Blog | Chez Alaska Cooking School

Pesto is a sauce originating in Genoa in northern Italy.  The word comes from the Latin pesta, meaning to pound or crush, the same root for the English words pestle and paste.

Pesto alla Genovese is made with 5 ingredients:  fresh basil, garlic, pine nuts, grated hard cheese and olive oil.  The cheese is parmigiano reggiano or sometimes pecorino romano.  Sometimes parsley is added.  Pesto is best used raw, or tossed with hot pasta  yet not cooked itself.  Cooking (or drying) destroys much of the aromatic quality of basil.  Although basil is widely used in cooked dishes, when used raw, the flavor and aroma are much brighter, almost anise-like.  Pesto is used as a sauce in lasagne, on pizza, and in other cooked dishes, but it’s best at room temperature.

Pesto alla Genovese

2 c packed basil leaves

5 large garlic cloves

1/2 c pine nuts, toasted

1 c grated parmesan

3/8 c olive oil

You can use a mortar and pestle or a food processor.  A blender won’t work well with this thick of a paste.  A mortar and pestle will yield a pesto with a crushed, more interesting texture, as you can see in the picture above, rather than a smoother consistency.  Anyway, employing either method, you start with the basil and garlic, then after those are pretty mashed up, add the pine nuts, mash, then the cheese, mash, and finally the oil.  Obviously, you don’t want to put the oil in first if using the mortar and pestle, because it will just slop around.  But even with a processor, it’s best to add it last; if it goes in with the basil and garlic, it will emulsify quickly, then by the time you add the cheese and nuts, the paste will be thicker and more glue-like.  Instead, start without the oil, and keep stopping the processor frequently to scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula.  When the oil is added at the end, the sauce should be almost creamy.

The salty, hard cheese will probably provide enough salt, especially if paired with pasta cooked in heavily-salted water.  But you can add a little salt to taste.  Also, a little fresh cracked, toasted pepper is nice.  Chile-heads might want to add some hot chiles, even though that would be entirely not traditional; if you must add chiles, I’d recommend using fresh green, hot chiles, such as serranos, rather than dried red chiles or red prepared sauces.

It’s important to toast the pine nuts.  This gives them a deeper, more intense flavor.  As a rule, I think nuts should always be toasted, even if they are going to be used in a cooked item, such as chocolate chip cookies.  Walnuts are a good variation, or pine nuts and walnuts ½ & ½.  Other common variations are walnuts, almonds or cashews.  All toasted.

Fresh lemon slices are a nice garnish for pesto pasta.  Some people add a little lemon juice to the pesto, instead.  You could add the juice of a whole lemon to the above standard recipe.  You might then need to add a little more salt to balance.  This is not a good variation if you plan on storing the pesto, as the acid will discolor the basil (1 day) and eventually change its flavor as it pickles(2-3 days).

Anchovies are an excellent addition.  The best pesto I’ve ever had was made with anchovies, and had been allowed to mature at room temperature for several hours before serving.  Three or four fillets should be enough for the above recipe.

Parsley is a traditional addition.  Italian flatleaf is much preferred, because the flavor is different; flatleaf has a flavor slightly similar to orange zest.

Pesto rosso, red pesto, is Sicilian, and is made with sun-dried tomatoes, only a small amount of basil, almonds instead of pine nuts, plus hard cheese and olive oil.  Here’s a fantastic version of pesto rosso that also includes oil-cured black olives, fresh rosemary, and a bit of balsamic vinegar.  This pesto can change your life, and it improves everything it is spread upon.

Pesto Rosso

10 whole sundried tomatoes, packed in oil

5 cloves garlic

about 20 oil-cured black olives, pitted

1/2 c almonds, toasted

1/4 c chopped, packed fresh rosemary

2 tsp sugar or honey

1/2 tsp dried red chile flakes

1 tsp freshly toasted, crushed black pepper

1/2 c olive oil

2 tsp balsamic vinegar, or sherry vinegar

Puree all, add oil and vinegar last.  Although this pesto rosso includes vinegar, it stores better than basil pesto, and even cooks up better. A nice variation here is to substitute part or all of the sun-dried tomatoes for roasted red peppers.

An amazing quick sauce for pasta (or for dipping bread) can be made by first caramelizing a mess of onions, deglazing with wine, then adding some pesto rosso, and finishing with a couple pats of cold butter.

