Salt-free teriyaki sauce — a taste test of three varieties

Asian food is notoriously high in sodium, thanks mainly to the presence of soy sauce and teriyaki sauce in many dishes, both Japanese and Chinese.

I dearly miss my Friday night Chinese food treat but haven’t had Asian food since my angioplasty in August 2012 on nutritionists’ orders. I have been searching for a way to make some of my own, however.

Reduced sodium teriyaki and soy sauce is sold in mainstream supermarkets but it still has too much sodium for someone on a low-salt diet such as me. Kikkoman’s less sodium teriyaki, for example, has 320 mgs of sodium per tablespoon compared to 600 mgs for regular teriyaki. My limit per day is 1,200-1,500 mgs of sodium, so two tablespoons of reduced-sodium teriyaki sauce would be half my daily requirement, too much to sacrifice in one dish of a multi-dish meal.

Sodium-free teriyaki sauce does exist, as I’ve written here, but the first brands I tried relied too heavily on pepper as a salt flavor replacer for my taste.   

More recently though, I’ve tried Mrs. Dash’s sweet salt-free teriyaki and enjoyed the taste immensely. Using it on salmon created a wonderful salmon teriyaki, a dish I truly love and have missed mightily, especially when I pass a Japanese restaurant I once frequented for that very dish.

Thanks again, Mrs. Dash, the sweet variety is head and shoulders above your spicy teriyaki, in my opinion.