032. Fixing Salty Soup, Tasting Like a Pro, Home Garden Dilemmas

In this episode of Cooking Like a Pro, Chef Cal and Christa tackle three kitchen essentials:

🧂 Salt Fixes – How to rescue an over-salted dish
😋 Flavor Tasting – How to taste food like a chef
🍓 Garden Game Plan – Whether planting a garden this year is worth the effort

You’ll learn practical ways to fix seasoning mistakes, how to identify flavor components and build your palate, and what’s really worth growing in your backyard. Whether you're cooking from scratch or shopping smart, this episode is full of pro tips to boost your kitchen confidence.

Let's Connect!

I'm Christa DeMercurio. I started as a stay-at-home mom who relied on cookbooks, measuring everything and following recipes to the letter. But watching my chef husband move effortlessly in the kitchen, I knew there had to be a better way.

So, I learned—studying his techniques, practicing his methods, and mastering the strategies that keep professional kitchens running smoothly. Over time, I became confident, capable, and free from recipes controlling my cooking.

I’m here to help you do the same. On Cooking Like a Pro, together we share everything you need to cook with confidence, save time and money, and actually enjoy being in the kitchen—without the stress and frustration.
P.S. I still reference cookbooks and internet recipes too!

❤️Culinarily Yours, Christa DeMercurio (Mrs. Chef)

Email: christa@culinarilyyours.net

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Chapters

• 0:03 Hey Food Fans!
• 1:00 Too much saltiness! The fix...
• 5:00 Dissecting a Pot Pie?
• 8:10 Being intentional about tasting your food.
• 16:41 Plant a garden? The grow-your-own dilemma.

Transcript

Christa DeMercurio:
Hey, food fans. Welcome to Cooking Like a Pro with Chef Cal and me, Mrs. Chef his wife, Christa DeMercurio. We're dishing out culinary intuition, insights and imagination to spice up your meals and make cooking more fun. On today's episode, my chef husband and I discuss ways to save a dish that has been over salted. Being intentional about tasting food and deciding whether or not to plant a garden and what to plant. Let's dig in. Today's episode was broadcast and recorded live on AM FM radio.

Chef Cal:
Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to Cooking Like a Pro. You have found us chef Cal and Mrs. Chef Christa is here.

Christa DeMercurio:
Hello.

Chef Cal:
First thing I wanted to touch on. And when you learn to cook and you spend time cooking, not only are you, not only are you enjoying yourself and having fun. And for me it's like stress relief. I know, I know. Christa, you like to, well, I don't know now you. Since you. We've been together for, you know, 20 years. Did you enjoy, how did you view kitchen work in when you were younger? Not like a little girl, but, you know, college and such.

Christa DeMercurio:
Oh, I was always fascinated with food. I always loved cooking. Like I said, I just couldn't function without a recipe.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, that's, you know, you're, you're, you're more analytical. Is that the word? Me and I just kind of fly by the seat of my pants. I noticed the other day that I season real well when I don't measure.

Christa DeMercurio:
Just sprinkle things on.

Chef Cal:
I just, I've been doing it long enough that when I measure just, you know, and there's, you know, ways to mitigate, you know, damage. You don't want to slip and, and too much good, you know, salt goes into something or pepper or whatever the ingredient you're working with. One of the things that I do is if I'm pouring a seasoning and I'm looking for a tablespoon or a teaspoon, and I know I'm just not really going to take the time to go find it and I would, but there's a big difference between a tablespoon that's heaping and a tablespoon that's level. And you generally just don't see those recipes. It just will say a tablespoon or, you know, or, you know, maybe it's a cup and they're looking at it on an angle. So I don't know. You have to be careful with that. But I'll either dump the seasoning into the lid before I dump it into the soup or Stew or whatever I'm making or.

Chef Cal:
But the other thing is, though, you could also just dump it in your hand so something spills into your hand, it still hasn't ruined the soup. Right? Oh, you know what? And I forgot we had. Yeah. You had finally had an opportunity to learn what to do when something is over salted.

Christa DeMercurio:
Add potato buds.

Chef Cal:
It was. I was making some lentils and I used the ham broth from a spiral ham and not really thinking real clearly that obviously that was real high in sodium. So when I just did a general seasoning on it, it became too salty. And what did you do to fix that? Do you remember?

