How To Fix An Oversalted Meal

Salt can be your best friend in the kitchen. It enhances flavours taking a dish from drab to vibrant with just a pinch. But what do you do when you have seasoned a dish and you realize that you’ve added way too much salt? Relax and do not panic as Jumia Food, Nigeria’s no 1 food ordering platform, discusses how you can fix an oversalted dish.

Make more

The most obvious solution to an oversalted meal is to make more. If you have enough ingredients, double the recipe or make more by half, then mix it in with the salty batch until you’ve reached your desired flavour.

Add some dairy

If the dish allows it, add some dairy to it. This could be yoghurt, milk, cream or even coconut milk. The choice of dairy will depend on the dish at hand. Dairy helps cut both the spice and salt, without diluting the meal too much, and can also add a wonderful creaminess to your food

Raw potato

This is probably the oldest trick in the book. Just peel and chop one or two potatoes and add them to your dish. As the potato cooks, it’ll also absorb some of that saltiness. If it’s a meaty curry, you may want to cook the potato till it’s done and leave it in the curry too. Potatoes can also be subbed with rice, but that depends on what you are cooking.

Dilute with liquid

With this option, you just want to be careful not to dilute all the hard-earned flavours as well as the salt, so don’t reach straight for the water. Opt instead for unsalted broth, some unsalted diced tomatoes, or a splash of cream or wine. Make sure you are adding something that will add to the flavour and not dilute the dish.

Re-season, but not with salt

If you’ve mitigated the saltiness by adding liquids or other ingredients, you’ll likely need to bolster the other seasonings so that you don’t end up with a perfectly salted but otherwise underwhelming dish.