Make your own pantry items If you’re not starting with no-salt-added canned beans, fear not. A quick rinse can make a significant difference. Cook’s Illustrated commissioned a lab to see how much sodium you can eliminate simply by rinsing canned beans. Looking at cans of store-bought cannellini, pinto and black beans, plus chickpeas, the lab found that draining and rinsing them cut the sodium by about 100 milligrams per half-cup serving, roughly 25 per cent. Add salt smartly Depending on your own health situation, cutting back on sodium may not mean not using salt ever. So focus on getting more bang for your buck, flavour-wise. As Samin Nosrat says in her book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat it matters when you use salt. “Add it in the right amount, at the right time, in the right form. A smaller amount of salt applied while cooking will often do more to improve flavour than a larger amount added at the table.” So, salt your meat in advance, sprinkle some on your vegetables before roasting, and add it to the water in which you’ll be boiling vegetables, pasta and grains. That way you’re giving the salt time to work and season from within.