Don’t rush to throw a finished, over-salted dish into the trash; the situation can still be corrected and the food returned to normal. The best culinary methods of experienced housewives will tell you how to achieve this and what to use. Thanks to the application of small tricks in practice, no one will guess that you made a mistake, since the food itself will acquire a normal, pleasant taste.
Add an absorbent product
Some products have beneficial absorbent properties, e.g. able to absorb excess salt. Such products include potatoes, starchy cereals, pasta, and fresh herbs. So, in an over-salted soup, you can put a few chopped potatoes or add 100-150 g of rice - these ingredients will absorb excess salt. If you don’t want to spoil the dish with extra food, you can put the potatoes in whole so that they can be easily taken out later, and place the cereals in the soup in a fabric bag.
We'll have to tinker
It’s a little more difficult to correct the situation if you happen to over-salt the soup. It would seem that there is nothing simpler: add water to such a soup and cook a little more. But leave this method as a last resort, otherwise you risk hopelessly ruining the taste of the soup. It’s great if you have unsalted broth in stock - you can dilute the soup with it without any damage to its organoleptic properties. If you don't have such broth, try keeping a bag of rice in the soup. Rice is an excellent absorbent and will quickly absorb excess salt. Some housewives use refined sugar to correct the taste. A piece of sugar is placed in a tablespoon and immersed in the soup. The melted sugar is replaced with new sugar - and this is repeated several times until the salt level in the soup becomes acceptable. Regular potatoes and pasta are good absorbents. If your soup recipe allows it, just add more of these ingredients. If there are no potatoes in the original recipe, put a couple of peeled potatoes into the soup and remove after 10-15 minutes. The potatoes will absorb the salt and not spoil the taste of the soup.
Goulash and roasts that contain too much salt can be corrected with sour cream. The meat is placed in a cup with sour cream and allowed to cool. If you don’t want to bother with transferring the meat, add an unleavened butter or flour sauce to the bowl with the meat. A bland side dish can also save the situation.
Over-salted minced meat can be saved by finely chopped cabbage, raw zucchini or grated potatoes. These “additives” will make the cutlets even more tender and juicy. As a last resort, you can replay everything, and instead of cutlets, make meatballs or cabbage rolls, adding rice to the over-salted minced meat.
Tomatoes and other vegetables will remove excess salt from vegetable stew. Chop them finely and add them to the dish, which you continue to cook over the fire. Whole cooked vegetables will release excess salt if you pour boiling water over them and cook for a few minutes. Boiling water, of course, must be unsalted. Mushrooms can also benefit from bland sauces, an extra serving of new mushrooms, sour cream, or an unsalted side dish in the form of rice or mashed potatoes.
But, generally speaking, to prevent such situations from arising, you should not salt the dish immediately, but a few minutes before it is ready, or intentionally under-salt it. After all, it’s always easier to add salt than to correct something that’s too salty.
Add a fresh or sparkling side dish
If you have oversalted the main dish and it can no longer be corrected, serve this dish with a simple side dish - cereal porridge, unsalted mashed potatoes or stewed vegetables without salt. Everything together will turn out to be more harmonious in taste. If you don’t have time to prepare a side dish, serve sparkling wine or champagne with an over-salted dish - the bubbles it contains will neutralize the excess saltiness right on the tongue, and a couple of glasses will allow you to completely forget about the failed dish.
Now you know how you can save an over-salted dish. However, be moderate - it’s better to under-salt than to correct the taste of the finished dish later!
As easy as pie
The easiest way to revive over-salted rice. Simply rinse the bag of rice in cold water (longer if necessary) or boil it in unsalted water for a few minutes. Using the same principle, you can “desalt” pasta, buckwheat and other cereals. The main thing is not to overdo it, so that something shapeless, although moderately salted, does not end up on the plate.
Over-salted cabbage from a jar that you brought from your grandmother can also be reanimated with running cold water. It’s a pity, of course, that the brine containing vitamins and minerals will be lost. But if you chop fresh onions into washed cabbage and add vegetable oil, it can turn out very well. Pickled cucumbers, for which no salt was spared, also feel great when soaked in cold water.
Also, soaking in cold water can make over-salted fish suitable for consumption. To do this, you just need to fill small fish (sprat, sprat) with water, changing it periodically, and cut large fish (herring) into pieces before soaking so that the salt comes out faster. Sometimes water is replaced with milk. After two to three hours, the fish should be washed and the degree of edibility assessed. If there is still too much salt, repeat the procedure.
Over-salted dough, especially for dumplings and dumplings, is also easy to fix: you just need to knead another portion of dough without adding salt and combine it with the over-salted dough.
