts.

Peter

One major problem is that potassium doesn't have the same antibiotic properties as sodium. Here in Sweden, where homemade pickled herring is popular, we've had a few cases of botulism where people substituted potassium chloride for ordinary salt. I think that there is even a warning label on the package that it must not be used for curing or pickling.

However, this is obviously not an issue in fresh sausages and as long as one uses nitrite, I don't know if it's an issue at all.