For example, if you’re making a marinara or chili, adding a little sodium-free crushed tomato or tomato paste can help.Īnd some foods, like rice, meat and vegetables, may be able to be made less salty by rinsing off any salt that it hasn’t already absorbed. You can also think about the liquid ingredients already in your recipe.
Moreover, after testing the salinity of the salted water he used for his experiment both before and after the potatoes were added, Wolke writes (emphasis his), “ There was no detectable difference in the salt concentrations before and after being simmered with potato…. According to Wolke, while the potato does absorb some of the liquid and therefore tastes salty itself as a result, it doesn’t actually remove excess salt any more than dipping in a dry kitchen sponge would. But in his book What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained, author Robert Wolke described his scientific testing (with the aid of a chemistry lab assistant) of this myth and explained why it doesn’t really work. The theory goes that if you add a few pieces of potato to overly salted food, then remove them, they’ll have soaked up the excess salt. But before we get to the solutions for fixing salty food, let’s talk about the starchy elephant in the room: the potato.