How to reduce salt in food with potatoes

Q: How do you neutralize food thats too salty?

Lemon juice, vinegar—whatever the acid, its your saving grace. Use a squeeze of lemon or a drizzle of a mild vinegar to help mask some of the aggressive salt with a new flavor.

Table of Contents Show

Tips to remove excess salt from your dish
01/11Ways to remove excess salt from food!
02/11Water
03/11Vinegar + sugar
04/11Tomato
05/11Potatoes
08/11Flour dough
09/11Flour
10/11Curd or malai
How do you neutralize food that's too salty?
How long does it take for a potato to absorb salt?
How do you make potatoes taste less salty?

Tips to remove excess salt from your dish

Times Food | Last updated on - Oct 2, 2020, 12:15 ISTShare fbsharetwsharepinshare

01/11Ways to remove excess salt from food!

Can you imagine your food without salt? But adding too much salt makes the dish unpalatable. Fortunately, there are many easy ways to remove excess salt from food. While there is a solution to having little salt in the curry, it becomes difficult to reduce salt from prepared dishes. Here are some easy tips and tricks to reduce excess salt from your food.

02/11Water

If the gravy has too much salt, add water and boil it. Water is the most common solution used for balancing the excess salt in the dish.

03/11Vinegar + sugar

To balance out excess salt, put a tbsp of white vinegar with a tbsp of sugar to your gravy.

04/11Tomato

For Indian curry or gravy, you can add finely chopped tomatoes or tomato puree and cook for few more minutes.

05/11Potatoes

Chop a few slices of raw potato and put them in the salty gravy, dal or soup. The potato slices will absorb the excessive salt from the dish. Let the potatoes remain in the dish for about 20 minutes and discard the potato slices before serving the dish.

06/11Onion

Add raw onion and put it in the curry and remove it after a few minutes. This will balance the excess salt in the dish.

07/11Milk

Coconut milk can be added to gravies to neutralise the excess salt and balance the flavours of the dish.

08/11Flour dough

Make small balls of flour dough and put them in the curry with excess salt. Keep them for 10-15 minutes and the balls will soak excess salt from the dish. Take them out before serving.

09/11Flour

Add a tsp of flour in the gravy. After 6-7 minutes, the flour will appear on the top layer as it soaks the excess salt from the gravy.

10/11Curd or malai

Add 1-2 tablespoon of curd or malai in your curry to help in neutralising the extra salt effect.

Salt can make or break a dish, but most importantly, it’s the quantity that plays a crucial role. There must have been times when you’ve put a pinch or a teaspoon of extra salt, which completely ruined the taste of the dish.
Although many dishes benefit from the trick of adding a little salt at first and adding more, if required later. However, in case of processed food it becomes a little difficult to add more salt. Well, an excess of salt can spoil your food, and so we thought of sharing some quick tips to remove that extra salt from the dish.

Salt is the seasoning that pulls a dish together and enhances its flavour. So, when you sprinkle a little extra, it’s heartbreaking. Does that mean that all your hard work and effort should go to waste? Absolutely not!
Wasting food is not something anyone is proud of or want to do, but when these mishaps happen and you don’t know how to save the day, you resort to throwing the whole thing out. So, as you dread the next food adversity to strike, keep these kitchen hacks in mind.

Check out these little tricks to remove the excess salt from your food:

Potatoes

A few raw potato slices can absorb the salt within minutes. So, when you’ve added a sprinkle of extra salt in your gravy recipe, chop up a potato and throw it in the pan for 15-20 minutes over low flame. Then, discard the potatoes and go on with your cooking as if nothing happened. Although, do keep in mind that along with the salt, it also absorbs liquid so you might need to adjust that after discarding the potato slices.

Milk

Milk will hamper the classic recipes but it’s a great dish saver. Add some coconut milk to your food to neutralize the excess salt. It’s one of the best ways to remove the excess salt from the recipe, plus you get a reward in disguise of a creamier dish.

Water

The easiest and simplest way to remove the excess salt is to dilute the dish by adding water to it and bringing it to a boil. The water will balance out the excess salt and will save your dish from an unfortunate

Lemon Juice

Lemon juice can easily mask your mistake and give it a tangy twist at the same time. Although this trick expands your recipe to something with a more wide palate, it’s a total game saver.

Yoghurt or Malai

A couple of teaspoons of yoghurt or malai (fresh cream) is definitely handy when it comes to saving a dish from excess salt. It doesn’t change the dish a lot plus saves it to give you the flavours that you will enjoy.

Flour

This ingredient might sound a little off but works just the way you’d want it to. Add a little flour to the gravy, and watch as it absorbs the excess salt and floats up to the top. Scoop it out and continue with your recipe.

Dough

Just like the potatoes, add small dough balls in the gravy and they will absorb the excess salt right away. Unlike the potatoes, this does not soak up any liquid, but you need to be careful about how long you leave in it the gravy.

Sugar

This trick is for the small mishaps. So, if you’ve added just a pinch of extra salt, you can add a pinch of sugar to balance it out. It’s a calculated move, therefore, if your recipe is really salty, you should refrain from using this trick as you can end up with a weird sugary dish.

Vinegar and sugar

So, if it’s a bigger mishap, you can use a tablespoon of vinegar and sugar to balance out the flavours of your dish. The acidic nature of vinegar along with the sweetness of sugar evens out the excess salty flavour.

Make Extra

Another great way is to increase the serving amount of the dish by adding more of what you’re cooking. So, add extra vegetables or gravy or whatever the recipe calls for and multiply the share size.

Add starch to your recipe

Starchy foods like rice, pasta, quinoa, etc are salt absorbing machines. Add the cooked versions (unsalted) to your pan and simmer or bake them into the recipe with a splatter of liquid. They will easily absorb the excess salt and save your dish.

How do you neutralize food that's too salty?

Lemon juice, vinegar—whatever the acid, it's your saving grace. Use a squeeze of lemon or a drizzle of a mild vinegar to help mask some of the aggressive salt with a new flavor.

How long does it take for a potato to absorb salt?

To combat salt, place a peeled raw potato into the pot of cooking soup. The starchy tuber will absorb liquid and some of the excess salt. You'll need to remove the potato once it's fully saturated with extra salt, but before it's fully cooked, about 30 minutes.

How do you make potatoes taste less salty?

If you find your potatoes are too salty, adding more liquid, such as milk or buttermilk, or more potatoes can help tone it down. No more potatoes on hand? Try adding some mashed cauliflower or root vegetables to the mix.