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, first off, I tried to dilute it. I added a bunch more water to it, try to balance it out and try and, you know, get more of a stock flavor so that it would calm down the saltiness. Yep. Now, I did not put sugar. You would think, you know, counter salt with sugar, but that is a. No, no.

Chef Cal:
Yeah.

Christa DeMercurio:
You want to absorb that.

Chef Cal:
Unless, of course, you want it to end up being, you know, too sweet. I mean, you know, some things, a little sugar works great. You know, if spaghetti sauce or something like that. But, but so, so then after you, you made this, I. After I made the soup wrong, I made the soup and it's too salty. I showed you how to, how to, how to make. To take some of that salt out of there.

Christa DeMercurio:
Oh, actually we did diced potatoes.

Chef Cal:
Diced potatoes.

Christa DeMercurio:
You can put potato buds into a creamy soup because they kind of melt.

Chef Cal:
Well, they'll extend it. They'll extend it so that salt gets extended as well.

Christa DeMercurio:
But because I didn't have a creamy soup because lentils are chunky, we want to add another chunky element that kind of was similar. So, yeah, cook some diced potatoes in there.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, do some diced potatoes in there and just let those cook. And that was something that I was taught Wee Wee lad in the restaurant business. I mean, I don't know why that was just something that came out of my apprenticeship, but when I used it, it worked and it was important that it did. And again, so you just, you know, peel and dice yourself up some. Some russet potatoes or maybe some golden Yukons, but, you know, something's going to absorb a lot. Throw them in your soup and just let them cook and simmer. Now you've got some beauty and you can remove the potatoes. I mean, you can literally just cut potatoes in half and throw them in there and then just let it simmer for, you know, 45 minutes and then just remove the potatoes.

Chef Cal:
But there's not a whole lot of ways once you've over seasoned. So you do want to be careful with that. But anyway, so my one wife had brought home something and was munching on this, and it was a. Was it a chicken pot pie? Right.

Christa DeMercurio:
Marie Callender's turkey pot pie.

Chef Cal:
Turkey. Was it turkey or chicken?

Christa DeMercurio:
Oh, I always get turkey.

Chef Cal:
Okay. Turkey pot pie. Anyway, so I went through and tore the thing apart.

Christa DeMercurio:
I've never seen anybody dissect a pot pie like a frog.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, we had. That's what I did. Especially when it comes to ideation. When you're a corporate chef and you want to analyze something, you have to get to the bottom of what the actual, you know, cost is. For example, is it more? There's two different things. Say we're making a milkshake, okay? And this person over here is making a milkshake with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. And this person over here, person B is making it with chocolate ice cream and milk. Those are both going to produce two different things.

Chef Cal:
So the first question to ask is which one tastes the best? Right. And we're going to hopefully talk a little bit about taste and how to do that a little bit later in the show. But which one tastes the best? But secondly, you know, the. The ease of it being made, it has to be consistent. And you do that by really breaking it down. So I broke this pie down, this turkey pot pie, and it was 10, a little, almost 11 ounces in the box and down to 10 ounces. It was the boxes, wasn't it? The box was an ounce. The tin it was in was an ounce.

Chef Cal:
The cook weight was a little over 3, 8 ounces. Excuse me. So you bought something that was almost 11, and you ate something that was, you know, just a little bit over 8, 4. Almost half of that was just the crust. There were 2 ounces of chicken, 1 ounce of carrots, 2 ounces of sauce, and 1 tablespoon of peas. And when I sat down and figured that out, it was 65, 6, 7, 8, 69 cents to make, and that cost $4. So actually it's $3.95 plus tax. But anyway, 69 cents.

Chef Cal:
So you can sit there and make these things, get some, you know, your own products, make a bunch of them, get some in some tins, stuff them with whatever you want, hit you all of your grease and your ingredients together rather, and your mise en place, make a bunch of these things, freeze them, and literally be spending a dollar on something that Would have cost you four if you go out and buy it. And probably, I don't know, 11 or $12 if you went out and purchased it.

