What to do when I accidentally put too much salt on the meat?

I'm still learning to cook, and yesterday I put too much salt on the meat when I was cooking it. What I can I do to not waste the meat? I still have some raw meat but I'm afraid to make it too salty if I mix both together. I heard I can put the meat in boiling water to try to get rid of salt, but I'm not sure if that Would work. Or should I make soup/stew with the meat and not use salt on it? What else I can do to make it edible?

Best Answer

There's no single answer, as there's a few considerations here:

Was it ground meat, or a larger chunk?
How far cooked was it already?
How far over-salted is it?
Is it being cooked in some sort of sauce or other liquid?

Depending on the answer to those:

If it's not over-salted by much ... serve it with a sauce that hasn't been salted, serve it on top of a bland starch (rice, pasta, baked potato) or mix it in as the flavoring to something else that's unsalted. (eg, a casserole, soup, stew, etc.)
If it's uncooked larger chunks, you can rinse it off (in cold water), pat dry, and then cook it.
If it's uncooked ground meat ... the salt will cause the proteins to start tightening, and make things start to stick together if it sits before you cook it. If you haven't stirred in the salt yet (for those times when the lid came off a salt shaker), you might be able to get the worst of it off with a spoon, or even pick up the block of ground meat and shake it off. Rinsing is still an option, but it's more difficult to dry back off before cooking ... you might have to resort to other options.

If it's while cooking ... you might still be able to rescue it.

If it's not in a liquid or sauce, for the 'lid came off the salt shaker' situation, for large hunks of meat, just pick it up and shake and/or brush off the salt. For ground meat or smaller chunks ... you might need to add some water, and then pour the water off (a strainer helps with this).
If it's larger hunks in a sauce, you can pull it out and remake the sauce. Depending on the type of sauce, you might want to save it to use it as flavoring in some other dish (casserole, soup, etc.)

Your most difficult case is ground beef in a sauce. If it's wet enough, you can rinse if off in a colander ... for thicker sauces, if it's not so salty to be inedible, you can try serving it over rice, pasta, a baked potato ... or turn it into a casserole.

Note that all of these assume that you've caught the problem quickly ... if the meat's been cooking in the salt for an extended period, you might have to go with the casserole route, as it'll have absorbed the salt.

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Quick Answer about "What to do when I accidentally put too much salt on the meat?"

Citrus juice – a sour variety, like lemon or lime.

Herbs – savory aromatics like basil or rosemary.

Milk, half-and-half, or cream.

Sour cream or yogurt.

Sugar – brown or white.

Vinegar – particularly balsamic for beef-based dishes.

Wine.

Can you fix over salting?

If you end up with an oversalted dish, don't panic. Luckily, there is a remedy fixing over-salted food; excess salt can be tempered with the addition of a fatty ingredients, such as sour cream, heavy cream, butter, or milk.

How to rescue a salty dish

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Images: Gonzalo Guzman, Katerina Holmes, Markus Spiske, Engin Akyurt