Hacks to fix salty food

By Abisola Adigun

Salt is one of the most crucial ingredients needed to make a meal. It adds to the taste of everything.

Most of us are guilty of being carried away while cooking or making wrong calculations while adding salt to the meals we prepare that we add too much.

If you’ve ever experienced this and couldn’t figure a way out of it, then this article is for you. There are ways to rectify this situation and still regain its flavour. Below are the various ways to fix salty food.

1. Add more water

If you’ve added excess salt to your rice, soup, or stew, adding more water will significantly help. Adding water might make your dish a bit watery, but it becomes thicker when it stays on fire and reduces the saltiness. Doing this makes you get the desired consistency and still correct the taste.

2. Fight it with sugar

Adding sugar or other sugary content to your salty meals helps to complement or counter their saltiness. You can add honey or brown sugar to also help maintain its flavour.

3. Increase the ingredients 

If you have ever found yourself over-seasoning your food and still have extra ingredients on the ground, the best solution is to increase the portion size of your meal. Make a new meal from scratch, then add salty food to get your desired flavour.

4. Add acidic content

The acidic content refers to lemon, orange, vinegar, or citric acid. Adding acid to your dish moderately helps to balance the saltiness of a meal. You need to ensure that you add only a little content to avoid your meals’ sour taste.

5. Use creamy ingredients

These creamy ingredients are fats that might not reduce the saltiness, but it performs the role of a bud taste barrier by coating the tongue to make the salty flavour impotent. These creamy ingredients can be dairy products like milk.  To replace dairy products, you can add mashed avocados. This will help to hide the salt and also add richness.

6. Rinse with water

You can reduce the salt content from your meal by rinsing it repeatedly. However, there are exceptions to this hack. You can only rinse foods that wouldn’t dissolve in water immediately, like rice, yam, and potatoes. Meat can also be rinsed or added to your stew without adding any seasoning when it is being cooked.