General recommendations
It is best to try to prevent a problem from occurring than to deal with its consequences later. Therefore, it is worth remembering the following rules and recommendations:
- You should definitely try the dish that is being prepared. This is especially important at the stage of adding various spices.
- To accurately determine the saltiness of a dish, you need to let it cool. Hot food will not allow you to do this correctly.
- It is necessary to use salt that was purchased for the first time with caution. It is possible that it will be more concentrated than usual.
- You should follow the instructions when preparing food with cubed broths. They contain a lot of salt and other ingredients that in large quantities can spoil the dish.
A little care and compliance with the above rules will allow a person to never think about what to do if he has over-salted a dish.
Question for the experts: I over-salted the buckwheat, but I cooked a lot. What to do?
We invite you to familiarize yourself with Rose floribunda surprise
Sincerely, Elena
Sincerely, Elena
More potatoes
Balance the taste of the prepared mashed potatoes with an additional portion of boiled potatoes. In this case, the vegetable is chopped into small pieces, boiled until tender and ground into puree. No need to salt! Just mix fresh puree with salted one.
Tip: While you cook the second portion of mashed potatoes, wrap the first portion with a towel so that the potatoes do not cool down.
"Silk Road"
Don't have time to cook a new batch or add vegetables? In this case, you can supplement the puree with butter or milk. For a standard serving you need to add 3 tablespoons of milk or 50 grams of butter.
Due to dairy products, the puree will become more airy and have a silky consistency.
This method is recommended to be used only if there is slightly more salt than required. If the puree is too salty, adding milk and butter will not save the taste, although it will change it a little.
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!
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Any person, whether he is an experienced cook or a novice cook, has mistakes. Many explanations can be found for an over-salted dish. After all, salt differs in grinding and in its origin. So sea salt has a milder taste than lake salt. You need to be careful with rock salt. An extra pinch can ruin the dish.
How to avoid oversalting
Rather than redoing what has already been done, it is easier to prevent this from happening - that is, always be attentive to the process of adding salt to the dish and follow simple rules:
- Always under-salt the dish a little - you can add more salt later, when the dish is almost ready. This can be done even while eating - remember, there are always salt shakers in canteens for these purposes.
- For one kilogram of minced meat or fish, two level teaspoons of salt are required.
- When kneading dough, take one small heaped teaspoon of salt per kilogram of flour.
- To prepare crumbly buckwheat porridge, take 2 level teaspoons of salt per half a kilogram of raw cereal.
- It is better to salt all dishes at the end of cooking, the only exceptions being boiled potatoes and fish soup.
This is no longer puree - and okay!
These are dumplings with potatoes.
And not oversalted at all! Over-salted mashed potatoes are perfect as a filling for pies and dumplings. It can be mixed with cottage cheese, buckwheat, eggs, stewed cabbage and used as a filling.
Or make dumplings from over-salted puree. Sprinkle them with fresh herbs, fried onions and serve.
Add more potatoes
This method is considered the simplest and most effective. It is necessary to boil more potatoes and add them to the existing ones.
Photo: Pixabay
In this case, it will be possible to balance the taste. Of course, you shouldn't salt a new batch of potatoes.
When mixing the purees together, they should be heated to the same temperature. You should also add a little oil.
This method is not suitable for those who do not like to cook with a large reserve. The amount of new puree should be determined based on the amount of salt.
Over-salted cereals
- To correct the situation with over-salted cereals, you need to discard the prepared raw materials in a colander. Rinse the product with running water. Wait until the liquid has completely drained. After this, transfer the cereal to a saucepan and pour in a little water.
- Mix a little butter into the ingredients. Simmer over low heat until the liquid has completely evaporated. As for over-salted pilaf, the situation is also fixable.
- To do this, you need to boil a small amount of unleavened rice. Stir the cereal with salted pilaf. You can add aromatic spices. Pilaf will also help rid soaked raisins of saltiness.
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.
Over-salted food is one of the most unpleasant culinary blunders. It’s especially disappointing if you had to work hard on a dish for a long time, and only one awkward movement ruined all your efforts. If this happens, we will tell you how to fix an over-salted dish later, don’t rush to give up, almost any treat can be revived and saved from an unfortunate incident.
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.
How to fix an over-salted dish so it becomes normal
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.
Ideal technologies for preparing minced meat for cutlets
Meat
✍ Ingredients:
- beef – 500 g;
- pork – 200 g;
- onion – 1 pc.;
- eggs - 2 yolks;
- spices, salt - to taste.
Preparation:
- Grind the meat in a meat grinder or blender. Fine grinding will give future cutlets a delicate texture.
- Knead the minced meat thoroughly, allowing it to saturate with oxygen. This will make it fluffy and soft, which will affect the taste of the future dish.
- Fry the onion until light golden brown, add it to the minced meat along with the egg yolks. Knead thoroughly.
- Lastly, spices and salt are added to the minced meat. As spices you can take black pepper, rosemary, basil, paprika.
- To avoid having to correct over-salted minced meat, add salt at the rate of 1 tsp. per 1 kg of meat.
- Before cooking, place the thoroughly mixed minced meat in the refrigerator for at least half an hour so that it is saturated with the taste and aroma of spices.
Ingredients to increase volume should be added at the beginning of cooking the minced meat. Spices and salt are invariably added at the end of cooking.
How to rid a dish of excess salt without changing its volume
The task is more difficult if it is undesirable to change the resulting volume - for example, you cooked jelly and, diluted, it will not harden. Then you need to extract some of the salt from the same volume. This can be achieved by welding something else in the same place, and then taking it out and throwing it away. Most often, finely chopped potatoes or rice are used for this. Again, this method works best if most of the liquid can be separated, otherwise there is a risk of overcooking the main contents. However, overcooked is better than over-salted.
Jelly diluted with water will not harden, so you need to cook something else in the same broth.
Technologically it looks like this. Take another pan, insert a colander into it and pour your soup into it. Now put a colander in the first pan, and put the second one on the fire and load it with a kilo of potatoes or a glass of rice, and cook. Strain again and you will get a much less salty broth, boiled potatoes or rice, perhaps even an acceptable taste. Keep in mind that potatoes do not absorb liquid, and a glass of rice will take two glasses of broth and you will need to replenish the liquid, which further simplifies the task, but worsens the concentration of the broth - perhaps you should put 200 g of minced meat along with the rice and strain it too.
To remove excess salt in soup, finely chopped potatoes or rice are most often used.