Christa DeMercurio:
That's what you're buying when you go someplace, say, you know, Trader Joe's or Winco, wherever, you're paying for the packaging, you are paying for the transportation, and you're paying for the person that made it.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, the ease of all that. So again, you can make these things yourself. And if you make these things yourself, just like anything else, and maybe just pick a few things, practice and play with it. But anyway, we're going to take a quick break. This is chef cow and Mrs. Chef cooking like a Pro. Back in just a moment. Welcome back.

Chef Cal:
Welcome back to Cooking Like a Pro. And speaking of trying foods and tasting foods, one of the things that I'm fascinated by this subject and obviously because I'm a chef and this is what I do, is a big part of that, but it's also very interesting. And I think that because of my wife Christa here marrying a chef, I think and with her education and degrees and stuff, she's more studious. She looks at things from a more rational, needs to make sense thing where I fly by the seat of my pants sometimes. And I think that learning how to taste just a fascinating area. You know, knowing that you can taste sweet or bitter, salty or sour or umami or, or any of these things. And when you start doing that, I think that's when you really start enjoying your meals more.

Christa DeMercurio:
If you try different things next to each other, start trying to pick things out that you've never thought of picking out before. Like when wine tasting. I never really drank wine before I met you. I mean, a glass here and there, but I had no clue anything about it. But what we do is we take one varietal, you know, let's say Pinot noir, and just try to bunch different ones and learn how to pick up the characteristics across that particular one. And I think even if you went with a bunch of, you know, sometimes kids, you take and have them try chocolate milk, some kids can pull out all different flavors out of every single different chocolate milk and they can tell you which brand it is. So maybe even doing a tomato sauce tasting, you do things like that.

Chef Cal:
And I think a lot of that has to do with people's interest in, you know, enjoying it more because they're studying more about it and they're learning more about it. It's like you mentioned wine tasting and all the fun times we've had over the years with just numerous groups of people being able to have everybody bring a different type of what we used to do, where everybody would bring a varietal. So when you talk about a varietal, you're talking about the variety of that grape. And so you talk about a chardonnay or a cab or a Pinot or a, you know, a chenin blanc, a Gewerstraminer or aspect reason, all. Okay, so there's all these different varietals, these grape varietals. The point about it is, what we did is we would taste wine, people would bring wine, but they'd also bring a food dish, and you get to try, first off, you know, maybe, you know, seven or eight different types of one varietal, and then seven or eight different types of food, and you'll see.

Christa DeMercurio:
What compares, what contrasts, what went well and what didn't go well, you know, because you would practice, and everybody would bring something different, and we didn't have a set menu.

Chef Cal:
Okay, well, calling you on the spot here. Now, do you. Do you have any that you remember that just really stand out?

Christa DeMercurio:
That's a long time ago.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, for me, it's something like. Like, from the food standpoint, it might be strawberries and balsamic, you know, or brie cheese, roasted garlic and raspberries. I mean, certain just combinations that work well. And, like, when you get trying, you know, chenin blancs and things that would be a little more tropical flavor as far as a wine would go, and then pairing those with something like papaya or preparing them and serving them with pineapple and coconut and just, you know, foods that would be more of a. Of a tropical thing. And. But in order to be able to do that, you first kind of have to be able to pick out, you know, the flavors of that food.

Christa DeMercurio:
Oh, I think I remember one. There was a pizza I think was smoked Gouda, and figure on it.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, that would go well with a lot of different wines.

Christa DeMercurio:
So that right there, that's the very strong profile. So let's pick apart that pizza. So how would you experience, like, you picked apart the chicken pot pie earlier today. How would you pick apart that pizza and pull out the flavors so that things were overwhelming so that you would enjoy it? Because that's what we talk about is developing your palate so you can enjoy food more instead of just, you know, coming up to a pizza joint, grab a piece of pizza, and just, you know, eating it, you know, pulling out the flavor. So how would you do that? How would you detect well, let's look.

Chef Cal:
At it this way. So we're taking this. This pizza, and it's going to have a listed blue cheese and figs on there. Balsamic is always a great flavor to go with these things. One thing that balsamic is, of course, it's a. It's a vinegar. So it's going to cut through and help marry that. That blue cheese together again, that that fig has.