Nowadays, there are a thousand new, trendy pesto recipes to be found.  It’s easy to make your own.  You can follow a basic template, and then branch out from there.  Start with five ingredients.  You’ll want:

1)   A fresh herb:  basil, rosemary, tarragon, oregano, mint, cilantro, dill, thyme, etc., etc.

2)  A member of the Allium (onion) family:  garlic, shallots, leeks, scallions, red onions, sweet onions, elephant garlic, smoked onions, smoked garlic, roasted onions, roasted garlic, etc.

3)  Nuts:  pine nuts, walnuts, almonds, cashews, pecans, hazelnuts, macadamias, peanuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame, etc.

4)  Cheese:  parmesan, romano, dry jack, sap sago, asiago, myzithra, cotija, Jarlsberg, fontina, Gorgonzola, chevre, cream cheese, etc.

5)  Oil:  I would recommend olive oil for most combinations.  However, if working with Asian flavors, olive oil may seem cloying, so I’d recommend peanut, soybean, canola or sesame (and maybe leave the cheese out).

- Derrick Snyder

One more link to Luxirare, this time a very original take on parfaits.  Luxirare is a weekly web magazine of cooking and fashion, and has great photography.

There’s a new subfield of cuisine called molecular gastronomy, that deals with creating dishes employing the latest advances in food chemistry.  Much of the innovation is textural, such as the creation of stable foams or ketchup chocolate.  The test kitchen chef at Luxirare is obviously a fan.

The cool thing here is that the chef has come up with a way to make ‘caviar’ liquid-filled balls out of any liquid.  The process involves adding sodium alginate (a thickening agent) to the liquid of choice, and then dripping the liquid into a calcium chloride solution.  The liquid forms pearls as it drops.   The calcium salt solution reacts with the alginate, forming a thin but stable shell around the ball of liquid.  When you eat these, they go pop-pop-pop like fish eggs.  What’s even cooler, this process seems doable at home, given some time, practice, and those two special ingredients.

The parfaits are assembled using various flavors of liquid caviars layered with complementary flavors of yogurt and granola.  The blue liquid used here is Hpnotiq, a trendy liqueur made with vodka, cognac and tropical fruit juices.  A real show-stopper, with endless possibilities, both sweet and savory.  Pull this off at a picnic or catered event, and people will think you are some sort of wizard!

Here’s a very impressive take on a crab salad at Luxirare.  The salad is carefully enclosed in avocado, and then coated with a mixture of crushed seeds.  P.S., if you try this, you might want to season your salad with a bit of your favorite dressing before wrapping.

Actually, I was just as impressed by that seed mixture as by the composition itself.  The seed mixture is a combination of pink peppercorns, dried edamame, wasabe sesami seeds, black sesame seeds and sunflower seeds all ground together with a mortar and pestle.  Cool!

- Derrick Snyder

Okay, well at least the tourist season is here…in Juneau, that is.  The heralds are honkers and tourists, both of which fly north for the summer.

Honkers

The first cruise ship of the season, the Norwegian Pearl,  pulled into dock two days ago.  From now until the middle of September, at least one large ship a day will stop in Juneau, and sometimes as many as five.  These ships carry between 1000 and about 3500 passengers, and Juneau frequently hosts more than 15,000 visitors a day during the high days of July.

Tourists, God Bless 'Em

If you’re thinking how much you’d like to visit Alaska this year, there’s still plenty of time to make reservations.  Taking a cruise up through the wild islands of the Inside Passage is by far the best way to travel.  Those cruise ships are essentially floating towns with all the modern amenities and comforts.  Watch out for the 24-hour buffets, though…  When you’re able to wander down in your PJs at 2:30 in the morning to fix yourself a hot prime rib sandwich…well let’s just say, who among us could resist?

Try to go easy on the midnight prime rib sandwiches.

Here’s the pitch:  if you find yourself in Juneau, please don’t hesitate to stop by Chez Alaska and say hello!  Seriously, we’d love to see you.  You can e-mail and contact us here. We give cooking demonstrations almost every day throughout the summer.  These demonstrations take about an hour, they’re  lots of fun, and you get to taste our delicious creations.  We’ll even try to ply you with wine.  Some cruise ship companies have tours in Juneau that include a stop at Chez Alaska, but even otherwise, it’s a short ride from the docks.  Here is one of our demonstration classes:

Guests at a Chez Alaska Cooking Demonstration

Here’s the demonstration kitchen, where the chefs whip up Alaskan  cuisine:

Chez Alaska Kitchen

Here’s a few pictures of places around Juneau to make you want to come visit:

Waydelich Creek

Downtown Juneau

Lynn Canal, Looking West

Crab Pots at Harris Harbor

A walrus carving in someone's front yard.

