How to save tomato sauce that's too sour. Longer cooking, butter, and even regular baking soda will help

Tomato sauce is one of the most popular Czech sauces. There are several recipes for it, so the result can be a little different each time. And sometimes it happens that tomato sauce is too sour. But even then, nothing is lost. Find out how to reduce its sourness and adjust the taste correctly.

The best tomato sauce

Traditional Czech sauces include, in addition to sirloin or dill, tomato sauce. You can prepare it from fresh or canned tomatoes or using tomato paste. The selected ingredients and their quantity then affect the resulting taste of the sauce and also how pronounced its acidity will be.

When preparing it, it is mainly important to follow a proven recipe. You will find one such recipe at the end of the article. Of course, the final seasoning is also essential, where you need to balance the sweet and sour taste correctly. If the tomato is too sour in the end, you can easily correct its taste.

How to deacidify tomato sauce

The acidity of tomato sauce depends largely on the ingredients used. It can be more pronounced due to tomato paste, lemon juice or vinegar, for example. If the sauce ends up being more acidic than you would like, there are several ways you can balance its taste. What are they?

Longer cooking time – if the acidity was caused by tomato paste, cooking the sauce for a longer time will help. This will soften the sharp acidity.

Sugar – it balances out the acidity in taste, but it's better to add it in small doses.

Here – butter or cream is suitable, the acidity will be softened and not so pronounced. An interesting alternative is a little sweetened condensed milk.

Baking soda – this will neutralize the acidity. Add a really small amount and expect the sauce to foam. When the foaming stops, taste the sauce again. However, if you overdo it, the taste will be bland.

Tomatoes taste great in sauces, on pizza, on pasta, baked with meat and cheese, but also raw - for example, the Italian delicacy caprese made from tomatoes, mozzarella, balsamic and basil is...

Tomato sauce

A good tomato sauce should have a pleasantly balanced sweet and sour taste, with neither the sugar nor the acidity of the tomatoes being overpowering. If you want to make this Czech classic at home, you can try the following proven recipe.

You will need: 500 g beef back meat, 4 large tomatoes, 70 g tomato paste and 1 large onion, 1 bay leaf, 5 allspice, 5 peppercorns, 3 cloves, 1 pinch of thyme, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1 teaspoon ground paprika, juice of 1/2 lemon (or vinegar), semolina sugar (to taste), oil (as needed), salt and 1 lemon without zest. For the roux: 50 g butter and 50 g plain flour.

How about this?

Clean the meat and place it in a pot of boiling water. Lightly salt it and cook it slowly until tender, about 2 hours. Remove the finished meat and set the broth aside for now.

Peel, wash and finely chop the onion. Wash and cut the tomatoes into eighths. You can peel them before slicing. Wash the lemon well, peel and cut into rounds. Do not throw away the peel.

Sauté the onion in oil, add the tomatoes and sauté for a few minutes. Add the tomato paste, spices, peeled lemon slices and a piece of lemon zest.

Pour the meat broth over everything and cook for about 20 minutes. Once the tomatoes are cooked, strain the sauce and add more broth to thin the sauce.

Fry the roux from the flour and butter. Add it to the sauce and simmer for at least 15 minutes. Season with salt, sugar, and optionally acidify with lemon juice (or vinegar).

Slice the meat, add to the sauce and heat briefly. Serve the sauce with the slices of meat and bread dumplings.