Deepening Flavors Overall

• Even if your marinara is already prepared, you can offset its saltiness by adding additional ingredients. Add cooked aromatic vegetables, such as onions or garlic for hints of sweetness and vegetable flavor. Add cooked mushrooms or sausage for umami, or a splash of red wine or herbs, such as rosemary or basil, for hints of bitterness. These additional ingredients with sweetness, saltiness, sourness, bitterness and umami, or savoriness, balance the saltiness of the marinara.

Combating Salt With Salt

• Odd as it may seem, adding salty ingredients to your salty marinara may distract your taste buds from the saltiness of the marinara. Chef Sharon Hage of the York Street restaurant in Dallas uses capers, olives, anchovies or prosciutto to add "another dimension of saltiness" to foods. In other words, the taste of the table salt that makes your marinara too salty is one- dimensional, while the other salty ingredients, with their depths of flavors, distract your taste buds from the salt in the sauce.

The Fix Is In

• Dilute the saltiness of the marinara by adding a second batch of sauce made without salt to the salty version, or add one or more cans of tomatoes, tomato sauce or prepared marinara to increase the amount of the sauce. Add additional unseasoned meat or an additional 1/4 cup of wine to already-prepared salty marinara. Taste as you go to ensure that you get the sauce just the way you want it. Leftover marinara keeps for two to three months in the freezer.

More Ideas To Try

• Some remedies for reducing saltiness of sauces may or may not work. Don't bother adding a potato to absorb excess salt and removing it after 10 minutes -- the oft-cited method is useless, according to the editors at "Fine Cooking" magazine. Do add a small amount of sugar to see whether you can eliminate some of the salty taste, or add a tablespoon of olive oil, whose fats may block some salt from your taste buds.