There is no need to be upset about an over-salted salad made from fresh vegetables. Add a couple more cucumbers, tomatoes, more greens and herbs, and you will get a lot of great salad with a wonderful taste.
Dough
Add another portion of unsalted dough (Photo: pixabay.com)
Knead half a portion of dough without salt and mix with salted dough. This option is suitable if you are preparing unleavened dough for dumplings or flatbreads. Yeast dough for pies and pies, in addition to an additional portion, can be corrected with unsalted filling.
Add some water, milk, flour and sugar to the pancake batter. You can also make another portion and add it to the salted one. You'll just end up with more pancakes.
See our recipe with photos: Kefir dough for pies.
Water
The most obvious fighter against salt, water can help us in two ways. Firstly, you can soak over-salted foods in water, be it dried meat, sauerkraut, boiled chicken or boiled vegetables. Secondly, water can be added to the soup, which turned out to be so salty that even a potato cannot save it. However, you should resort to water only in extreme cases, if other methods have not justified themselves: although water will indeed quite effectively correct over-salted soup, the taste of this soup will leave much to be desired.
Goulash
Serve the goulash with an unsalted side dish (Photo: pixabay.com)
Sour cream will correct the stew. Just place the meat pieces in a bowl with sour cream and let sit for a few minutes. You can also mix tomato paste with spices, flour, water and simmer along with the meat.
Prepare an unsalted side dish for over-salted goulash - vegetables or rice. The products will equalize each other.
It is important!
Finally, a few life hacks. The ability to save a situation is good. But it is much more important to avoid such situations. Simple rules will help with this:
- Salt while cooking, not on the plate. Do not throw out all the salt prescribed in the recipe at once. Perhaps it will be too much for you.
- Iodized salt often requires less than regular salt. Many perceive the taste of iodine as a salty taste.
- Salt dishes containing salty ingredients especially carefully: cheese, capers, pickled mushrooms or cucumbers, soy sauce, bacon are not only salty in taste - they impart it to the entire dish.
There are no hopeless situations for a savvy housewife. An over-salted dish can almost always be saved. But it’s much easier to be vigilant, avoiding culinary misfires.
Soup
The soup will be saved by peeled raw potatoes (Photo: pixabay.com)
You will have to tinker with the soup. Logic dictates that you can add more water or dilute with unsalted broth. Be sure to bring to a boil.
If you don’t want to dilute the rich soup, immerse a whole raw potato or a handful of rice into the pan. These products will absorb some of the salt. Remove the potatoes after 10-15 minutes and eat as a main course.
Either leave the rice in the soup or immerse it in a cheesecloth (bag) with holes and remove it after a few minutes.
See our recipe with photos: Chicken noodle soup.
Acid
You can correct over-salted food by adding a little acid, be it lemon juice, wine vinegar or other acidic foods. Of course, the salt won't go away, but the acid will help mask it, adding another dimension of flavor to your dish. The most obvious example is over-salted fish, which can be improved by squeezing a little lemon on it. Of course, in the case of salted or smoked fish, this idea is on the surface, but lemon juice can cope no less successfully with over-salting fried or baked fish. In addition to fish, acid can be used to save baked or stewed vegetables, as well as some meat dishes.
What to do if you oversalt your food
Sad, but not irrevocable. Not a single housewife can avoid such situations, and it is imperative to be able to cope with them. Give yourself a short reminder, because it’s not easy to keep all the tips in your memory, and you’ll have to act quickly in all cases.
Most often, oversalting occurs with second and first courses, the reason is simple: the sample was not taken from the dish. On the other hand, while the dish is really hot, it is not easy to correctly determine its saltiness.
So, we believe that the excess salt is already noticeable; the easiest way to describe further actions is in the form of questions and appropriate recommendations. Let's start with meat dishes, since a set of products is not cheap, and trying to save a treat is always important.
- What to do if you oversalt the meat? If you feel that the meat is over-salted, immediately remove it from the gravy or broth; it is much easier if you notice this while frying. Whatever you planned to cook initially, then you will have to correct the situation and possibly change the recipe. If the slices are not yet browned enough, heat a frying pan with clean fat and fry the meat, then carefully scrape off the crust. Alas, you will have to get rid of it, just like the fat in the second frying pan. Next, put the meat in a saucepan with melted butter, add high-fat sour cream and prepare the gravy according to any recipe, excluding garlic and salt.
- What to do if you over-salt the minced meat for cutlets? This is perhaps the smallest problem of all. Add finely grated potatoes or bread soaked in fat milk to the mixture; increasing the amount of onion also helps. Of course, if you have another slice of meat, grind it into a common bowl.
