Too salty

I made one of my "usual" Mystery Stir-Fry dishes a couple of days ago and almost couldn't eat it. It was just way too salty.

The ingredients were not much different than what I have used in the past: chopped white onion, chopped celery, diced chicken breast, chopped broccoli, sliced carrots. I did throw in some leftover smoked ham, but that came to maybe half a cup and the overwhelming taste there was "smoke" (which happily disappeared in the cooking process).

I used the "usual" spices: sea salt, coarsely ground black pepper (reminding self to refill that bottle), garlic powder, curry powder.

What I was experimenting with was Knorr Caldo de Tomate (tomato bouillon). I bought the chicken flavored kind. Since I want to try to make sauces without thickeners, I thought this would be a good addition to my Mystery Stir-Fry. I added two heaping teaspoons to my stir fry and stirred and fried (mostly steamed actually) away.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww!

After I burned out the salty taste buds in my mouth for at least a week, I checked the label on the tomato bouillon. I was shocked to find that I had just added 2 x 38% (+ heaping) of my daily requirement for sodium.

I'm cooking with less salt these days and using sea salt whenever possible. I wonder if that has not only reduced my sodium intake but changed my taste for saltiness. Whatever it is, I don't think that tomato bouillon is going to make it onto my pantry shelf as a staple unless I can find a salt free version.

I did actually try to find a salt free or low sodium version of this bouillon by looking at the Knorr corporate web sites for the US and for Canada (there isn't one for Mexico, but the Canada site is way cool). There is no mention of tomato bouillon on either site. I didn't do too well with the Latin American sites since they were written in Spanish and Portuguese. Going to the home company (Unilever) brought me to the environmental/healthy eating brag page where, assuming that this bouillon is manufactured somewhere in South America, the brag is that "soups" for that area have seen an average 7% reduction in sodium.

Well, whoopdeedo!

1. I can't find the bleeping product on any of the company's many web sites. Do they even claim it in public? Are they ashamed of it? They should be because . . .
   
2. 910 mg of sodium per teaspoon is a crying shame. Indeed, given the ingredient list which shows salt as the first ingredient, the whole product is probably mislabeled. This is not chicken-flavored tomato bouillon but tomato-flavored salt.