So I get a meal kit delivered to me every week and discovered something interesting very early on. The recipes often instruct you to add salt (and pepper) at certain steps, which is frequently unnecessary.
First, I believe the average North American diet contains too much sodium to begin with. When you are cooking your own meals, it’s imperative you control the amount of salt you’re adding to your food. With processed foods or premade items, you’re not in control of how much salt has been added, but with a meal kit, you are.
Second, I don’t think the meal kit maker, in my case Chef’s Plate, understands how unnecessary salt is in their recipes. In a typical recipe that might have a vegetable component, a meat one, and a sauce one, they will ask you to salt all these components. You might think this is required for the dish to not taste bland but keep in mind most of these recipes have a spice or marinade component that adds flavour that way. Some of these spice blends or marinades already have salt added to them.
It’s gotten to the point where I usually never use my salt grinder at all while I’m cooking these dishes. The only exception perhaps is when the recipe has me cooking pasta and I’ll salt the water, and even then I won’t add much to it.
We should all strive to eat and cook as healthy as we can.