How to De-Sweeten a Soup

A soup's flavor is a balance of many different ingredients

As any experienced chef knows, mistakes sometimes happen. One of the most common mistakes to strike both novice and experienced cooks is a dish with one flavor overwhelming the balance of the others. If you have a soup that has turned out too sweet for your taste, you can restore the proper flavor by increasing the amounts of other ingredients or adjusting your cooking time.  

Things You'll Need

• Salt
• Onion
• Garlic
• Cayenne pepper
• Soup stock granules

Instructions

1. If your soup is too sweet, first try adding salt. Mix in a few pinches at a time, stirring and tasting after each application. The salt will balance the sweetness out to create a more savory taste.

2. Adjust the water content as needed. Adding water will make all the flavors in the soup more mild. Use this step as a means on its own or as a way of counteracting the strengthening of flavor caused by Step 1.

3. If the soup contains many herbs, let it simmer for an extended period of time (an hour or more). This will cause the flavor of the herbs to strengthen while the sweet taste remains the same.

4. Add savory flavors to the soup like powdered or minced garlic and onion, soup stock granules or cooking alcohols (especially white wine or lager beer). If the soup is a cream soup, add a little cream or milk as well.

5. Mix in some spicy ingredients. This may counteract the sweetness, or simply give you a spicy-sweet flavor that you might find preferable to sweetness alone. If you're in doubt about which type of pepper to use, try ground cayenne as this is one of the most versatile.

6. Raise the level of all the soup's ingredients except sugar. This method is the most time-consuming, but it will give you the most even balance of flavors. This method is best if the heavy sweetness was caused by adding too much the recipe's sweetening ingredients.

References

• "500 Soups: The Only Soup Compendium You'll Ever Need;" Susannah Blake; 2007