Chef Cal:
It's kind of an earthy flavor to it, a little bit of spice. You're gonna. If you get a really nice, nice fig, especially if it's dried, if it's concentrated, you know, and quite a bit of sweetness, too. Yeah, yeah, you're sweetness as well. So, you know, there's a variety of things, but, you know, you look at that and say, well, I don't have anything salty. Okay, well, then maybe you're gonna add some capers to it or so. So you think about what might be missing and whether you'd want to add that. You know, you don't really have anything sour, but then the vinegar would bring in that sour component, you know, so you got umami because of the cheese, which is giving it that.

Chef Cal:
That more satisfied, you know, flavor. And then you got some spice. So, you know, you just wouldn't want to. For example, if you put. Had something sweet already on there, you wouldn't add anything else sweet, because then they're fighting again, the flavors are fighting against each other.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, in the balsamic, if it's a reduced balsamic, it's going to have some sweetness to it, but also, interestingly, with acidity, it also can act as a saltiness factor sometimes.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. I mean, again, I think that picking out the flavors is really what's important. And I think trying a lot of things, Try things multiple times. Basically, you're practicing. We used to practice this with wine all the time. I mean, I practiced it for decades, obviously, making clam chowder, until I got to a point where I make it now and I don't need to taste it. I know what it tastes like. I mean, I taste it anyway just because I do.

Chef Cal:
But, you know, you know, when you repeat something, you get used to those different flavor profiles as well.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, I think paying attention to if you like something, try to figure out why you like it. If you don't like something, why don't you like it? And what could you do to change it to make it so you like it again?

Chef Cal:
Well, and I think, you know, we'll kind of hit on this, but pay Attention to it. You know, pay attention. Think about, what does this taste like? And even before you taste it, remember, before you ever taste something, you're going to smell it. And that's, of course, it doesn't have an aroma. First you're going to see it. Right. And then you're going to smell it, and then you're going to be aware of its texture. And the last thing you do is literally put it in your mouth and taste it.

Chef Cal:
So, but study it through that whole process. Pay attention to that flavor. Smell it when you first take, and then enjoy yourself. And also, what did Thomas Keller say you had read it once, that. That after, what, three times, three bites, you really don't taste anything new anyway.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. You're starting to have especially.

Chef Cal:
It's American pizza.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. Flavor fatigue.

Chef Cal:
Yeah.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, speaking of, let's tear something else apart yesterday. So we're. We're post St. Patrick's Day at this point, and you. We had a bunch of eggs, and we had some leftover corned beef, and you diced up the corned beef, and you were going to put it into scrambled eggs. Immediately, I was turned off because I'm not a huge corned beef fan, and I'm not a huge eggs fan. And so you're taking two things that I did not really care for.

Chef Cal:
Well, it's making it for me.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yes. But I obliged. And having the corned beef in the eggs, which you had, also put the hollandaise over the top of it, I was actually surprised I had to move past first my visual cues, because I'm like, this is two things that I really don't want to eat, but I'm just going to trust it and go with it. But I pulled out that, you know, you've got the saltiness from that corned beef. You've got kind of plainness from the eggs. So that helped balance that. And you put that nice creamy sauce over the top.

Chef Cal:
And I think that's the idea. You know, it's coming up with the, you know, again, flavor profiles. Understanding what they are not having three things that are salty in the same dish and understanding that that's going to be too salty. Chef, cow, Mrs. Chef, cooking like a Pro. Back in just a moment. Welcome back to Cooking Like a pro. Cal and Mrs.

Chef Cal:
Chef. And. Hey. Beans, greens, tomatoes, potatoes. Yes. Are you wondering what it is that we should be planting this time of year? What is it that we're supposed to be planting out there this time of year? Because we're getting into it here. You know, we're nearing the spring session and you want to. And if you're planting from seeds, you definitely need to be doing that.

Chef Cal:
Now, all of your lettuces, meaning your romaine and your spinach and all of your head lettuces, butter lettuce, iceberg. Of course, a lot of different things are out there. Your cabbages, it's a good time to start Your cabbages, too. They're going to take a little bit longer. And when I talk about cabbage family, I mean start growing your radishes, which grow fairly quickly. Your beets, of course, broccoli and cabbage. All of your sulfuric stuff should be things that are. They're going out in early spring, coming up here.

