This recipe takes a delicious blend of spices to create a delicious, non-starchy vegetable dish that is not only low is sodium but packed with kidney friendly ingredients. Best served cold, this is the perfect dish to have on hand in your fridge for those times when you’re not in the mood to cook.
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This recipe is adapted from the recipe by Once Upon A Chef. She’s got some great vegetable forward recipes that can usually be easily tweaked to be more kidney friendly.
About the ingredients
First off, I want to acknowledge that there are a lot of ingredients in this recipe. But I’ll let you in on a little secret – the more flavorful ingredients that you use in a recipe, the easier it is to get away with using less salt.
Flavor has to come from somewhere, and a lot of recipes rely on salt as the primary flavoring agent. If salt is the only seasoning that you use in a dish, then the dish is going to be pretty darn bland when you cut back on the salt.
This recipe contains over a DOZEN flavorful ingredients that result in a dish that is delicious and full of flavor, but not high in sodium.
- Carrots – to meet your daily Vitamin A requirements, it is recommended that you eat one serving of orange vegetable most days of the week. Carrots are not only a non-starchy vegetable, but they are also considered low in potassium which is helpful for anyone who is trying to be mindful of their potassium intake. In this recipe, the carrots are grated, which makes them much more tender than a typical raw carrot – perfect for any individual who doesn’t usually like the crunch of raw vegetables. If you’re okay with a bit of crunch, you can use pre-shredded carrots from the store. Otherwise, you will ideally want to have a food processor on hand to grate the carrots. We have this one in an older model.
- Currants – currants are a type of raisin, typically smaller than a normal raisin. If you can’t find them, you can substitute raisins. To ensure that you get a little bit of raisin in each bite, you can also chop the raisins to make the pieces smaller. Dried fruit tends to be higher in potassium, so we only use a small portion in this recipe.
- Almonds – Nuts are a great source of both plant based protein and heart healthy unsaturated fats, which make them a very kidney friendly food. This recipe calls for slivered almonds, but you can also by unsalted almonds and simply chop them by hand to make them smaller. The smaller pieces help add some crunch to the salad to balance out the tenderness of the grated carrots. We doubled the amount of almonds called for in our recipe for a couple of reasons. First, we wanted more crunch in the salad. The crunch helps balance out the softness and tenderness of the carrots and chickpeas. Second, almonds help add calories without adding salt. Using more almonds allowed us to keep a bit more salt in the dish, which helped enhance the flavors of the other ingredients.
- Cilantro – Chopped cilantro adds both flavor and pops of color to the dish. People eat with their eyes as much as they eat with their mouths, so having some bright green color goes a long way with making the salad prettier. Additionally, cilantro counts as a leafy green vegetable. If you are not a cilantro fa, you can substitute fresh mint.
- Chickpeas – also known as garbanzo beans, chickpeas are a very kidney friendly bean. Chickpeas are the lowest potassium bean, especially when you buy then canned. They are also a good source of plant based protein and fiber. We recommend finding no salt added chickpeas for this recipe.
- Cumin, Ginger, Cinnamon, Coriander, Allspice, Cayenne Pepper: This recipe calls for several spices, many of which are used in lots of different recipes so it is good to have these on hand. If you find that you really like this recipe and plan to make it often, I recommend mixing up a large batch of the spices called for in this recipe, so that when it comes time to prep, you just have to measure once.
- Shallot – shallots are like a cross between a yellow and red onion, so like a milder version of red onion. If you can’t find shallots, feel free to substitute a similar amount of your onion of choice.
- Garlic – garlic is a great flavor enhancer that is also high in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds. Studies have found that consumption of garlic is associated with reduced inflammation, improved lipid panels, and improving cancer outcomes. In many of these studies, the dose of garlic was approximately one clove per day. This recipe doesn’t contain a ton of garlic, but it will get you closer to that one clove per day.
- Olive Oil – olive oil is high in heart healthy monounsaturated fats and is a key component of Mediterranean diets. Olive oil also contains no phosphorus, potassium, or sodium, which make it very kidney friendly.
- Lemon Zest and Lemon Juice – Lemon is very flavorful and high in vitamins, flavonoids, and antioxidants. Lemon juice may even help protect against the formation of kidney stones.
- Honey – honey helps add a touch of sweetness to this recipe. The original recipe was overly sweet in our opinion (and our testers), so we removed one of the fruit juice ingredients and also reduced the amount of honey. Honey is considered an added sugar, so we do recommend using it in moderation. This recipe uses only 1 tablespoon.
- Salt – last but not least, we do use salt in this recipe. All of the ingredients used in this recipe are sodium-free, so we have a bit of wiggle room to add some salt and still keep the overall dish low in sodium. Because we cut out some of the added sugar in the recipe, we were able to reduce the amount of salt used so we could make the dish low sodium. Each serving of this salad contains 349 calories and 253mg of sodium.
Making Bulk seasoning
We love this recipe so much that we ended up mixing up some bulk seasoning so we just have to scoop out one seasoning when making the dish. Here is what we did:
- 2 tablespoons cumin
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 tablespoon ginger
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- 1.5 teaspoons ground coriander
- 1.5 teaspoons ground allspice
- 1.5 teaspoons cayenne pepper
Mix well. When adding to the recipe, simply measure out 1 tablespoon plus ¼ teaspoon of seasoning.
Nutrition Information:
The full recipe makes 6 servings, and the nutrition for each serving is listed below
Additionally, each serving has 639µg of Vitamin A, which is almost the full recommended daily value for women (700µg) and 71% of the RDA for men (900µg). Each serving also contains 6.9mg of Vitamin E.
Is this recipe high in potassium?
This recipe contains 535mg of potassium per serving. Whether or not this recipe is considered high potassium will depend on your unique needs. Many people with CKD do not need to follow a potassium restriction and may not be eating enough potassium. There are many reasons your potassium levels may be high that are not related to the food that you eat.
Based on the calories in this dish, I would not consider it to be a high potassium dish. This recipe contains approximate 1.5x as much potassium as calories. To put that into perspective, an 1,800 calorie diet that included 2,700mg of potassium would also have 1.5x as much potassium as calories. A diet with 2,700mg of potassium is much lower than the Daily Value of 4,700mg.
Talk to your dietitian or doctor about what the right amount of potassium is for your unique situation.
Low Sodium Moroccan Spiced Carrot Salad
Nutrition:
Nutrition:
6
servings10
minutes5
minutesIngredients
- Dressing
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp lemon zest
3 tbs lemon juice (one large lemon’s worth of juice)
1 tbs honey
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp ground allspice
- Salad
1 lb carrots, peeled and shredded
1/4 cup currants
1 cup slivered almonds, toasted
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1 can no salt added chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 tbs minced shallot
1 clove garlic, minced
Directions
- If almonds need to be toasted, pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange almonds on a foil lined baking sheet and bake for 5 minutes until almonds are golden.
- In a large bowl, whisk together dressing ingredients until evenly mixed.
- Add all salad ingredients to the dressing and toss well to coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least a few hours for flavors to set. Salad is best served cold.