Is there any way to tone down the sweetness of something, in particular a tomato based sauce, while it's cooking?

I haven’t tried this but I read that if you have a sauce that is too sweet, adding a teaspoon of cider vinegar can tone it down.

Liz

@Mz_Lizzy The sauce already has a little white vinegar in it and that’s all the vinegar I have in my house. Maybe I could try adding more. Thanks.

I think the aim is to add something sour to balance out the sweet. Do you have anything else that is sort of sour that might work? Hope it works out.

Liz

Yeah, vinegar of any edible sort will do the trick. Just add to taste, I use it quite a bit like this when making tomato based stuff.

Shit im way off today, read the conversation. Red wine.

@Arbornaut The sauce already has some red wine in it but I suppose I could add more. More wine more better.

I think I’ll pour some of the sauce out of the pot into a bowl and try one or the other, vinegar and wine, and/or both and see if that helps. Then if one or the other or both works I’ll pour the whatever into the whole pot.

Thanks, guys.

A lot of ethic cooking involves something sweet, salty, hot and sour, so I would do as suggested above with the vinegar but also a chili and something salty, maybe a hit of soy sauce???

For the future (or left overs), baking cocoa will balance out the sweet and also add some depth. It doesn’t take much and, no, it won’t taste like chocolate.

Lemon juice is good

Pureed carrots will add sweetness if tomato sauce iss too acidic, so if you need to correct the sauce from the vinegar/wine that would be the way to go rather than adding sugar.

@lillycoyote How did it turn out?

beef broth.