# What to do about over salted cream sauce?



## developingtaste (Aug 17, 2011)

1) Throw it out, there is nothing that can be done.

2) Add liquid and thickener

3) Add liquid and balancing flavor

4) Other.

Just a brief re-intro on my background.  I didn't grow up cooking, being forced to learn as first a professional caretaker, and then as a single dad.  I started off just trying to survive, then as I got into being a cooking dad, I started to expand my learning.  Now I'm in the stage of adapting from past standards, improving them, and presenting an exceptional dinner, hopefully!  That's me.  No pro cook; just a delighted fan.

I've found at this stage, my best learning moments come in three ways,

1) Tasting as I go, making sure each stage of cooking tastes right.

2) Starting with a basic recipe and looking for what I have in the fridge from previous meals that I can add or change in my current recipe.

3) Making mistakes that forces me to try to 'correct' the mistake.r

It's the third way that is the inspiration for this post.  The story is thus::

I started with an old recipe from my earliest cooking days that started as an Quaker Oats Meatloaf that I changed up some.  I would take a can of mushroom soup and top off the meatloaf after it had cooked through.  I don't know if they've added more salt these days or my 'DevelopingTaste' has improved, but I busted out that old recipe in the past couple years, and haven't been happy with the results.  The mushroom soup is too salty.  So, I tried to address it a few different ways without changing the basic idea. 

First off, I've considered doing a cream sauce from scratch, which would most likely solve the whole problem.  I do a pretty good alfredo from scratch, so I think I can do it.  However, it wouldn't help me learn from the lesson of dealing with salty sauce.  After my efforts with no directions on measurements from any sources, I think I should most likely just throw out any sauce that is too salty, enless I want more of it and more liquid in it.  So, that again goes back to just starting the whole process from scratch;  BUT,  if there is a way that you recommend of saving salty sauce given the recipe conditions below, I'd love to hear it from you.

As I mentioned this is a meatloaf with mushroom soup to top it off.  I've started looking for unsalted soup in the store, but tried this time to use up some soup I already had in the cupboard.  Instead of placing the mixture directly on top of the meatloaf, I heated it up on the stove top, and added some things, and tried some things.  I added things like 2% Milk, Cream, Sour Cream, Butter (salted!  very little),  white pepper (later on), parsley, a small touch of thyme.  The sauce NEEDS to have some consistency in order to remain on top of the meatloaf.  I tried 'cooking it down' to keep the consistency, but although the water content would evaporate, the salt didn't that I could tell, leaving me back were I began.  I added starch when I gave up (flour instead?), but I DON'T like adding thickening unless I absolutely have to.  The question is:  to solve the problem, did I HAVE to?  Was there another way?  Is there another herb or spice out there that could have 'balanced' the flavor??  Remember, the purpose of my post is to learn from salty sauce.........have I exhausted all I could learn from it?


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## ordo (Mar 19, 2009)

Add potatoes in the emergency. They will absorb some of the salt. 

But please do not use canned soups. Canned soups suck. Not only for the salt content, but also for the glutamate and a lot of spurious addenda.


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## petemccracken (Sep 18, 2008)

Um, I believe the "potato absorbs salt" idea has been fairly well discredited.

Salt is ionic and the level of salt can only be reduced, IMHO, by dilution, i.e adding more non-salty liquid.

Of course, you could always run it through a desalinization facility that uses reverse osmosis or some other industrial process./img/vbsmilies/smilies/crazy.gif


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## developingtaste (Aug 17, 2011)

ordo said:


> Add potatoes in the emergency. They will absorb some of the salt.
> 
> But please do not use canned soups. Canned soups suck. Not only for the salt content, but also for the glutamate and a lot of spurious addenda.


*sigh*. Okay, your right....just the last vestiges of resistance fading........I'm starting to hate the onions (yellow or sweet) in the meatloaf too. Perhaps green onions instead?


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## developingtaste (Aug 17, 2011)

PeteMcCracken said:


> Um, I believe the "potato absorbs salt" idea has been fairly well discredited.
> 
> Salt is ionic and the level of salt can only be reduced, IMHO, by dilution, i.e adding more non-salty liquid.
> 
> Of course, you could always run it through a desalinization facility that* uses reverse osmosis or some other industrial process*./img/vbsmilies/smilies/crazy.gif


 Yep, yep! Does it work on humans?


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## cheflayne (Aug 21, 2004)

> I added things like 2% Milk, Cream, Sour Cream, Butter (salted! very little), white pepper (later on), parsley, a small touch of thyme. The sauce NEEDS to have some consistency in order to remain on top of the meatloaf. I tried 'cooking it down' to keep the consistency, but although the water content would evaporate, the salt didn't


Instead of adding the cream to the soup and then reducing, if you had reduced the cream to soup consistency and then added it to the soup; the saltiness would have been lessened without making the soup too thin.


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## developingtaste (Aug 17, 2011)

cheflayne said:


> Instead of adding the cream to the soup and then reducing, if you had reduced the cream to soup consistency and then added it to the soup; the saltiness would have been lessened without making the soup too thin.


What a great idea. Thanks! Another lesson learned.


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