Step 1

Try doubling up on all the other ingredients but the lime. This will dilute the lime flavor and bring it back into proportion with the dish. If you’re making guacamole, add some more avocado.If it’s a soup, add some more stock and so on.

Step 2

Sweetness works really well to cut through the acidic taste of too much lime juice. The most obvious thing to add is sugar, but this will only work if the dish is hot. Sugar won’t dissolve in a cold dish, so you’ll end up with a grainy texture. Honey or maple syrup are good liquid sugar substitutes that will work in hot and cold dishes. You can also make a simple sugar syrup (sugar and hot water) if you don’t have anything else to hand.A more inventive idea that can work well in soups or stews is to add a pureed sweet vegetable into your dish.

Step 3

Salt enhances sweetness in food and reduces bitterness, perfect for cutting a bitter lime taste.Add in a pinch at a time, stir your dish and taste it. Slowly does it with salt. It’s easy to add too much, and then the whole thing will just taste like salt.

Step 4

Add some hot sauce or diced chilis to your dish.This one’s a great one for Mexican food because many of the dishes already have some chili in them. Heat works as a distraction technique in food and can distract your tastebuds from an overly sour or bitter flavor.

Step 5

If your dish is too much of one (sour), adding some more of another (umami) will help balance it out.Umami also has the added benefit of being totally delicious and moreish. Foods high in umami include: soy sauce, fish sauce, worcester sauce, bacon sprinkles, anchovies, mushrooms (particularly dried shiitake), shrimp paste, aged cheese (parmesan), Marmite / Vegemite, and seaweed.

Step 6

If you’re making a creamy pasta sauce or something where dairy wouldn’t go amiss adding some cream, yogurt or extra cheese can go a long way to mask the sour flavors of lime.Butter also works wonders.You don’t even need to be able to mix the fat into your dish.Say you’ve made some Mexican rice but overdone it on the lime, go heavy-handed with the cheese and sour cream in the burrito, and no one will be any the wiser.For non-dairy options, you can try avocado or olive oil.

Step 7

Lime is an acidic ingredient, so to chemically balance it, you can add a base (i.e baking soda).All the other methods simply mask the taste of the lime. Adding baking soda neutralizes the lime.The other suggestions are in no particular order, but I kept this one till last on purpose because you should only use it as a last resort. It’s more complicated than the other suggestions and has the most risk of going wrong.Add too much baking soda, and you can end up with a soapy-tasting dish with a weird texture.To add baking soda to your dish: - Very slowly sprinkle a pinch of baking soda over your dish and stir it in. Sprinkle a fine layer over the whole dish, don’t just dump the baking soda in one spot - Stir the baking soda into the dish. - Wait for any bubbling to subside before tasting the dish. - Repeat and necessary adding only a pinch at a time.The baking soda reacts with the lime in the dish and releases CO2, which is why you see some bubbles.Tasting as you go is essential because you only need a tiny amount of baking soda to see an effect. An alternative to baking soda is calcium carbonate. You can purchase it online, and it works in the same way, but it doesn’t have the same soapy taste, so there’s less chance of ruining the dish’s flavor completely.