Salt vs. Sodium in getting a bind
Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2021 18:23
This may seem like a silly question, but I'm feeling a little puzzled and having trouble finding information on this question: when we add salt (NaCl) to the meat and mix and proteins are extracted giving us the bind we desire, is it the sodium that's doing it, or the NaCl?
The reason I ask is that I'm making a recipe with a decent amount of soy sauce and I want to compensate for amount of sodium in the soy sauce when measuring how much salt I add to the mix. I also don't want it to be too salty tasting. Each tbsp (15ml) of reg soy sauce contains slightly under a gram of salt. Salt contains about 40% sodium. Should I just be subbing out one for the other and doing the math, or do I still have to add the requisite amount of salt to get a bind because it's NaCl that does the work of producing a bind, and then make sure I don't add so much soy sauce that it's unpleasantly salty? I could use low sodium soy sauce, but I already purchased gluten free soy sauce as a couple people I know can't do the gluten. And besides, low sodium soy sauce still has about a half gram per tbsp so the question remains.
Can anyone shed more light on the actual chemistry of sausage making here? I'm very curious.
Thanks.
The reason I ask is that I'm making a recipe with a decent amount of soy sauce and I want to compensate for amount of sodium in the soy sauce when measuring how much salt I add to the mix. I also don't want it to be too salty tasting. Each tbsp (15ml) of reg soy sauce contains slightly under a gram of salt. Salt contains about 40% sodium. Should I just be subbing out one for the other and doing the math, or do I still have to add the requisite amount of salt to get a bind because it's NaCl that does the work of producing a bind, and then make sure I don't add so much soy sauce that it's unpleasantly salty? I could use low sodium soy sauce, but I already purchased gluten free soy sauce as a couple people I know can't do the gluten. And besides, low sodium soy sauce still has about a half gram per tbsp so the question remains.
Can anyone shed more light on the actual chemistry of sausage making here? I'm very curious.
Thanks.