The first clue is the 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt! Holy moly who needs that much salt? Change that to a dash. Also use low sodium soup broth.

The tomato products also add to the sodium content of that dish.

.. Joann

I would say..the tomatoes and the broth..as well as the chicken itself..and salted water for pasta...

So to reduce the sodium in this..I would check chicken labels, use low sodium broth..(home made is best for this) I don't add any salt to mine..only the salt left on the carcass after roasting...and usually use home grown or organic chickens..

No salt added tomato products too..

and don't add salt to it until you taste it put together...

If you really are watching sodium content...

After I read the nutritional info on this recipe, I thought no way would I try that one and found a different one (which doesn't use chicken broth--I don't know why you'd really need that in chicken cacciatore--and for some reason I've never liked any of the recipes I've tried that call for chicken broth, including Swanson's recipe for creamier mashed potatoes -- yuck!).

But I didn't know that the tomatoes have salt! Thanks! I actually only use tomato "products" (ketchup, spaghetti sauce) because I hate whole tomatoes.

Ketchup and spaghetti sauce have lots of salt in them, too. And if you take a look at the back of the cans of those and the tomatoes and paste, you'll see the sodium content. Lots of salt.

I omit the salt in all recipes, but my family can add salt at the table.

My eyes about popped out of my head when I saw 1-1/2 tsp. of table salt! About half the sodium in this recipe comes from the 1-1/2 tsp. of salt. Omit this. Regular canned chicken broth adds about another 128 mg/per serving of sodium. Even if I wasn't concerned about sodium, I doubt I'd put chicken broth in this recipe, and I'd put in white wine instead of red. But that's just from a flavor stand-point.

Other ways to reduce sodium would be to use reduced-sodium tomatoes and to put very little salt in the water when cooking the pasta. The chicken probably has some that has been injected into it, but you might get rid of some by rinsing the chicken, then patting it dry with paper towels.

Yes, fresh tomatoes have naturally occurring sodium, but they do not have salt. Processed tomato products are loaded with extra sodium by way of added salt and other sodium products, such as monosodium glutamate, sodium nitrite, sodium saccharin, baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), and sodium benzoate.

Eat all the fresh tomatoes you want, and you'll be fine. In fact, if you just avoid processed foods and eat fresh, you'll cut your sodium intake WAY down.

Muir Glen makes wonderful canned tomato products like diced tomatoes, fire roasted diced, tomato paste etc... w/o almost no salt and no sugar and they taste wonderful! i also do not buy canned broths i use a paste type from a jar that is organic w/o much salt that way i can use as little as i want but still get the flavor. i do not watch my salt intake (have low bp) but i'm also sensitive to salt taste, i don't like it much, i do watch sugar and that is how i found Muir Glen. ~ liz

What's the reason for putting salt in the water before cooking pasta? I remember my parents doing this, but I don't. I think a science teacher once said that adding salt beneficially alters the boiling point of the water?

Well, all I know for sure now is that a homemade chicken cacciatore (watching the sodium contents of pasta sauce) is bound to have less sodium than the frozen-food item I came across and really loved -- Marie Callender's 3-cheese ravioli with chicken (in a red sauce with onions and peppers, which basically is chicken cacciatore with ravioli).

My job's hurry-hurry-hurry pace doesn't leave much time to eat (dinner, in my case, cuz I work a late shift), so microwave stuff is always a fallback. But I'm much happier with something I've actually cooked (and without a lot of the ingredients on the frozen-food packaging that I can't even pronounce!).

Hmmm.... 3.5 lbs of chicken is a lot of chicken if it is boneless. If it is not boneless, I would cut the salt in half or even less and add to taste if needed.

I suspect this recipe may have come from someone's homemade spagetti sauce recipe that uses salt, but calls for salt free tomatoes (and they just forgot to mention that fact in this particular recipe)...

I'd really just salt the chicken as you would any chicken before cooking (don't even measure) and then just add to taste additional salt (if needed) at the end.

Any time I make a recipe that calls for "store-bought canned" ingredients, I never add salt as another ingredient.

My eyes also bugged out when I saw that (1 1/2 tsp.) salt -- that is a LOT of salt.

I also heard that the reason for adding salt to the water for pasta, is to bring it to a boil faster. It doesn't really save much time and is not needed.