How to Fix an Over-Seasoned Dish

From All Recipes.

Ask professional chefs what the secret to good cooking is and they'll say, "Taste, taste, taste." Once you understand the special relationship between salty, sweet and sour flavors, you'll be able to fine-tune the taste of any dish until it's perfect. Try these steps on any dish that can use some salt, sugar or lemon juice mixed in or sprinkled over it.

Things You'll Need

• Salt
• Lemon Juice
• Sugar

1. Think of salt, sugar and acid as the trinity that holds up all other flavors. When these three are out of balance, the other flavors in a dish can also fail to come together.
2. To fix a sauce or soup that has too much salt, for example, add a dash of sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice.
3. If a sauce or soup is too sweet for you, add salt and lemon juice.
4. If a sauce or soup is too sour, then adjust the flavor with a bit of salt and sugar.
5. Adjust seasonings gradually, and stir well after each addition.

***Hints from this web site on how to save your over seasoned dinner.

You've measured the ingredients for your vegetable soup, and  you taste the soup and realize your soup is salty enough to make you run for running water. How can you take the salty edge off?

A. Add a chunk of potato
B. Add a small amount of sugar
C. Add a bit of fat, like butter, oil, or animal fat

A: You may have heard this kitchen fix offered before. The theory behind it is that a cut-up potato will absorb some of the salt from the broth, and that if the potato is cooked in the broth and removed, voila, you've gotten rid of some of the salt. While it seems that this is gospel for many cooks out there, there's no scientific evidence to support it. Then again, there are no real studies disproving it either. The only thing for certain is that you'll have a salty, cooked potato when you're done. 

B. Sugar, used in the right proportion, can help cut the edge off other flavors. You might think it's obvious to add sugar to lemon juice to make a less-sour lemonade. By the same token, sugar added to coffee makes it less bitter. And yes, a little sugar (not too much!) stirred into your soup will make it seem less salty. 

This approach can be tricky, though. You're not actually covering flavors, you're adding more flavors to distract your tongue from the one you want to be less prominent. Getting the right flavor balance depends on the ingredients and their proportions in your soup. If the proportion of salt to sugar is too small, they'll actually enhance each other. So you want to add enough sugar to cut the salt, but not so much that it makes the soup sweet. You might want to practice this one before putting it to use.

The reverse of this is also true: Bitter, sour, and salty tastes can lower the intensity of sugar. Keep this relationship in mind when checking the labels on processed foods: Sugar and salt are often used to cover less pleasant flavors that arise when food is processed. Processed foods often contain much more sugar and salt than your palate can detect, and often more than is necessary to balance flavors.

C. There's another approach that might also be effective. Try the other answers to see what it is, or move on to the next question. While fats themselves don’t have a taste, anyone who savors a good cheesecake knows how important fat is to making food enjoyable.Fat won't actually reduce the amount of salt in your soup, but it will coat the tongues of your guests and block some salt from reaching their taste buds. 
  
Help With Over-Seasoned Dishes

• It's too sour
• It's too sweet
• It's too salty
• It's bitter
• It's too hot and spicy

1. The four senses of taste are sour, sweet, salty and bitter and way too hot and spicy.
2. Increasing an ingredient to counter the other, it doesn't change the flavor as much as it changes the way our taste buds preceive the flavor.
3. If you alter one of the tastes, it will affect the others.
4. If it is too sour, add something sweet or add a litle salt, depending on what your are preparing.
5. You add sugar to lemonade to cut the sourness of the lemons; same principle works with other things.
6. If it's too sweet, add somethng sour. Add citrus juice, vinegars, an acid.
7. If it is to salty, increase the amount of sweet and sour and it will alter the taste of the salt.
8. If it tastes bitter, changing the sweet, sour, salty tastes will change the bitter taste.
9. If it is too hot, you added too many peppers or too much hot sauce, adding a dairy product will help calm the heat. That's why dished that