- Another option for solving the question of what to do if you oversalt the minced meat is to boil a certain amount of rice (without salt, of course) and, mixing it with the minced meat, prepare meatballs or stuffing for cabbage rolls. The best variety of rice for this is round grain; it produces a lot of sticky mass, which not only sticks together the minced meat, but also somewhat conceals its saltiness.
- Well, what should you do if you over-salted the fried meat and the taste became noticeable only in the finished dish? Almost the same as in the first tip. We get rid of the gravy and crispy crust, then simmer the meat without salt and garlic. We prepare the gravy without tomatoes and spices; the best option is sour cream or cream.
- Methods similar to the previous one are also effective in case the hostess accidentally over-salted the goulash; what to do in such a situation first is to change the gravy. Make it thicker, add sour cream and 30% tomato paste, of course, undersalt the side dish.
NOTE!
It’s worth saying a few words about the side dish. Whatever you were planning to serve with the dish before you had to save it from over-salting, most likely your plans will have to change. The best side dish for an over-salted dish is mashed potatoes; cook it with milk and spare no butter. Be sure to beat well and only by hand.
- What to do if you over-salt navy pasta? You will have to prepare the dish according to a slightly modified recipe. So, even if you didn’t plan to make it, we prepare the gravy from unsalted tomatoes. Do you have a supply of unsalted minced meat? Great! Fry it and cook a little more pasta without salt, mix it all with the first portion, the saltiness will noticeably decrease.
- What to do if you over-salt your pasta as a side dish? Don't worry, this is not the most difficult case. A considerable part of the salt will leave the pasta when washed, and compensate for the rest with lightly salted gravy, preparing it with the same lifesaver - sour cream.
How to remove salt from soup if it's too salty
It’s a little more difficult with first courses if the oversalting is noticed when the soup has already been cooked. Simply adding broth will not help, especially do not pour clean, even boiled, water into it. Good advice on how to remove excess salt from soup was given in old cookbooks.
Pour the broth from the pan completely into a clean bowl and set to heat. Rinse the rice, in the amount of half a glass for each liter of liquid, put it in a gauze bag and put it in boiling broth, boil until the cereal is almost ready. It is clear that the broth will become cloudier, but this method of removing salt from soup is the most effective.
Another method, also quite well known, is to boil potatoes in broth. This reduces salinity, but also leads to cloudiness. Is there really no way to cope with the emerging problem? The following method of reducing the salinity of soups and broths also helps to lighten them.
Why is jerky dangerous?
In addition, the product contains purines, which are broken down to form uric acid, so its abuse carries the risk of joint pain, osteochondrosis, joint deformation, exacerbation of gastritis or pancreatitis, and stomach ulcers.
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Fish
Place fried fish on the pie, sprinkle with lemon or serve with an unsalted side dish (Photo: pixabay.com)
Place fried or baked fish in the pie. Mix with unsalted rice, onions and cover with dough. You can also serve salted fish with unsalted side dishes: potatoes, rice, vegetables.
If you want to preserve elastic pieces and give them a delicate taste, place the finished fish in a baking dish, pour sour cream and place in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Sour cream will collect excess salt.
Soak lightly salted and barrel herring in water. To ensure that the salt is washed well, cut large fish into pieces. Rinse, try and refill with water if necessary.
Fried fish goes well with lemon. Pour lemon juice over the finished dish or cover it with slices. The lemon will pick up the salt and add flavor.
Fat
But not just anyone. The problem of over-salted food can be corrected by something that contains a creamy taste, say, cream, sour cream (which works well with salt for the reason stated above), cottage cheese or, for example, avocado. This component not only blocks the perception of salt, but can also make the dish more interesting and tasty. For example, heavy cream will not only correct over-salted tomato sauce, but also make its taste richer, and a creamy sauce for chicken or meat will surely be appreciated by everyone.
Starch
Let's start with the method that probably everyone knows about. 1045;If you have over-salted your soup or any other thin dish, from simple stews to curried vegetables, simply add a potato, peeled and cut into several pieces. During cooking, the potatoes will absorb some of the salt, and then they can be removed. Other products that contain starch work no worse than potatoes - pasta, rice, cereals, etc., and they can be placed in an improvised gauze bag so that you can then easily remove them (and, for example, use them as a side dish). However, you shouldn’t completely rely on this method - if you salt the soup too much, the potatoes may not help.
How to revive burnt kebab?
To do this, again, cut off the burnt areas, pour red wine over whole pieces of meat and simmer in a frying pan for about 20 minutes, adding rosemary and carrots, onions and garlic cut into large pieces. After this, put the dish in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes at a temperature of 200 degrees.
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