Mendenhall Glacier

Salmon Fishing, Amalga Harbor

Wetlands Trail

Devil's Club, Montana Creek

Fireweed

- Derrick Snyder

Tri tip is probably my favorite cut of beef to work with.  It has good marbling and great flavor, and after being trimmed, has virtually zero tendon or gristle, so it can be quite tender.  And it’s cheap.  I think it’s a weird-looking piece of meat.

But then, I suppose all cuts of meat are weird-looking.  This steak can be roasted or grilled whole, but I like to cut it up first.  If you like beef skewers, you can cut it into pieces, and then marinade and grill skewers, but I like to slice it thinly and sear it.  Once the meat has been sliced, you can use it to make bulgogi, gyros, carne asada tacos, stir fries, or sandwiches.

In order to make slices that are nearly the same length, you want to first cut it into four pieces, cutting with the grain, and then freeze it.

You don’t have to freeze it solid,  just enough to let you slice it more easily.  Thirty minutes in the freezer should be fine.  Use a sharp knife, and slice across the grain.  Try to slice it into 1/8″ pieces or thereabouts.

Notice I’ve drawn in all the yellow lines.  Make sure you follow this template EXACTLY.  Just kidding.  I started drawing yellow lines, and then I was unable to stop.

This steak sandwich recipe is a nice way to try out the sliced steak.  Fresh rosemary makes all the difference here.  The addition of salami adds just enough”salty pork product” to really boost the beef into the taste stratosphere.  Well, at least above the tree tops.

Italian Steak Sandwich

Dressing/Marinade

1/2 c olive oil
1/2 c red wine
1/4 c red wine vinegar (or balsamic)
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 Tb soy sauce
1 Tb ketchup
1/4 c fresh rosemary, chopped
1 tsp whole oregano
1 tsp crushed red chile flakes
1 tsp salt
2 tsp toasted freshly crushed black pepper
1/4 tsp ground cumin

The Rest of the Sandwich  (per sandwich; amounts are approximate)

6 oz. tri-tip sirloin, sliced across the grain
3 slices salami, chiffonade
1/4 c onions, thinly sliced
1/4 c green pepper, thinly sliced
1/4 c roma tomatoes, thinly sliced

crusty, gnarly sandwich rolls
mayonnaise
dijon mustard
grated mozzarella
grated parmesan

Toss with some of the dressing, enough to coat liberally, and allow to marinate at room temperature for an hour.  The ingredients will sear better if the steak is near room temperature.  The steak should soak up most of the moisture.

Split the sandwich rolls, and toast in a 400°F oven until lightly browned.  Allow to cool slightly.  Spread one side with mayonnaise and the other with dijon mustard.  Sprinkle both halves with a small amount of mozzarella (you don’t need full coverage).  Spray the baking pan briefly with cooking spray (helps clean up dried-on, melted cheese) and toast rolls in a 400ºF oven until bubbling.  After they come out of the oven, the rolls can rest while you cook the steak.

Heat a cast iron skillet or heavy-bottomed sauté pan on high heat until very hot.  Pour in a small amount of olive oil (just less than a tablespoon per sandwich), and tilt pan to coat.  The oil should be smoking. (If the olive oil turns clear after hitting the pan, or starts to generate white smoke, it’s much too hot, and is in danger of bursting into flame.  In case of a grease fire, never attempt to move the pan off the stove…leave it under the fan.  Throw salt or baking soda at it until the flames are smothered, then turn off the heat and transfer the pan to a cooler burner.)

Carefully transfer the steak mixture to the skillet and spread it out.  Give it a chance to sear before moving it, then stir occasionally.  This is not a stir fry, you don’t want to keep the ingredients constantly in motion.
You want to allow the stuff time to sear and caramelize.  Don’t crowd the pan; work in batches if necessary.  You shouldn’t be generating much liquid in the pan; at such high heat, the water given off by the cooking food should evaporate rather than pool.  Also, as long as the pan is very hot, the food shouldn’t stick very much.  Ideally, you want the steak to have a little sear on the outside, yet still have some pink on the inside.  The tomatoes may disintegrate, but that’s fine.

