The Skinny on Coconut Aminos

What Are Coconut Aminos

Coconut Aminos are a liquid sauce similar to soy sauce. They are made from fermented coconut tree sap and sea salt. They can be used on their own or combined with other ingredients to make numerous familiar sauces that can liven up your meal plan for the week. They have a savory and slightly sweet flavor reminiscent of a mild soy sauce. There are a lot of claims about the health benefits of coconut aminos, but they have not been studied closely enough to give any weight to those claims. They do contain amino acids. See Nutrition Basics if you don’t know why that’s good. But, I have not been able to determine if it is in significant enough concentrations to worry about. The absolute biggest benefit of coconut aminos is that they contain 75-85% less sodium than traditional soy sauce! Click here for the best deal that I could find on a bottle or check out the Max Value Nutrition Shop. Plus it is SNAP/EBT Eligible.

Basic Teriyaki Sauce

Preparation

Combine all ingredients in a small sauce pan. Set heat to medium low. Bring to a mild simmer, reduce heat if necessary. Stir often and cook for 5-7 minutes. Sauce may thicken as it cooks.

General Tso’s Sauce

Preparation

Combine all ingredients in a small sauce pan. Set heat to medium low. Bring to a mild simmer, reduce heat if necessary. Stir often and cook for 5-7 minutes. Sauce may thicken as it cooks.

Thai Peanut Sauce

Preparation

Combine all ingredients in a small sauce pan. Set heat to medium low. Bring to a mild simmer, reduce heat if necessary. Stir often and cook until peanut butter is melted and smoothly incorporated. Sauce may thicken as it cooks, add milk to thin out as necessary.

See my recipe for Ramen Pad Thai for an idea of what to do with this sauce!

Final Thoughts

None of these sauces are what I would call “healthy”, but they are an easy way to make your meal prep more interesting for relatively low health overhead. Most soy based sauces will have 3-4x the sodium. If you are cooking with a sauce like this, there is no real need to add any additional seasonings, particularly if they contain more fat or salt. Also, note the serving sizes. Is anybody going to actually use 1/12 of the recipe? Probably not, but you would use the same amount of a sauce that was worse for you and could really end up with your entire daily recommended serving of salt with dinner alone. So when you use these sauces, I would recommend using them on an entire week’s worth of prepped food to minimize the impact on any one meal.

Be sure to visit the Recipes page for more budget friendly meal ideas to maximize your performance! New recipes are being added daily.