I love watching the cooking channel on the weekends and sometimes during their commercial breaks they will have little segments with cooking tips. One time they shared 5 ways to save your ruined recipes. I thought these were so helpful because I’ve been there far too many times than I’d like to admit.

So thank you, Dan and Laurie from the Cooking Channel for helping me know what to do when I make my chili too spicy for company.

1. Fixing Something that is Too Sweet

Now I am a sweet tooth so rarely do I think something is too sweet :) But let’s say you were making some marinara sauce and it is too sweet. You want it to still have a little bit of zip to it--it’s not supposed to be ketchup. If you find it too sweet, first thing you can do is add some salt to balance out the sweet, but you could also add some red wine. The acidity in the red wine will balance out the sweetness.

2. Stale Bread

A lot of times I find myself grabbing a loaf of French bread whenever I’m at the grocery store or Costco and then something comes up that night and next thing I know it’s a couple days later and I’ve got myself a nice loaf of stale bread.

First thing you’re going to do is wrap it loosely in some damp paper towels, which will add some moisture back into your stale baguette. Then you’re going to bake it for 5-10 minutes at 350 degrees and then it will be ready for you to eat again! Or you could always make it into bread crumbs and freeze them.

3. Too Salty

When anyone in my family is down with a cold I love to make them chicken noodle soup from scratch. There is just something about it that is comforting when you are sick. It is one of those things where I’m not following a recipe, I’m just tossing everything in and tasting as I go. Every once in a while I will accidentally make it too salty. That’s usually forgivable for my husband or me (I think as grownups we’re pretty desensitized to salt and it would take a LOT of salt for me to think it was too salty. Yikes!) but my kids won’t eat it if it is too salty.

What you can do here with something like chicken noodle soup is add in some raw potatoes and let them cook in there for about 10 or 15 minutes and they will absorb the sodium. Then you take them out and add them to your next batch of mashed potatoes. Killing two birds with one stone at its finest!

4. Too Spicy

Let’s say you whipped up a batch of your favorite chili but then you remembered your in-laws are coming over and they aren’t quite as brave with spices as you.

You will want to add some sort of dairy to cut that spice. Sour cream is probably the one that works and tastes the best with chili. The milk proteins will break up the capsaisin, which is what makes it spicy. You could also add some honey or sugar which can cut down some of that spice too.

5. Scorched Soup

You’re a bit of a risk taker: it says to stir your cheesy potato soup constantly but you got a little sidetracked and now you’ve scorched your soup and you’ve got that nice burnt layer at the bottom of the pan! This is the worst!

What you can do is immediately add the whole pan to a bath of icy cold water. Do not stir it. Just ladle it out spoonful by spoonful into another bowl and you will be good to go!

You guys are probably perfect cooks and never make any mistakes, right?? I hope you found at least a couple of these tips helpful like I did :)