As soon as the steak is cooked, remove the pan from the heat and then quickly sprinkle a small amount of parmesan over the meat.  Toss and immediately divide up between sandwich rolls.  Serve with a small amount of dressing on the side.

Also, you can serve this as is with lettuce leaves, and let your guests make lettuce rolls.  You let your guests fill their own lettuce leaves at the table, because the leaves will wilt if you fill them beforehand.  I like curly red lettuce for this, because it’s attractive, and folds into packets easily.  Romaine is nice too, because you can make long boats.  Iceberg is unsuitable, because it’s difficult to separate into uniform leaves.

- Derrick Snyder

Kalua pork (unrelated to Kahlua, the coffee liqueur) is one of the best ways to roast pork.  It’s Hawaiian, and this is the type of roast pork you can get at a luau, if you’re lucky enough to be invited to a luau.  It’s a very good pulled pork, and it’s versatile enough to be used for pretty much any recipes calling for pulled or roasted pork.

The real, original kalua pork is cooked in a Polynesian earthen pit called an imu.  Basically you soak a dressed pig in brine (or toss it in a tide pool) for a few hours, then wrap it in banana leaves, lay it in the pit on hot rocks and coals, then throw dirt on it and let it smolder and cook for half a day.  Then you dig it up, and eat!  The pork takes on a subtle smoky flavor, similar to ham or bacon, and the banana leaves impart an amazing perfume, fruity and floral.  Typically, Polynesians would surround the meat with yams, coconuts, and banana leaf packets of fish and whatever else they had.  Chicken and mangos in coconut milk, that sort of thing.  Mmm.

Unfortunately, earthen pits are rarely found in modern kitchens, probably due to timid, unimaginative architects.  So nowadays, most Hawaiians and the rest of us have adopted an oven method that closely replicates the bona fide taste of true kalua pork.  It involves this stuff:

Hey, wait a minute, that’s liquid smoke!  Isn’t that cheating? Yes, it is.  Wouldn’t any Michelin chef worth their gravy fricassee me if they caught me using liquid smoke? Yes, they would.  A lot of gourmets and especially barbecue purists would turn up their nose at the thought of using liquid smoke, and then they would chase you with a sharp object.

What’s worse, the recipe I’m going to drop on you calls for a whole bottle of liquid smoke.  That’s insane.  And it works.

The reddish Hawaiian sea salt is red because the sea water has been evaporated on a red clay salt pan.  You can use kosher salt or curing salt, such as Morton’s Tender-Quick.  Or regular old salt.

A Filipino chef once gave me a tour of his kitchen, and his cooks were just pulling this out of the oven, so I got to taste it.  It blew my mind when he explained how much liquid smoke was used.  The magic of this recipe is that the smoke flavor permeates the meat and mellows during the long cooking time, so that the end result is bacon-like, and not overpowering in the least.

Kalua Pork

1 pork butt (5-8 lbs)

about 1/4 cup kosher salt or sea salt

1 3-oz. bottle liquid smoke

1 package banana leaves

If one side of the pork butt still has the fat cap, you should trim it down a bit.  Wash it and pat dry with paper towels.  Now, get a big kitchen knife, and go psycho on it, just like Anthony Perkins in the Hitchcock film.  Stab the pork butt all over, about 12 or 15 times, making gashes 3 or 4 inches deep.  I like to make my own sound effects when I do this because I think it helps the flavor, but if you don’t remember the soundtrack from the movie, just do the best you can.

Lay out two 3 foot lengths of banana leaf on your counter, crisscrossing each other, and place the stabbed pork butt in the middle.  Now slowly pour the whole bottle of liquid smoke over the meat, massaging it into the holes and all over.  Wear kitchen gloves if you don’t like your hands to smell like smoke.  Next, do the same with the salt; you may need more salt for a larger pork butt.

Fold the banana leaves up around the meat.  It doesn’t matter if they split or break, just try to keep them together the best you can.  Next, seal the whole package tightly in foil. Unless you have a really wide roll of foil, you will probably want to join two lengths by triple folding the edges together.  Set the whole package in a pan or pot big enough to hold it…when it cooks it’s going to leak out an inch or two of liquid.