Chef Cal:
And how are you with greens? Much of a green person. Mustard greens, Swiss chard. We ate so much greens, and they all have that bittery, peppery kind of flavor to them.

Christa DeMercurio:
What's interesting is you and I both grew up in the same area. No, we did not eat greens. Greens. I guess there was something from the south.

Chef Cal:
Swiss chard.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, they are. They can be bitter like mustard, tastes like mustard, and I do not like that. Now rainbow chard. That's a nice, A nice green.

Chef Cal:
Yeah.

Christa DeMercurio:
Depends on the green.

Chef Cal:
Chard, red charge. Yeah. But they're sturdy and I'm. And extremely fibrous. You're not gonna have any problem with fiber if you're. If you're eating your. Your greens. But a good time for onions and anything that's gonna sprout some things under the ground, too.

Chef Cal:
You can do root vegetables, your carrots. I already mentioned beets. But turnips and, and celery and things like squash. That's a great thing to squash it because it just goes nuts. I mean, but the thing about squash is it's one of those things that grows so fast. Now, I would say green beans fall into this category that you need to pick them when they're just perfectly tender because they. And most things, they get to that peak part of their season, then it starts going back, back downhill from there.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. Because the later in the season, the fruit that comes off of it isn't as bright, tender. It gets more old. Woody tasting.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. Almost always you'll get something that becomes more woody, becomes almost more fibrous, you know, and, you know, so. But. But zucchini and any variety of squash. Patty pans. One of my favorite things, like even eggplant and things like that, you really just don't want them to get. To get too big. You want to get them when they.

Chef Cal:
You want Their flavor to be developed.

Christa DeMercurio:
I think this year I'm not gonna plant. No, I think this year should be the year to focus on the farmer's market and supporting the local community and those that really know what they're doing and get some really good produce. Because I spend so much time and money on water and soil, and then we get hit with 110, 120 degree heat and, like, why, I could have just gone to the farmer's market, spent way less money.

Chef Cal:
How about if we just pick one thing? One thing. One vegetable. One vegetable. One fruit. Okay, that's it. One vegetable and fruit. Because I already know what fruit I want.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, it's not tomatoes. I kill tomatoes.

Chef Cal:
Well, yeah, we do get a lot of. Well, yeah, the deer probably get more tomatoes. We do, But I was thinking strawberries. You know, I have not evergrown strawberries. I think strawberries. Just because the umbrella area, the leaves that protected the fruit from the. The harshness of the. Of the temperature, whether hot or whether cold.

Christa DeMercurio:
If you want to do sprouter, it's. We were walking through Costco the other day, and they had some gorgeous, huge strawberry plants. I'm like, maybe we should do it.

Chef Cal:
Well, how about things that are easy to move in, you know, Because I think about the different. If you get the right climate where you could do microgreens or you could do radish sprouts.

Christa DeMercurio:
That's what I want to do. I want to do microgreens.

Chef Cal:
Because then, you know, you're not. You know, we go from bear cold, not extremely cold, but we can go, you know, it's not. We're not, you know, North Dakota, but we do get extremely hot. You know, we're in an area that easily gets into the mid 105th. One teens, you know, one. Usually 171. I think we actually won 19 last year. That was a new record.

Chef Cal:
But. But we spend. We can easily spend several weeks, as in, you know, close to a couple months, if not more periodically without it going under 100 degrees.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah, easily. I'll let you take care of the garden this year. I'm out. I'm out.

Chef Cal:
I just said strawberries. Yeah.

Christa DeMercurio:
Okay. I'll try strawberries. Strawberries and microgreens.

Chef Cal:
Okay.

Christa DeMercurio:
That. That's my thing this year. Strawberries. Microgreens.

Chef Cal:
Microgreens.

Christa DeMercurio:
See if I can do it.

Chef Cal:
Anyway. Hey, the season's coming up. You know, think about it. Go on Google. We never used to have that. Say Google. What's. What.

Chef Cal:
I. I live in Reading, California. What should I. What would be the easiest thing for me to plant and not kill because my thumbs are not green.

Chef Cal:
Thank you so much for spending time with us. Until next time, we hope you'll be cooking up a storm in the kitchen. So we'll be with you again next week with food, flavor and fun right here on Cooking Like a Pro podcast.