How to rescue a badly cooked meal
It’s quite difficult to salvage a badly cooked dinner within an hour before guests arrive. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a bad cook. One minute you could be stirring the pot, adding salt and then the next minute the lid falls off, letting all the salt pour into your food.
Mistakes happen and sometimes we read the required measurements wrong. Don’t blame yourself for silly mistakes. There are three type of cooks: Those who perfectly flip the omelette in the skillet, those who perfectly let the omelette land on the floor and then those who ask, “What is a skillet?”
No matter what type of cook you are, if your dish results in an epic fail, there are different ways to save it.
Too spicy?
The only solution to saving an over-spiced dish is to use dairy as its saving grace. Add a few spoons of yoghurt or sour cream to remove the spicy flavour. Nut butter is also known to mellow out the spiciness of a dish. However, you need to bear in mind that the butter or dairy product you choose needs to complement the rest of the dish. Or you’ll only end up going from bad to worse.
Too salty?
Say no to diabetes and high blood pressure. Over salting your food will not only bring out a potent flavour, it can also lead to serious health concerns. It is often said that a lack of salt is a lack of love in the pot. However, over salting your food is no way to show love to your loved ones. Salvage your salty dish by adding more ingredients such as vegetables which will absorb some of the salt. The golden rule for salt is to add it as you cook.
Too bitter?
Brussels sprouts are vegetables that have an overwhelming bitter taste. If the taste is too bitter you can add a little sugar to your dish. Over cooking green vegetables on a gas stove can result in your vegetable also tasting sour or bitter.
Anyone can cook and call themselves a chef, but those who can salvage a dish can call themselves master chefs.