Did You Over-Salt Your Meat? Just Throw It In A Salad

Salt is a basic but essential condiment with many uses, such as adding flavor and preserving food. However, using it too liberally could spell disaster for the dish you're attempting to make. Over-salted food can taste so bad that you may feel tempted to abandon it outright. One type of food that is, unfortunately, easy to over-salt is meat. Fortunately, one quick, chef-approved solution can help neutralize the extra salt. All you have to do is add the over-salted meat to a crisp salad with strong flavors, which help mask the saltiness.

So, the next time you feel your meat has too much salt, don't throw it away. After all, wasting food is never an ideal solution. There are ways to work around this simple problem. That includes this literal solution to avoid oversalting meat or dousing an over-salted steak in hot water as the best way to fix it. If you are curious about trying the salad trick, here are a few things to remember.

Any problem that arises in a kitchen requires creative thinking. Hence, it helps to turn to experts for advice. In the case of over-salted meat, Massachusetts-based chef Jim Booth, when speaking to Food and Wine, recommends slicing it up and adding it to what he describes as a "hardy salad." This hardy salad should contain leaves with some crunch, such as romaine, cabbage, or frisée. The sliced-up meat should then be tossed liberally with the salad so it mixes well.

According to Booth, these salad leaves act as a bulwark against heavily salted meat. This is likely due to a combination of their flavors — which can stand up to salt — and crunchy textures. Other salad types with pronounced flavors include arugula, which has a peppery taste, slightly bitter escarole, and crispy iceberg lettuce. Throwing in sturdy romaine lettuce is also a good idea if you have some. If you need to balance the taste of the meat and salad further, consider adding a mild-tasting cheese to the mix. Mozzarella would be an ideal example. If you need guidance or inspiration on how to do this properly, this slow-cooked porchetta salad recipe will help.

If the salad trick isn't one you particularly care for, but you still want to utilize accidentally over-salted meat, there are other methods you can try. The easiest of these, as mentioned above, is to wash it in hot water and then dry it well by covering it with a paper towel on both sides to remove as much extra salt as possible.

Another age-old solution to fixing over-salted food — and meat in particular — is to add other ingredients that work to counteract the saltiness. Acids such as lemon or vinegar are a great way to hide the strong flavor of the salt. Similarly, anything sweet added to the over-salted meat will help to cut the saltiness down. In this case, simple additives like sugar, honey, or maple syrup are good additions. Many people advocate the addition of a simple starch to help soak up the saltiness. This could mean adding pasta, rice, quinoa, or something similar. Even a peeled and diced potato could do the trick.