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Help -- I over salted Pork Ragu

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Just pulled the braised pork out of the oven and the braising liquid is way too salty. This has to be reduced by half to become the sauce. Is there anything I can do to fix this without starting over?

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  1. you can try adding a cut up potato to absorb some of the salt, but the salt will not go away if you just add more liquid and still reduce.

    what kind of sauce are you making?


      I'm making this recipe, which I've done several times, but somehow added far too much salt this time. It literally tastes like sea water. So strange.

      1 Reply
      1. re: VJA

        you're kinda stuck. you can add canned tomatoes, and make it a different dish, but reduction will be your enemy here.

      2. I would discard half of it and replace it with another flavored but unsalted liquid and see if that helps. From the ingredients listed in the regular menu, I would think salt-free chicken or vegetable stock plus maybe some white wine would work? Use unsalted butter and don't salt your pasta water, that might also help in the final outcome.

        1. I don't know what the consistency of the sauce is you are trying to achieve, but you could double with water, juice or wine.... and thicken with potato starch or instant mashed flakes....rice flour can also be a friend. You will have more sauce than you need, but it may save your dinner.

          1. Not really. If something is just a little bit oversalted, adding a bit of sugar and some acid (citrus juice, vinegar, etc) can bring it back into balance. But that doesn't work for things that are very oversalted.

            If you look hard enough, you'll find recommendations to use a potato to 'soak up' the extra salt - that and similar tips are really just old wives tales. They don't work. And the problem with thinning with another liquid before reducing down is that unless that liquid has a large amount of dissolved solids, the end reduction will still be oversalted (in other words, you'd mainly just be adding more water to boil off during the reducing process).

            The only thing that really works is diluting the reduction with something that's not salty.

            So what you can do is rethink the sauce. Instead of using the braising liquid as the entire sauce, you could reduce down it down and use some of that to flavor a more diluted sauce. You could mix it with some wine and then mix it with a lot of unsalted butter. Or you could make a cream sauce, using the reduction as a flavoring. You could use in in a vegetable or fruit puree if you're looking for something healthier. Or mix with tomato puree and brown sugar for a sort of barbecue sauce. You get the idea.