Remedy Oversalted Cooking

A little too heavy-handed with the salt container? Treat it as a chance to expand your culinary knowledge. Understand how salt interacts with other flavors will help you save your dish.

Steps

Fixing an Oversalted Dish

1. Replace some of the oversalted liquid. If you are making a soup, curry, or other liquid dish, the easiest option is to add more liquid. Pour out some of the salty liquid and discard it. Add water, unsalted broth, or milk, depending on the dish.
2. Add acid or sugar. Adding a completely new ingredient is a bold move, but can have high rewards. Acidic and sweet flavors are great choices to complement or obscure saltiness.
   • Acidic ingredients work with almost any dish. Try citrus juice, vinegar, wine, tomato, or pickled foods.
   • Besides plain sugar, you could add honey or condensed milk. This works best in combination with acid. Try adding 1 teaspoon (5mL) each of sugar and cider vinegar, then repeat until perfect.
3. Increase the recipe size. If you have the time and pantry supplies, add more ingredients. For instance, add more meat and vegetables to your stew, or unsalted butter to your sauce. This will reduce the ratio of salt to other flavors. This is the only way to fix an oversalted dough.
   • If you prefer more neutral flavors, grind cauliflower to a fine consistency and mix it into the liquid.
4. Serve over starch. You can add rice, pasta, or potatoes to almost any dish. Starch is not a special counter to sugar, but it is an easy way to increase the recipe size.
   • Don't believe the myth about letting a potato absorb salt from a broth, then throwing it away. The potato absorbs liquid as well as salt. The percentage of salt remains unchanged.
5. Rinse salty vegetables. Partially boiled vegetables can be rinsed and returned to less salty water. Rinsing can ruin the texture and flavor of steamed, baked, or stir-fried veggies, but may work if you catch the mistake soon after you begin cooking.
6. Serve at a higher temperature. Temperature affects taste in complex ways, but a cold dish can taste saltier than a hot one. If warming the dish isn't an option, consider serving it with a hot drink like coffee or tea instead.
   • This is a fairly minor effect. Combine it with other solutions.

Preventing Oversalting

1. Switch to kosher salt. The tiny grains of table salt clump tumble quickly out of the shaker, easily over-salting the dish. The larger crystals of kosher salt are much easier to control. You will need a larger volume to get the same flavor, since kosher salt is more loosely packed.
   • Stick to table salt for baking. You need small crystals to dissolve in dough.
2. Salt your food from higher up. When sprinkling on salt, hold your fingers about 10 inches (25cm) above the food. The salt will spread more evenly across the dish. Your guests will appreciate the lack of salty clumps.
3. Salt in small amounts throughout the recipe. Salt a little at the time, every time you add a new (non-salty) ingredient. Taste frequently to keep track of how the flavor is developing. It's much easier to adjust halfway through the process than five minutes before serving time.
4. Plan around reducing liquid. Remember that the soup you're seasoning will be a lot stronger after the water's boiled away for half an hour. Go light on the salt at first, and add more to taste once the soup is closer to its final volume.

Tips

• Herbs and spices can help a little, but are not as effective as acid or sugar. Make sure not to add spice mixes that contain more salt.

Related Articles

• Eat Less Salt
• Create Salt Dough
• Turn Salt Water Into Drinking Water
• Use Flaky Sea Salt

Sources and Citations

See also

• Follow a Recipe when You Don't Have All the Ingredients
• Make a Citrus Glaze (for Baking)
• Pan Fry
• Make Stocks for Soups and Sauces
• Substitute Commonly Used Ingredients
• Cook Sponge Cucumber
• Boil Artichokes
• Make Half‐Popped Popcorn
• Make Dinner Without a Kitchen
• Cube Sweet Potatoes

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