If the dish doesn't turn out as planned, don't throw it away. Many botched meals can still be made palatable.
Salting the soup: A recipe that has been salted can still be used in three ways. If it was just a little too much salt, it is usually enough to add a little sugar to balance the salt taste. For salty soups and stews, you can slice a raw potato and stir it into the soup and let it sit for a while. The raw potato slices absorb some of the salt.
Finally, you have the option of cooking the same recipe again and this time not adding any salt at all. Then you can mix the two together afterwards and freeze one half for later.
Too sweet: Add a little salt to reduce the sweet taste. If it is a main dish, you can use a teaspoon of vinegar instead of salt.
Sauce too thin: If the sauce has not become thick enough, you can stir in a little potato flakes or breadcrumbs to thicken the sauce without changing the taste. Or mix a tablespoon of flour with a tablespoon of cold water in a cup and mix the smooth flour paste with the sauce. Bring to the boil and the sauce will have a viscous consistency.
If the sauce has become too thick, the only thing that helps is to thin it with a little water. It is best to stir in hot water so that there are no lumps.
You can make wilted vegetables fresh again by cutting off the brown parts and rinsing the vegetables with cold water. Wrap them wet in a kitchen towel and put them in the fridge for an hour.
Another option is to dip the vegetables briefly in hot water, then place them in ice-cold water and add a dash of apple cider vinegar to the water.
If you have problems with whipped cream that does not stiffen, first check the expiry date of the cream. Also, make sure the cream is nice and cold before whipping. To be on the safe side, put the bowl in the fridge for a while before adding the cream.
If you have already started to whip the cream and it does not stiffen, add the white of one egg to the cream, put it in the fridge for a while and whip it later with the egg. The egg white gives the whipped cream more stability.
If that doesn't work, add three to four drops of lemon juice one after the other to the cream while you are whipping it.
Salt that has become hard: Especially in humid weather, the salt often clumps up in the salt shaker. Try scraping the salt out of the container with a toothpick or a spoon, make the salt shaker nice and clean and dry and put the salt back in along with some dry rice grains. Wrap a piece of aluminium around the outside of the salt container to protect it from moisture. The grains of rice will help draw out the moisture absorbed by the salt, making it nice and fluffy again.
