You can reduce sodium in food you’ve already bought or prepared through rinsing, soaking, diluting, or swapping in low-sodium ingredients. The exact method depends on what you’re working with: canned goods, cheese, soups, or meals you’ve accidentally over-salted. Some techniques remove sodium physically, while others lower its concentration or replace it with a different mineral. Here’s what actually works and what doesn’t.
Rinse and Drain Canned Vegetables
Draining and rinsing canned vegetables under running water is the simplest way to cut sodium, though the reduction is more modest than many people assume. USDA research measured the actual numbers: draining and rinsing canned corn reduced sodium by about 21%, canned green beans by about 9%, and canned peas by about 12%. Across all vegetables tested, the total reduction ranged from 9% to 23%.
The key is doing both steps. Draining alone gets rid of some sodium because much of it lives in the packing liquid. But rinsing under cool running water for an additional 30 to 60 seconds pulls out more from the surface of the food itself. For canned beans, which are a staple for many people watching their sodium, this two-step process is worth building into your routine. It takes almost no extra time, and you don’t lose meaningful amounts of other nutrients in the process.
Soak Salty Cheeses in Milk
High-salt cheeses like feta, halloumi, and some aged varieties can be soaked to draw out excess sodium. Water works, but milk is a better choice because it pulls salt from the cheese without washing away as much flavor or changing the texture.
The process is straightforward: rinse the cheese under water, place it in a container with enough fresh milk to cover it completely, and refrigerate for one to two days. After that, taste it. If it’s still too salty, pour out the milk, replace it with fresh milk, and soak for another day or two. This works because of osmosis: the lower-salt liquid gradually draws sodium out of the higher-salt cheese. It won’t make feta taste like mozzarella, but it can take the edge off enough to make it enjoyable for people who find it overwhelming.
Dilute Soups, Sauces, and Broths
For liquid-based dishes like soups, stews, sauces, and gravies, dilution is your most effective tool. Adding unsalted broth, water, or other low-sodium liquids spreads the existing sodium across a larger volume, reducing its concentration in every serving. If you add equal parts unsalted liquid to a salty soup, you’ve roughly halved the sodium per bowl.
The tradeoff is that dilution also weakens every other flavor. To compensate, build back depth with ingredients that don’t contain sodium: a splash of vinegar or citrus juice, fresh herbs, garlic, onion, black pepper, or a pinch of sugar to balance acidity. Tomato paste (no salt added) can restore body to a thinned-out sauce. If you’re diluting a cream-based soup, use unsalted milk or cream rather than water to maintain the richness.
One thing that does not work: dropping a raw potato into an over-salted soup. This is one of the most persistent kitchen myths. Potatoes absorb water, and if that water is salty, they absorb salty water. You’re not selectively extracting sodium. You’re just adding a potato. If you then remove the potato and add fresh water to replace the lost volume, the water is doing the work, not the potato. Skip this step and go straight to dilution.
Use Acid to Shift How You Taste Salt
When you can’t physically remove sodium from a dish, you can change how salty it tastes. Acidic ingredients like lemon juice, lime juice, and vinegar lower the threshold at which your tongue detects salt, effectively making the same amount of sodium taste more prominent in smaller quantities. That sounds counterintuitive, but it means you need less salt to achieve the same perceived saltiness when acid is present.
This works in reverse too. If a dish already has too much salt, adding acid won’t reduce the sodium, but it will shift the flavor balance so that sourness competes with saltiness on your palate. The dish tastes less one-dimensionally salty. Research on taste interactions found that vinegar significantly affected salt perception, with darker, more complex vinegars like rice black vinegar having a stronger effect than milder ones. A squeeze of lemon over a salty piece of fish or a splash of vinegar in an over-salted stew can make a noticeable difference in how the dish hits your tongue.
Switch to Potassium-Based Salt Substitutes
Salt substitutes that replace some or all of the sodium chloride with potassium chloride are one of the most studied approaches to sodium reduction. A common formulation is 75% sodium chloride and 25% potassium chloride, which cuts sodium intake from seasoning by a quarter while also adding potassium, a mineral that independently helps lower blood pressure.
A large clinical trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine involving over 20,000 participants found that this type of salt substitute reduced rates of stroke, major cardiovascular events, and death compared to regular salt. The study also addressed a common concern: potassium-based substitutes have long carried warnings about dangerous potassium buildup in people with kidney disease. In this trial, the rate of serious hyperkalemia events was essentially identical between the salt substitute and regular salt groups. That said, if you have kidney disease or take potassium-sparing medications, this is a swap worth discussing with your doctor before making.
From a flavor standpoint, potassium chloride has a slightly metallic or bitter aftertaste at higher concentrations. Blended products that mix sodium and potassium chloride tend to taste closer to regular salt than pure potassium chloride. You can find these on most grocery store shelves, often labeled as “lite salt” or “reduced sodium salt.”
Reduce Sodium Before It Gets to Your Plate
The average American consumes about 3,400 milligrams of sodium per day, well above the recommended limit of 2,300 milligrams. The majority of that sodium doesn’t come from the salt shaker. Roughly 70% comes from packaged and restaurant foods. The biggest contributors are table salt used in cooking (23%), cooked meats (18%), bread and bread products (13%), dairy products (12%), and sauces and spreads (11%).
This means the most impactful way to reduce sodium isn’t rinsing or diluting after the fact. It’s choosing lower-sodium versions at the point of purchase. Comparing nutrition labels between brands of the same product often reveals surprising differences. Two cans of diced tomatoes on the same shelf can vary by hundreds of milligrams per serving. “No salt added” canned goods, unsalted butter, and reduced-sodium soy sauce are straightforward swaps that don’t require any rinsing or soaking.
When cooking from scratch, you control exactly how much salt goes in. Season gradually, taste as you go, and lean on the flavor-building tools that don’t add sodium: fresh and dried herbs, spices, citrus zest, toasted garlic, caramelized onions, and finishing touches like a drizzle of good olive oil or a squeeze of lemon. These don’t just replace salt. They add complexity that makes food taste more interesting with less sodium than a heavily salted but otherwise flat dish.