Too Much Old Bay? How to Fix a Dish That’s Too Salty, Too Celery-Heavy or Too Hot

Heavy hand with the Old Bay? Treat it as too much salt first, and dilute. Celery salt is the first thing on the label, so an overdose usually means a dish that’s too salty and tastes too strongly of celery seed. Heat is rarely the problem, since Old Bay is mild. Spoon for spoon, classic Old Bay has about 21% of the sodium of table salt, but a tablespoon still carries roughly two-thirds of the FDA’s Daily Value.

Quick answer

How salty is Old Bay?

The classic blend’s Nutrition Facts list 125 mg of sodium per 1/4 teaspoon, which weighs 0.6 g.¹ The 30% Less Sodium version lists 85 mg.² Morton lists its table salt at 590 mg per 1/4 teaspoon, which weighs 1.5 g.³ By our arithmetic:

Spoon for spoon, classic Old Bay carries about 21% of the sodium of table salt (125 ÷ 590). By weight it’s saltier than that suggests: about 208 mg of sodium per gram against about 393 mg for table salt (125 ÷ 0.6 and 590 ÷ 1.5), or a little over half. The gap comes from a spoonful of Old Bay being light and fluffy next to a spoonful of salt crystals. A tablespoon still carries about 1,500 mg, roughly two-thirds of the FDA’s Daily Value of less than 2,300 mg.⁴

Too salty

Dilute. It’s the only fix that lowers the salt in each bite. In chowder, crab soup or a dip, add unsalted liquid or more of the unseasoned base a little at a time, tasting as you go. Sara Moulton notes that unsalted stock or tomatoes keep more flavor than plain water where they suit the dish.⁵ In a seafood boil, add more unsalted potatoes, corn or seafood. If the pot won’t hold more, Tasting Table’s method for too much garlic works here too: cook a second unseasoned batch and combine the two.⁶ Two equal batches leave half the salt per serving.

Serve it with something unsalted. Plain bread, rice, unsalted potatoes or corn without the seasoning dilute each bite.

Balance with a little sweetness. In a 2010 taste study, sucrose cut the saltiness of a salt solution by 82.6%, though the authors say it’s unclear whether results from pure solutions hold for real foods.⁷ A pinch of sugar, or a sweet ingredient already in the dish, may help a slightly salty dish. It changes the taste, not the sodium.

Go carefully with lemon. Lemon wedges are a natural partner for seafood. But in a 1967 study, low levels of citric acid in water generally enhanced saltiness and higher levels depressed it, and in a green bean purée the tasters split.⁸ Squeeze a little and taste.

Too much celery and spice

McCormick describes Old Bay as celery salt, 18 herbs and spices, and paprika, and names only red and black pepper among the 18.⁹ PepperScale sums up the flavor as celery salt, paprika, a little heat and a warm background of baking spices.¹⁰ When a dish tastes of little but Old Bay, there’s too much blend for the food.

Dilute. More of the main ingredients lowers the spice and the salt together.

Give it company. Butter, lemon on the side, plain potatoes and corn are what Old Bay usually gets served with, and they make a heavily seasoned dish easier to eat. We found no test of any of them against an Old Bay overdose.

Too hot

Old Bay’s heat comes from the red pepper on its label. Dave DeWitt’s heat scale places Old Bay at 1,000 to 1,500 Scoville heat units, alongside ancho and pasilla chiles.¹¹ That’s a general rating, not a lab measurement, but it puts Old Bay at the mild end. If a dish does taste too hot, it’s usually because a lot of blend went in, and dilution handles salt and heat at once.

Dairy, if it suits. PepperScale says casein, a protein in dairy products, binds with capsaicin, and suggests sour cream, yogurt or milk.¹² In a chowder or a creamy crab dip, more cream or sour cream fits. A Penn State study reported in a 2019 university news release found that all the drinks tested reduced a capsaicin burn, with the biggest reductions from whole milk, skim milk and Kool-Aid.¹³ That study tested drinks after the burn, not dairy stirred into a dish.

Not beer. In the same study, carbonated drinks like beer, soda and seltzer did poorly.¹³

Caked on the surface

Old Bay often gets shaken straight onto shrimp, crab, wings and fries. Brush or wipe off the excess. Don’t rinse raw meat or poultry under the tap: the USDA doesn’t recommend washing raw poultry, beef, pork, lamb or veal before cooking, because rinsing raises the risk of cross-contamination.¹⁴ For fries or wings that are already cooked, toss them with a batch of unseasoned ones. That’s dilution.

