I was recently diagnosed with high blood pressure, so I cut sodium out of my diet as much as I could (and after a month and a half, I now have below normal BP! I also went on the Dash Diet and got really serious about exercise). And thusly, by combining ideas from several recipes and looking around the kitchen to see what we have, I invented the following
delicious recipe! Many Thai restaurants use something similar to this as a salad dressing before their meals, and it also works as the peanut sauce for dipping Satay Chicken (or tofu...) into. In fact, I'd say the end result is about halfway between those two things. It's a great peanut sauce you can put a lot of things, I even dip vegetables into it and munch. And of course, the point of all this is that it has almost no sodium at all, despite being tastacular. Normally sauces like this have soy sauce in them, which makes them a heart attack in a box. I used molasses - it's the same color, right? So, give this a go, it's really good:
Hamumu's Low-Sodium Thai Peanut Dressing
2 Tbs Chunky Peanut Butter
2 tsp Molasses
1/2 Tbs Sweet Red Chili Sauce*
2 tsp Sugar
1 Tbs Canola Oil (any vegetable oil)
2 1/2-3 Tbs Rice Wine Vinegar
1/8 tsp Ground Ginger
1/8 tsp Ground Garlic
Dash o' Pepper
Put Peanut Butter and Molasses and Chili Sauce in a bowl and microwave for 30 seconds to make the peanut butter easier to work with and warm things a bit. Stir it up good, and stir in the other ingredients. Taste repeatedly and add in more of various things until it's awesome! Preferably refrigerate it a while before using so the flavors can blend, but it works right away. Recipe makes 6 rather small servings of maybe 1.5 Tbs each? I like to double it.
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1 serving has 70 calories, 5g fat, 0.8g saturated fat, 0mg cholesterol, 32.4mg sodium, 4.8g carbohydrates, 0.3g fiber, 3.5g sugars, and 1.3g protein. I calculate all this stuff using Lose It on my iPod.
* Not everybody has Sweet Red Chili Sauce around their house, but they should. It's good stuff. You can substitute by skipping this entirely. It's just there to add a little sweetness, a little spice. You could chop in diced hot peppers if you like it spicy, or put in a sweet & sour sauce. Maybe Hoisin Sauce would be good (but salty)? Maybe not.