You can bake it for 5-6 hours at 325°F, or cook it for about 12 hours or all night at 200°F.  The meat should be falling-apart tender when done.

Then you can make pulled pork sandwiches, pasta, tacos & nachos, quiche with broccoli or asparagus, hash with fried potatoes, onions and cabbage, stir-fry, etc.

- Derrick Snyder

I’m not making this up.  They are for sale at Thinkgeek.

Caffeinated Bacon Lollipop in Use

Sometimes too much of a good thing is too much!

- Derrick Snyder

I love to grill lamb.  I don’t much care for roasted lamb or mutton, but I think grilling or searing brings bold flavor to lamb, and really produces a nice product.  Lamb racks, lamb burgers, and the kind of seared rotisserie lamb that’s sliced off a dangerous-looking meat slab to make doner kebab, shawarma, gyros, and tacos al pastor…yum.

So I don’t like roast leg of lamb.  However, once I was working at a restaurant where the cooks were given a free leg of lamb, and one fellow trimmed and cleaned it instead of roasting the whole thing intact.  After quite a task, he reduced the leg down into 6-8 odd-sized chunks of meat.  The pieces were long, so he sliced them into medallions against the grain, and then marinated and grilled them.  They were fantastic.  He worked up a recipe and we put it on the menu.

If you’re going to cook a leg of lamb this way, you might want to start a day ahead of time.  Trimming it is an ordeal.  There are several long muscles in the cut of meat.  Working on the shortest side, open the leg up, trying not to slice between the pieces of meat.  Use a sharp knife, and keep steeling it while you work.

The job can take up to an hour.  With practice, you can almost halve that, but the first couple of times it’s best to take your time.  It’s a pretty complex operation.  When finished, you should end up with several longish pieces of meat, all trimmed of fat and silverish tendon.  You’re probably going to end up with between 2½-4 pounds of meat, which at 6-8 oz. per serving equals about 6 to 10 servings.  Slice the meat across the grain into 1/2” pieces.  You can butterfly the meat to make it longer, so it won’t fall through the grill.  You can butterfly the longer pieces back and forth to create steaks, as shown in the diagram below.  Then marinate and grill (or even saute).  If you like, you can cut the meat up into chunks, marinate and make shishkebabs.

You wont believe this, but I made this diagram myself.

Now you don’t have to cook it for hours like a roast; it will be done as soon as it’s finished on the grill.  The only reason you need to roast meats for a long time anyway is to break down the tendon and gristle…that stuff is stronger than meat, and needs to cook for a long time until the proteins denature and become soft.  Meat itself denatures pretty quickly, in the time it takes to cook a steak…though if you cook it well-done, the proteins curdle up again and toughen, and then you need to cook it for a long time to make it soften again (and you need to cook it in liquid or a moist environment…when the proteins do finally denature, the meat will soak up liquid as it softens).

When grilling or sauteing lamb, the target color is different than that for beef.  Lamb will finish with more red than beef of the same doneness.  The general rule is that lamb is one shade redder than beef when you cut into it:  medium lamb looks like it’s medium-rare, well-done lamb looks medium-well.

Here’s a marinade if you want to try it out:

Grilled Rosemary Lamb with Grilled Vegetables and Rice Pilaf

1 medium onion
2 bay leaves
1 c red wine
8 cloves garlic
about 1/2 c fresh rosemary leaves (a 1 oz.bunch or package)
1 Tb dijon mustard
2 lemons juice and zest
2 tsp fresh cracked black pepper
1/2 tsp curry powder
2 tsp salt, to taste
1 Tb sambal or Chinese chile paste, optional, to taste

1 leg of lamb, cleaned of all tendon and fat, separated into pieces, and butterflied

Puree the onion with the bay leaves and wine in a blender, until the bay leaves are pulverized.  Add garlic and rosemary, and pulse to mince.  Transfer to a large bowl and add the rest of the marinade ingredients.  Reserve 1/4 cup marinade for the glaze.  Marinate butterflied lamb in bowl for 4 hours or overnight.  Some people are concerned that marinating for a long time will draw water out of the meat and toughen it, but with lamb and this type of marinade, I’ve never had a problem refrigerating the lamb marinated for 1 day.

