Too Much Lemongrass? How to Fix a Soup, Curry or Marinade

Soup or curry tasting mostly of perfumed lemon and grassy tea? That’s too much lemongrass. If the stalks are whole, you’re in luck: pull them out and they stop adding flavor. Minced or pounded into a paste, it’s staying in, so dilute. A squeeze of lime, a little fish sauce or more chile helps too, because lemongrass brings lemon aroma but no sourness of its own.

Quick answer

Why lemongrass takes over

Lemongrass oil smells very strong, fresh-grassy and lemon-like,¹ and Britannica describes the flavor as “a rich lemon without the acidity.”² That last bit matters when you’re fixing it. Lemongrass brings lemon aroma but no sourness, so by our reading an overdose tastes perfumed, not sharp.

How you prep the stalk changes how much flavor reaches the dish. Cooks pound lemongrass in tall mortars, which releases its lemony flavor, and bashing the stalks helps release the aromatic oils.³ Put those together and a minced or pounded stalk should give up more than a bruised one. We didn’t find anyone who’s measured the difference, though.

Whole stalks: take them out

Whole stalks are meant to come out. The woody stalks are commonly infused and removed afterward, and a tied bundle can simmer in stock to carry its flavor.² Recipes build the removal in. Nancie McDermott’s tom yum goong for Saveur simmers knotted stalks until the broth is fragrant, about 5 minutes, then removes and discards them,⁴ and Mandy Yin’s curry laksa takes the lemongrass out before the final seasoning.⁵

So step one is lifting the stalks out with tongs. Once they’re out, they stop adding flavor. How much they’ve already given up depends on how long they’ve been in, and no source we found measures it. Taste, and if the lemon note is still too strong, dilute.

Minced lemongrass or paste: dilute

Add more of everything except the lemongrass. Add stock to a soup, coconut milk and stock to a coconut curry or laksa, more of the main ingredients to a stir-fry. If the pot won’t take more, cook a second batch without lemongrass and combine the two. That’s the method Tasting Table gives for too much garlic.⁶ Two equal batches halve the lemongrass per serving.

Bring up the dish’s other flavors. Most lemongrass dishes are built on several strong tastes at once. Tom yum, for example, is a hot and sour soup.⁴ Lemongrass has no acidity of its own, so a squeeze of lime, a little more fish sauce or more chile gives you something to taste besides lemon aroma. None of these removes the lemongrass, and we found no source showing any of them masks it.

Woody, fibrous bits

Too much minced lemongrass can be a texture problem as well as a flavor one. The stalks are woody and tough, and only the tender young shoots in the center get chopped finely and added directly. In America’s Test Kitchen’s test, dried lemongrass in a stir-fry “retained the texture of hay,” and ATK advises using dried only where there’s liquid for it to hydrate and soften.⁷ For a soup or curry, pour it through a strainer and return the liquid to the pot. The strained pieces take some flavor with them, which helps if the dish was overpowered. In a stir-fry, pick out what you can.

Marinades and pastes on raw meat

If a lemongrass marinade or paste is too heavy on raw chicken, pork or beef, scrape the excess off with a spoon or knife. Don’t rinse it off under the tap: the USDA doesn’t recommend washing raw meat or poultry before cooking, because rinsing raises the risk of cross-contamination.⁸ Once it’s cooked, serve it with plain rice, noodles or vegetables to spread the flavor across each bite.

Fixes that don’t hold up

Simmering it longer to cook off the lemon. We found no test of whether long cooking softens lemongrass in a dish. Food chemists do describe citral, the main compound in lemongrass oil, as unstable. A 2022 study notes that it’s easily oxidized and degraded, and that as it breaks down it loses its lemon-like aroma and produces off-flavors.⁹ That work was on citral in lemon-flavored foods, not on simmering lemongrass, but it gives no reason to expect a clean, milder lemon from extra cooking. Reducing a broth also concentrates whatever lemongrass is left in it.

Adding lemon juice or zest to “balance” it. Zest is mostly more lemon aroma, which adds to the problem. Lime or lemon juice adds sourness, which can help the balance as described above, but it doesn’t take the lemongrass away.

A potato in the pot. The raw-potato trick comes from oversalted soup, and even there a Tasting Table writer who uses it calls it “more of an aid than a final answer.”¹⁰ Sara Moulton reports that potatoes in salty water soaked up some of the salty water instead of pulling out the salt itself.¹¹ We found no test of a potato against lemongrass. Potato you leave in and eat is just more unflavored food, which is dilution.

Is too much lemongrass unsafe?

At kitchen amounts, it’s a flavor problem. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lists lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus and C. flexuosus) among essential oils and natural extractives generally recognized as safe.¹² We found no regulator figure for an unsafe culinary amount.

Preventing it next time

Use recipe amounts as a scale. McDermott’s tom yum uses 3 large stalks to 4 cups of chicken stock for a soup that serves 2.⁴ Yin’s laksa bruises 2 stalks and simmers them in the coconut broth before removing them.⁵ For minced lemongrass, the Vietnamese caramelized chicken recipe from The Asian Grandmother’s Cookbook uses 4 plump stalks, minced to about 3/4 cup, split between the marinade and the pan.¹³ Those figures are each recipe’s own, and stalk size isn’t standardized.

Bruise and remove when you’re unsure. You can pull a bruised stalk as soon as the broth tastes right. Minced lemongrass can’t come back out. In a long-simmered dish, taste early and take the stalks out when the flavor is where you want it.

Halve dried lemongrass. ATK found that half as much dried lemongrass as fresh worked in a curry paste and a soup.⁷ More in cooking with lemongrass.

Related

• Lemongrass, cooking with lemongrass and lemongrass uses
• Lemongrass substitutes, lemon balm vs. lemongrass, lemon verbena vs. lemongrass
• Galangal, kaffir lime leaves
• Too much ginger, too much cilantro