New Chili

A few weeks ago, I decided to see how much sodium was in the chili I make. Though I always thought it was pretty healthy (fresh green and red peppers, fresh onion, meat, kidney and pinto beans), it turns out to be very high in sodium. In my best nerdy accountant-type, I put together the following spreadsheet of info:

	servings	Sodium per	total sodium
Tomato sauce	7	280	1,960
Diced tomatoes	7	320	2,240
Chili beans	3.5	400	1,400
Kidney beans	3	340	1,020
Pinto beans	3.5	350	1,225
Chili spice mix	4	210	840
Sausage	5	440	2,200
Total sodium			10,885

Depending on how many servings a pot of chili makes (10? 15?), it's a LOT of sodium per serving. So I set out to find a lower sodium chili. First and foremost, I found recipes that called for no salt added tomatoes and beans. Well, where the hell am I supposed to find those?? Turns out, right around the corner! Whole Foods carries all sorts of things without sodium added: tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, kidney beans and pinto beans. So tonight I went shopping and came up with the following results:

	servings	Sodium per	total sodium
Tomato sauce	7	10	70
Diced tomatoes	6	15	90
Chili beans	0	0	-
Kidney beans	3	10	30
Pinto beans	3	10	30
Chili spice mix	4	210	840
Sausage	0	0	-
Total sodium			1,060

A dramatic reduction!! But does it taste good? Well, that's why I made some tonight. The result? Interestingly, it needs salt. Sigh. So close. In this batch I left out the chili beans (because I couldn't find a low sodium alternative) and the spicy breakfast sausage (I opted for additional ground beef). My thought is that I can cook up some of the beans and add them to the mix, doubling the sodium content, but still reducing the overall sodium to less than 25% of what it was. If adding the beans improves the taste, that would be awesome!!