Glaze

1/4 c reserved marinade
1/4 c honey
1 Tb dijon mustard
1 tsp sesame oil

Mix all together.  Grill the lamb, then baste with this glaze when almost done.  The reason I do it this way is because sugar (in this case, honey) in a marinade makes things stick to the grill, and the sugar burns.  You can still turn the meat a couple times quickly at the end, and baste twice…that will burn the glaze just a little bit, which is good.  If you are a die-hard mint & lamb fan, you can slice some fresh mint and garnish the finished lamb with it, but I don’t think that’s necessary.  I’ve cooked lamb in at least five different world cuisines, Chinese to South American to Persian, and there’s always someone who asks for mint jelly (shudder).

Grilled Vegetables

turnips, celery root, rutabaga, carrots (cut carrots lengthwise so they don’t fall through the grill)
asparagus, zucchini

Use a combination of one or more root vegetables and one or more green vegetables.  Peel root vegetables, slice ~1/3” and blanche in heavily salted boiling water for about 4 minutes…they should still be underdone.  Drain, then stop the cooking process by throwing them into very cold water for 5 minutes, drain.  Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, and grill right along with the lamb.

Rice Pilaf serves 8-10

1/4 c diced pancetta or bacon
1 c onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 c rice, long grain, basmati, Texmati
1/2 tsp salt
4½ c chicken stock
2 medium tomatoes (or 4 romas), diced

Render pancetta or bacon over medium heat until almost crisp.  Add onions and rice and saute, stirring constantly, until onions soften.  Some of the rice grains will become white and opaque, then they will begin to darken and brown.  When half the rice is brown, add the rest of the ingredients.  Bring to a simmer, cap, and reduce heat to low.  Cook 15 minutes, move pot off heat and turn off heat, don’t open lid.  Wait 5 minutes, then remove lid and fluff.

- Derrick Snyder

From The Washington Post:

The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products.

Considering this would involve tens of thousands of different products, this is a huge undertaking.  I think it’s amusing to read the reactions from the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association (“We’re working on it voluntarily already.”) and the Salt Institute (“[It] would be a disaster for the public.”).  I didn’t know there was a Salt Institute.  Basically, then, the response from industry is that no regulation is needed because everything is under control, and also, regulation would only amount to a public catastrophe.  I picture riots and mayhem.  And anyway, who is this so-called “government” to tell us what to do?

But the truth is, as almost everyone knows, our diets are too high in salt.  If you want to eat lots of salt, that’s your choice, but with today’s food, there isn’t much choice.  I mean, there are a billion different food products to choose from, sure, but the way we eat today, most of our food is processed.  Our lifestyle, with regard to the amount of time spent cooking and eating has changed dramatically over the past generation.  Even if you try to make health-conscious choices, you might still be getting too much salt.  It’s an epidemic with our kids…they are growing up into a world where they don’t need to learn how to cook, and many aren’t learning the value of fresh or unprocessed food.

As this chart indicates, by far the majority of our salt intake comes from processed foods.

Historically, the primary value of salt was as a preservative, not as a flavor enhancer.  Salt was precious because it extended the time food could be stored, and so it increased the value of food.  Yeah, sodium is a necessary nutrient, and we’re predisposed to prefer the taste, but it’s also poisonous to a host of microbes.

And salt is still used today to preserve foods, along with a host of other sodium-based preservatives such as sodium nitrate.  But now there are lots of ways to preserve food.  When canning foods, the food is cooked first and then sealed, and when processed food is frozen, it’s cooked first also.  Both these methods of preservation require little if any additional salt.

So why all the salt?  Food manufacturers include lots of salt in their products because it sells more products.  There are lots of low sodium products offered now (though caution is warranted, since many products low in sodium may be high in fat or sugar, or may have achieved their low sodium rating by setting unrealistic serving sizes), but in the past, low sodium products have failed dismally, and manufacturers are wary.  Also, manufacturers have determined that customers are dissatisfied if the first bite of food tastes under-salted.  Heavens forbid we should have to add our own salt at the table, but apparently that’s enough to make people not buy the product again.

When it comes right down to it, it would be naive to expect food manufacturers to take responsibility for our own best interests.  Their concern for our health is limited to its relationship to their ability to sell us products.  I’m not trying to villainize the industry, we just need to look out for ourselves.

Okay, maybe I am out to villainize.  Here’s a store aisle in a Wall-Mart.   The chips and soda are conveniently located in the middle of the toys aisle.  That’s not just the store’s fault; the distributor has paid for the placement privilege.  Caveat emptor…

- Derrick Snyder

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