Too much salt in rice: how to fix and remove excess salt?

Rice along with buckwheat, pasta and mashed potatoes is the most popular side dish for meat and fish. But it's not always cooked to perfection. If over-salt has happened, you can take advantage of the tips from chefs, experienced hostesses.

Why rice is over-salted: Causes

Every culinary mistake has consequences. The dish becomes less tasty, and sometimes even inedible. In addition to inexperience of the hostess, there are other reasons for the mishap, less obvious:

1. Accident. Chefs recommend seasoning a dish from a spoon or with your fingers. If you add salt from a salt shaker, the likelihood of over-salt is greater because it is difficult to calculate the exact amount.
2. Distractions. In this case, the causes of error are a sharp phone call or doorbell, a baby crying, an exciting program on TV.
3. Inaccuracies in the recipe. In order not to over-salt rice, it is better to use recipes from the cookbook, not taken from the Internet.
4. Unusual grinding of salt. Large and medium-sized crystals are used in a larger volume than small ones. If the usual rock salt is replaced with "Ekstra", over-salted occurs more often.
5. Spices. A ready-made rice seasoning mix (saffron, cardamom, cinnamon, curry, cumin) already contains salt. If you do not study the composition of spices before cooking the grits, the usual amount of salt will become excessive and the dish will be spoiled.

Over-salting cereal if immediately before tasting the rice you have tried another dish with a bright taste - sour, spicy, salty. So that the taste buds could properly assess the salinity of the food, wait for time or drink a glass of milk.

How to fix over-salted rice

Excess salt not only spoils the taste of the side dish, but also harms health, provoking high blood pressure, edema, kidney problems.

To save over-salted rice, choose one of the suggested options for correction:

1. Boil a new batch of grits without seasoning, mix with salted.
2. Rinse the grains with water in a colander, return them to the pot or pan. Put a piece of butter, pour a little boiling water. Put the container on a burner with minimum heat, wait until the excess liquid evaporates.
3. Braise with spoiled rice mushrooms or unleavened chopped vegetables - young zucchini, sweet peppers, carrots, tomatoes, onions. You can use frozen vegetable mix.
4. Soak raisins in boiling water for 15-20 minutes and add them to porridge. The sweet taste of dried grapes masks the over-salt.
5. Dilute the saltiness of the dish with milk, in which to boil cooked cereal for 3-5 minutes.
6. If you are not allergic to citrus fruits and like the taste and aroma of lemon, put a few drops of lemon juice in the dish. As an alternative, the addition of apple cider vinegar.
7. If you notice too much salt at the beginning of cooking, correct it by changing the water. Rice is washed, poured with boiling water, and boiled until tender. Salt coarsely sliced potato tubers (1-2 pieces).
8. Fry meat with onion and carrot, add boiled grains and stew.

If there is too much over-salted rice, pack it in bags and freeze. Later the product is used to make salads, soups.

What can be cooked from over-salted rice

Excessive salt in the boiled groats will become invisible, if it is used in complex dishes.

Of over-salted rice and unleavened minced meat make urchins, meatballs, stuffing for stuffed cabbage rolls, stuffed peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, pies. Puddings, casseroles with raisins, cottage cheese, meat, apples and carrots, pumpkin, zucchini correct the taste of rice.

Recipe for cottage cheese casserole with rice

You will need:

• 700 g of cottage cheese or creamy cottage cheese;
• half a cup of sour cream;
• 300 grams of cooked rice;
• 5 eggs;
• 100 g raisins;
• sugar to taste.

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C.
2. Combine the cottage cheese with sour cream, sugar, beat with a blender.
3. In a separate bowl beat whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks.
4. The fluffy whites in parts is introduced into the cottage cheese and sour cream, stirring gently. Add raisins.
5. Pour the mixture into a mold greased with butter.
6. Bake for 40 minutes. Serve with sour cream.

With minimal skills in home cooking, you can make a fish pie from yeast dough. For the filling you need 400 grams of boiled fish and rice, 4 eggs, green onions.

When to salt rice when boiling

When boiling porridge, seasoning is added to boiling water before you add the grits.

If you add salt at the end of cooking, the salt won't penetrate to the center of the grain. Cooking in a microwave, multicooker and steamer involves adding salt along with the main ingredient. Rice for sushi is seasoned after cooking.

How much salt to add

When adding salt, gastronomic preferences, spices that enhance the taste, the consistency of the porridge are taken into account. According to the classic recipe, 1 tsp. salt is taken per 1 cup of cereal, 50 g or 2 tbsp. salt per 1 kg.

Professional cooks add 13 grams of seasoning per 1 liter of water when cooking crumbly rice porridge, 12 grams - for viscous porridge, 11.5 grams - for liquid porridge.

To avoid spoiling rice, it is better to add salt in a smaller amount than indicated in the recipe, and add more salt after cooking, if you find under-salt.