Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

This might sound odd, but many times lemon juice or a splash of good vinegar is what is missing from a dish and not salt. So use less salt, but add a squeeze of lemon, too.

You only get something like 10 percent of your salt intake from cooking, and the majority of it comes from processed foods. If you can cut those out, you might not need to cut out cooking salt. Ya gotta have SOME salt, or you skew your system in another way.

Nigella seeds taste salty to me. I use them as toppings for some breads, but they'd probably be lovely in things like salad dressings or marinades or rubs on meats.

Drinking sufficient water and exercising to the point where you're building up a sweat will rid your body of salt. Which is why athletes and people who work in hot environments sometimes need to supplement their salt intake.

I'm going to be an echo and also suggest acid. I like lime juice better than lemon - has a milder flavor.

Use bold spices - look to Indian, Thai, and Mexican cooking for big flavors so that you don't have to use as much salt.

@ dbcurrie - ~%12 of Na consumed is naturally occurring (esp. in dairy), ~11% is added in home cooking...meaning that ~%75 is from processed or restaurant food. Ick.

Another vote for limiting non-home cooked food. I always use salt when I cook and yet my food is never as salty as anything I eat out. You can make a lot things like sausage, ricotta, broth and salad dressing yourself and put enough salt to make them taste good, but less than the commercially prepared versions. And avoid canned soup like the plague, the salt content in those is astronomical.

one thing to remember is that most doctors will tell you to cut your salt intake if you have high blood pressure, however, less than 45% of people actually are affected by salt. My ex had veryhigh blood pressure, stroke zone, and after 6 mths of no to very low salt diet it was not affected at all, medication was what he needed and even after I went back to cooking regularly, his bp stayed perfectly normal. It seems to me dr's spout cut the salt just like loose the weight and stop smoking advice, almost without thinking. and while droping excess weight and stoping smoking are good ideas in most cases, they need to stop and give real advice to bp patients, rather than something that may or may not fit the criteria.

Also adding Potassium to your diet should help offset the negative effects salt can have on blood pressure. I agree that it is essential to avoid processed foods. I find I need less soy sauce (high sodium) when I add wasabi, chili oil or some other type of heat to a dish. It is founds is fruits and veggies especially potatoes, bananas and oranges.

Being a long-time health-food nut, I stumbled across the idea that salt cravings are not only a sign of dehydration but can also signal a shortage of other minerals - because in nature, surface salt deposits are usually "contaminated" by other minerals. So when I can't get enough salt, I take a multi-mineral or multi-vitamin-plus-mineral supplement for a few days.

For my own personal palate, it's GARLIC that is the most efficient salt substitute.

I also use a potassium-chloride salt substitute for table seasoning. It's satisfactory in foods that have some flavor of their own - even potatoes - to cover up that ashy aftertaste. For some delicately-flavored foods, such as a delicate homemade poultry stock, I still have to use salt.

I don't actually eat much processed food, yet my blood pressure is still high. Must be my misspent youth.