Did the top of your salt shaker fall off and dump a load of salt into the fabulous dinner you were making for your dinner party? Did you misjudge how much salt was needed for that huge bag of spinach that’s now wilted down to 1 cup in your pan? Did a favorite blogger’s recipe steer you wrong? No matter how things went wrong, there’s no need to dump your recipe into the garbage. It’s quite easy to fix an overly salted dish.
The easiest fix is to add something to the recipe that normally needs to be salted. You may need to add some more of the herbs that were in the original recipe, but that should do it. If I don’t have anything in my fridge to add I always have frozen spinach, frozen corn, frozen riced cauliflower. Check the label though. Sometimes the manufacturer adds salt to frozen veggies.
If you don’t want to mess with the recipe you can add a starch like a potato. If the dish has a lot of liquid then you don’t need to cut it up, you don’t need to peel it, just add it to the dish and allow it to soak up some of the salt.
No potato on hand? Just add water and continue cooking. You’ll dilute the other flavors also, so you may want to add garlic, pepper, or herbs so your dish isn’t bland.
If your dish can handle it add some fresh lemon or lime juice, or a little vinegar. If you’re not sure about this fix, scoop a little of the dish into a cup, add a dash of the acid, give it a taste and see what you think.
If the food you over-salted is something you were dehydrating. Dump the whole thing into a bowl of water. Let soak for an hour or two, drain and place back in the dehydrator.
Mix your over-salted food with an under-salted food. This works especially well with dehydrated foods, or for layering such as a sandwich, salad, quesadilla, or casserole.
Make it creamy – add cream, sour cream, yogurt, or mashed avocado.