A moment of inattention and the whole elaborate dish is oversalted. However, that is no reason to waste your efforts and food! Here you can find out how you can easily make oversalted food edible again.
Dilute oversalted food with water, milk & Co.
It is a common method to first dilute oversalted dishes with a little water. In some cases, you can use milk or a plant-based alternative such as rice, oat, or soy milk instead. Fatty foods such as cream, sour cream, coconut milk or butter are even better because they mask the salty taste particularly well.
Save oversalted food with the potato trick
This trick is especially useful for over-salted sauces, soups, or stews that you don’t want to dilute with more liquid.
Simply grate a potato or cut it into small pieces.
Add them to the dish in the pot and let everything simmer for about ten minutes.
If the potato doesn’t go well with the dish, simply remove it before serving the soup or sauce.
The potato draws most of the salt out of the liquid by soaking it up like a sponge. Alternatively, you can use carrots or bread for this. However, the bread will quickly dissolve, making it difficult to remove from the dish. A few prunes will also do the trick. You should let it simmer for at least 15 minutes.
Sweet helpers with over-salted dishes
Sweet flavors also balance a strong salty taste very well. This method is particularly suitable for dressings, marinades or dips. You can use e.g. honey, sugar or cane or whole cane sugar as a sweetener. Agave syrup, maple syrup or coconut blossom sugar are also suitable from a culinary point of view. Due to their poor ecological balance, however, they are not recommended from an ecological perspective.
If the food no longer tastes salty afterwards, but is a little too sweet, you can balance this out with a little acidity: simply add some lemon or lime juice or vinegar.
Two is Better!
Even if your dish is extremely salty, you still have options for using it. For example, just take it as an opportunity to pre-cook for the next few days. Cook the dish exactly the same way again. Leave out the salt completely! Then mix it with the over-salted version and freeze portions of the meal for later, if needed.
With sauces that are too salty, you can also freeze parts of the sauce in small ice cube trays and use them later as a flavorful base for other dishes.
For soups or stews, it is also a good idea to cook a large portion of vegetables, potatoes or pasta and stir them into the over-salted food to balance out the salty taste.
