"You taste the soup, and it's aggressively salty - this moment hits hard. Guests are coming, the table's ready, but you're considering takeout. Then someone suggests the potato trick: throw one in, simmer for 30 minutes, and it absorbs all that salt. It's a solution that's been repeated so often it feels like fact. Unfortunately, it's not. This remedy sounds believable because potatoes do absorb liquid while cooking."
"Bland, starchy food pulls salt from the broth the same way it pulls flavor - it's because of this that the trick has been whispered between home cooks for generations. Truth is, the salt reduction a spud can do for your soup is so small, you hardly notice a difference. It definitely soaks up some of the liquid, but your soup doesn't taste any better. You do have a cooked potato to show for it, but that's about it."
"The most obvious approach is to simply add more liquid to drown out the salt. Plain water works in a pinch, but the downside is you also dilute much of the flavor. As such, add a splash of unsalted broth instead (for cream soups, use extra cream or another dairy product, such as milk or yogurt, to preserve the richness). Go slow, adding small amounts, tasting, and adding more if needed."
A popular kitchen belief holds that adding a raw potato to an overly salty soup and simmering will absorb excess salt. Potatoes do absorb some liquid and flavor compounds during cooking, but the net removal of salt is minimal and the soup's taste rarely improves; the only real outcome is a cooked potato. Reliable corrections include diluting gradually with unsalted broth or water, increasing volume with pasta, rice, or beans, and brightening flavor with acids like lemon juice or vinegar. For cream-based soups, add dairy to retain richness. Adjust slowly, taste frequently, and freeze leftovers if needed.
Read at Tasting Table
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]