The invention relates to injecting steam into crude oil in two separate desalting steps to remove salt by transferring the salt into the condensed water from the steam and gravity separating the water from the crude oil. Steam transfers salt from crude oil via a different transfer mechanism and therefore doesn't require the high shear mixing of conventional water injection systems. In the invention, salt is also removed via an intermediate step of adding water with harshly mixing the added water with the crude oil.