Fixing Salty Food

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How to save really salty food.
Too much salt.

Can you make food taste less salty? Yes. You absolutely can make an over-salted meal or food taste less salty. This will go over every solution for saving any type of salty food. I know that the majority of individuals want a solution for fixing food that has already been made too salty.

We will cover that first with two of the best solutions, then we will cover other ways that salty food can be fixed to save your taste buds. Now, taking the salt out of food isn’t something that can be easily done. Once the food is cooked, it is already absorbed into most types. However, there are still plenty of things that can be done to fix the salty food.

Some of these solutions are also things that can be used to fix bad cooking made by someone else at home or a restaurant to make that food taste a little less salty.

Solution #1

Add a sweetener to the extra salted food.

This is one of the best methods for fixing food that is too salty. Simply add sugar, syrup, or honey to the food to neutralize the salty taste. This method has been tested and tried over and over again. This is the best solution for fixing meat specifically too, that has become too salty.

If you have salty ham for example, then add honey to it to make a common honey ham. For steak or chicken, add a sweet barbecue sauce. Adding barbecue sauce to meat that has been cooked already with too much salt, can possibly make it taste perfect, as sweet and salty actually work well together.

Sweeteners and salt surprisingly not only well together, but both often appear in almost every pre-made food; even desserts. Adding a sweetener can also possibly bring out a new flavor that you may like better than your salted recipe (or could possibly make the food taste better).

If you haven’t tried real honey with some salt, then you don’t know what you are missing!

Solution #2

Add more food that isn’t salty to the food.

The second best solution is to add more ingredients into the cooked food with more cooked food of the same type, that doesn’t have salt. In other words, cook more food that hasn’t been seasoned, and add it to the salty food. This is the best method of fixing things like pastas or alfredo for example, that have too much salt.

It is easy to just cook up some extra noodles and mix them in with the other salty food. This will dilute the salty food by adding more food all altogether. Depending on how much salt in the salty food, more of that food to the proportion of extra salt will have to be added to fix the salty food. It will have to be added to the food and mixed in.

Solution #3

Break up portions of the salty food and add them to an unseasoned new meal.

This can be done with meats (like fish) and other foods too. If the food is just unbearably salty, take small portions from it, break it up, and add it as a topping or additions into another meal like a salad.

For example, take some of the salty meat and chop it up and place it in another unseasoned dish. It can become the flavor for a new meal. You won’t be able to add the whole portion of the salty food unless it is considerably larger, but a smaller amount can reduce the salty taste, and make the food less salty.

This is basically the same thing that is done with a freshly made salad with no salt, when salty croutons are added to it. The croutons are used to help flavor the plain salad.

The bits and pieces from the unbearably salty food can be sprinkled unto other food as if it was salt itself.

This is basically the reverse method of adding more unflavored food to make it taste less salty, except it is more flexible; allowing usage in more than just one food type. Since, adding more food to the salty food just simply means more food, then this would be a different option that might be better if you don’t want to be stuck with eating that same food all day/week.

Solution #4

Add more water/liquids/sauce/gravy.

If it is a sauce that was made too salty, try adding more water or milk for example. It will make the sauce more runny, but also taste less salty. More thickening agents can be added afterwards to make it less runny.

Adding more liquids to salty vegetables may not work however. It has to be split up as mentioned in solution #2 and #3. New vegetables will have to be cooked without salt, then the salty vegetables will have to be split up and added to the new batch. This is also what has to be done with a stew that is too salty.

Solution #5

Add sour flavor to the spicy food (lemon or lime juice for example).

It may not sound like both salt and sour should go together, but they do work. Lemon juice can be used to neutralize the extra saltiness and make the dish possibly taste better. This is a more risky method, just like trying to use vinegar to fix salty food. It can possibly ruin the entire food, depending on what the food is if the correct amounts aren’t used, but vinegar can work too. For some individuals this was the perfect solution.

Lemon can work well with salty fish. Lemon juice is used to reduce the intensity of really salty, fishy seafood.

Lemon or lime juice can also be used to neutralize the saltiness of a stew or porridge.

Solution #6

Rinse the food off.

If the food hasn’t been marinating in salt, and the salt was fresh added, try washing the food off to rinse some of the salt off. It takes time for fresh salt to actually soak into most foods without heat. Immediately rinse the food off and try cooking it without the salt. You can taste test the food as it is cooking to see if it is good or not. Adding more salt to the food later will be easier than cooking it with the extra salt.

For food that will be boiled, try removing the food immediately from the water with the salt and putting them in a fresh unsalted water in a pot to cook. This will only work before the food is cooking.

Sometimes it happens. You are pouring the salt in and it won’t pour, then you tip it a little, and too much salt comes out. Sometimes the salt shaker top comes off the salt shaker while you are shaking the salt on. It happens.


Depending on how much effort you are willing to put into saving your large batch of foods, any of these methods will work, and have worked for all types of food.

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