Fixes that don’t hold up

A potato in the pot. Robert L. Wolke’s test, as Moulton reports it, found that a potato simmered in salted water came out salty because it soaked up salty water instead of pulling out just the salt.⁵ A Tasting Table writer who uses the trick calls it “more of an aid than a final answer.”¹⁵ In a seafood boil the potatoes are part of the dish, so adding more of them is dilution, not absorption.

When it’s a health matter

Sodium. The FDA’s Daily Value for sodium is less than 2,300 mg a day,⁴ and the World Health Organization recommends adults stay below 2,000 mg, naming raised blood pressure as the main health effect of high intake.¹⁶ If you’re cooking for someone who’s limiting sodium, dilute, and think about the 30% Less Sodium version next time; McCormick says it has the same flavor as the classic.²

Celery allergy. Celery seed is in the blend.⁹ Celery is one of the allergens listed in Annex II of the EU food information regulation;¹⁷ in the United States it isn’t among the major allergens the FDA lists.¹⁸ Diluting a dish doesn’t make it safe for someone with a celery allergy.

Preventing it next time

Start with a recipe’s amount. McCormick’s Old Bay Steamed Shrimp puts 2 tablespoons of Old Bay into the steaming liquid for 1 pound of shrimp, serving 8, and drains the shrimp after cooking.¹⁹ By our arithmetic that’s about 3,000 mg of sodium in the pot, but the liquid gets drained, and we found no measurement of how much seasoning stays on the shrimp. When the seasoning goes straight onto the food instead of into a liquid you drain, start well below that and taste.

Season with Old Bay first, then salt. Celery salt is its first ingredient,⁹ so add Old Bay before any plain salt and taste.

Shake onto a plate, not over the pot. Measuring into your hand or a dish first keeps a loose shaker lid from dumping a tablespoon into the food.

Related

• Old Bay seasoning and Old Bay vs. Creole seasoning
• Celery salt, celery seeds and paprika
• Too much salt, too much sea salt and too much pepper
• Clam chowder spices and spices that go well with shrimp
• Creole seasoning and Cajun seasoning

Footnotes

1. Old Bay Seasoning, 16 oz, Nutrition Facts and ingredients via ShopRite. shoprite.com · Merchant ↩ ↩²

2. Old Bay 30% Less Sodium Seasoning, Nutrition Facts and description via ShopRite. shoprite.com · Merchant ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Morton Iodized Table Salt, product page, Morton Salt. mortonsalt.com · Merchant ↩ ↩²

4. Sodium in Your Diet, U.S. Food and Drug Administration. fda.gov · Regulator ↩ ↩²

5. Sara Moulton, Oversalted it? There is one solution, saramoulton.com, 2012 (updated 2016), reporting Robert L. Wolke’s experiment. saramoulton.com · Publication ↩ ↩²

6. Harmony Colangelo, Simple Ways To Tone Down The Pungency Of Garlic, Tasting Table, 2023. tastingtable.com · Publication ↩

7. Green BG et al., Taste Mixture Interactions: Suppression, Additivity, and the Predominance of Sweetness, Physiology & Behavior, 2010. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov · Peer-reviewed ↩

8. Pangborn RM, Trabue IM, Detection and apparent taste intensity of salt–acid mixtures in two media, Perception & Psychophysics, 1967 (abstract). doi.org · Peer-reviewed ↩

9. OLD BAY Classic Seafood Seasoning, product page, McCormick & Company. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩ ↩² ↩³

10. Matt Bray, What’s A Good Old Bay Seasoning Substitute?, PepperScale, 2026. pepperscale.com · Publication · PepperScale is also owned by Matt Bray, the editor of this site. ↩

11. Dave DeWitt, Heat Scale Updated, Fiery Foods & Barbecue Central, 2008. fieryfoodscentral.com · Publication ↩

12. Matt Bray, Dish Too Hot? How to Make Food Less Spicy, PepperScale, 2022. pepperscale.com · Publication · PepperScale is also owned by Matt Bray, the editor of this site. ↩

13. Milk: Best drink to reduce burn from chili peppers, Penn State news release via ScienceDaily, 2019, reporting a study in Physiology & Behavior. sciencedaily.com · Publication ↩ ↩²

14. Washing Food: Does it Promote Food Safety?, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. fsis.usda.gov · Regulator ↩

15. Alison Spiegel, How To Fix An Oversalted Soup, Tasting Table, 2016. tastingtable.com · Publication ↩

16. Sodium reduction, World Health Organization fact sheet, 2026. who.int · Regulator ↩

17. Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Annex II, EUR-Lex. eur-lex.europa.eu · Regulator ↩

18. Food Allergies, U.S. Food and Drug Administration. fda.gov · Regulator ↩

19. Old Bay Steamed Shrimp With Cocktail Sauce, McCormick Kitchens, McCormick & Company. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