Adding too much salt is one of the most common problems while cooking your favorite dishes. This most commonly occurs when you are trying to make a larger serving size and/or a new recipe you aren’t familiar with.
Too much salt not only creates a taste issue but also a health issue as too much salt in our diets can lead to problems like high blood pressure.
So, your hand slipped and your beans are now too salty? Wait! Don’t throw them away – you can still fix the problem and we are here to tell you five different ways to do so.
How to Save Your Beans from Being Too Salty?
1. Add More Liquid to The Pot
There are different ways to add more liquid to your beans and save them from being too salty.
- Add water
Adding an extra cup of water can balance and neutralize that extra spoon of salt in your pot. Do not be hasty and panic by adding multiple cups at a time.
Add each cup of water and taste your beans to judge the saltiness. If the beans are extremely salty, we recommend draining all the water out and reserving the beans in a colander.
Now, rinse the colander full of beans under cold running water to wash off the salt. Return the beans to the pot and cover them with fresh, unsalted water.
If the beans are already fully cooked, simply bring them to a boil, boil for a couple of minutes, then drain the water off.
If the beans are still uncooked, bring the fresh unsalted water to a boil then turn the heat down and simmer the beans until they are soft. Drain and use as normal.
- Add Vinegar and Sugar
If your beans are already part of a dish and cannot be rinsed off with water, you can try this trick. Adding a few spoons of vinegar and sugar can also cut down the saltiness of your beans.
However, you have to be more careful while adding these because too much vinegar or sugar can ruin the taste of your beans.
Make sure that you add one teaspoon of each of them and check the flavor after each spoon. Keep adding until you reach your desired flavor profile.
- Add Lemon Juice and Avocado
If you don’t have any vinegar, lemon juice is a great alternative for adding to salty beans because it can distract your taste buds from picking up the saltiness of the dish.
You can add about a tablespoonful of lemon juice to the pot of beans; however, you must check the taste before adding too much. Top the dish, if suitable, with some avocado slices and an extra squeeze of lemon juice.
2. Switch Some of The Liquid
If you are not going to try the above options, you can go for replacing some of the over-salted cooking liquid surrounding the beans with a cup of fresh water or cream, depending on the dish.
You can do this quite easily by removing some of the cooking liquid with a soup ladle.
Do not remove and discard all of the salty liquid because it contains all the spices and other flavoring ingredients. Now add the equivalent amount of salt-free stock, water, or cream.
Reheat the dish and check the flavor. It should be greatly improved. You may need to add a little more spice, herbs, or other flavorings but be careful not to add anything containing salt.
3. Split the Pot of Beans in Half
Cook another batch of salt-free beans. Divide your salty pot of beans into two halves. You can store one part and mix the fresh batch into the half that you want to use.
4. Add More Ingredients
If your beans are part of a dish like a chilli, you can dilute the saltiness by adding more (unsalted, of course) ingredients that match the dish such as potato cubes, tomatoes, or pasta.
Tomatoes or tomato paste works particularly well because the acidity absorbs quite a lot of the salty taste.
5. Use Corn Starch
If your bean dish contains a lot of salty liquid, try thickening it a little with a slurry of corn starch and a little cold water. This will neutralize some of the saltiness and create a sauce.
Never add corn starch powder directly to the dish as it will go lumpy.
Conclusion
We hope these tips will help you to save your pot of too-salty beans. Let us know in the comment section below which tip you used and how well it worked for you. Thanks for reading!