How do you fix a dish that’s too salty?
Life without salt isn’t worth living. It brings out all the flavors, whether you add it to your pasta water or sprinkle it over your perfectly cooked steak at the end. But what if you accidentally add salt twice because you get distracted—or worse: the entire salt shaker falls into your dish? FavorFlav to the rescue!
Prevention is better than cure, so I’ll first tell you how to avoid it. Always add salt little by little and taste as you go. You can always add more salt later, but you can never remove it from a dish. Also keep in mind that sauces and soups often reduce and therefore become saltier. So only salt dishes in this category at the end of the cooking process. Okay, so that didn’t work out and now you need our help. Let’s get to it.
Add more of the other ingredients
Not the easiest method, but the most effective. Is your mashed potato and kale dish far too salty? Add extra potato, kale, carrot, or whatever else is in it. As long as it isn’t salty. This lowers the salt content of your dish without compromising on flavor.
Add extra water or salt-free stock
This is the solution for your extremely salty soup. Simply add extra liquid that isn’t salty. This will save your pumpkin soup at the last minute and make you the hero of the day. If the soup then becomes too watery, you can always add some extra pumpkin.
Add acidity or sweetness
Are the solutions above not applicable and has, for example, your beef stew become far too salty? Add acidity (lemon, vinegar, tomatoes) and/or sweetness (sugar, honey, carrot, fruit). It depends on how salty your dish is, but these flavors can mask the salt to a certain extent.
Also read:
- These ingredients will make your pumpkin soup sexy
- The four elements of cooking: salt, fat, acid, heat
- Super-fast Italian stew
