ASIAN BROWN GARLIC SAUCE

When you are tired and feeling unimaginative, stir-fries are a quick, easy meal. Toss some veggies in a wok or deep skillet, put on a pot of rice, and choose your seasonings. My husband loves this brown garlic sauce though when he first made it, it was so salty that I could not eat it because he used regular soy sauce. I have modified this recipe drastically but if you need to avoid salt, this recipe is not for you. Reduced salt soy sauce still has nearly 600mg sodium per tablespoon and coconut aminos has 270mg per tablespoon. I used it sparingly on my dish of broccoli and black rice and it added plenty of delicious flavor. Next time I will use salt-free vegetable broth because it was still a bit too salty for me.

You can find the original recipe at “Food”: Brown Garlic Sauce but I made modifications described below to make it healthier.

Here's a wonderful 3 minute video by Dr. Greger about how to reduce salt in your diet.

What I did differently:

-Instead of regular soy sauce I used 1/3 cup reduced sodium soy sauce and 1/3 cup coconut aminos

-Used reduced sodium vegetable broth instead of chicken broth (next time will use salt-free broth)

-Used Japanese sake for the rice wine

-Instead of sugar: once I added equal amount of date paste and another time I substituted with 2 Tablespoons unpacked brown sugar

-Reduced the sesame oil to maximum of 1 teaspoon

-My tablespoons of garlic and ginger were heaping because they are my jam!!

-Did not use cooking oil, instead dry sautéed the garlic and ginger

-Be sure to add the cornstarch to cold water to dissolve it first. If you add cornstarch directly to your hot recipe it will clump.

-Since I like spice, I sprinkled my dish with crushed red pepper flakes.