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A homestyle tomato sauce is a widely used staple that is used to enhance the flavor of many dishes like lasagne or bolognese. While a tomato sauce is thicker than tomato juice, it is generally not as thick as a tomato puree.
Tomato Sauce Is Too Sweet
Even though making a tomato sauce isn’t really that hard, people tend to be unsure of certain ingredients, the first time they’re making one. As a result, the tomato sauce ends up being too sweet for the savory dish it’s been prepared for. It can be difficult to know how to fix this issue.
Today, we will be focusing our article on helping you with exactly how you can prevent or reduce the sweetness in your tomato sauce. Here is everything that you should know:
Why Is Your Tomato Sauce So Sweet?
Let’s first look at why your sauce may have turned out too sweet. Most cooks like to add sugar or other sweeteners in a tomato sauce to neutralize the acidic flavor. While there are no drawbacks to adding a little sugar to the sauce, you might have overdone it.
Red wine is another common ingredient that can make a recipe too sweet for most people’s taste. Regardless of the ingredient responsible for the sweetness of the sauce, you can balance out the taste by following certain tips.
Making Your Tomato Sauce Less Sweet
Fortunately, there are several things you can try which will all contribute to balancing out the taste of your sauce.
- Adding More Volume
One of the most effective and straightforward solutions to your sauce being too sweet would be to add in more volume. You can gradually increase the volume by adding another can of tomatoes to the pot. You could also add a can of beans or lentils, depending on the recipe.
Cook everything together for another twenty minutes or so to allow the flavors to blend. Do make sure that you keep tasting the sauce until it reaches the desired taste. Alternatively, to increase the volume you can make up another batch of sauce minus any sweet ingredients.
Once it’s done, add it to the first batch. You’ll end up with lots of sauce but you can freeze it for later use.
- Adding Acidity To The Sauce
Another quick and easy way you can balance the taste of your sauce is by making use of acids, which are opposite in flavor to sweetness. You can use flavorless cream of tartar or a little mustard.
If for some reason, you don’t have access to these acids, you can add a small amount of lemon juice or vinegar. Be sure to mix the sauce before you taste it.
- Spicing It Up!
You can also make use of salt and spices. However, you have to make sure that you don’t add in too much of anything. Whether you decide to use salt or any other spice, you will have to keep tasting the sauce which should give you a better idea of how many ingredients you need to add.
One common way to make your sauce spicy is by adding chili peppers into the mix. Not only does it add an extra flavor of spice to your sauce, but you will also get to enjoy certain health benefits that they come with.
The Bottom Line:
Is your tomato sauce too sweet? Sweetness in a tomato sauce is usually due to sugar or certain sweeteners added to it. Although there is no way of removing these ingredients, there are still multiple ways to balance out the flavors.
