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I was making this recipe: Cabbage Borscht, which was from the old Lincoln Del, one of my mom's favourite places. I mistakenly doubled the sugar, putting in 1/2 a cup instead of a 1/4 of a cup. Given the 2/3 of a cup ketchup, which was heinz, the soup turned out way, way too sweet. Is there any way I can rescue this? Right now I feel like just chucking it all down the disposal. I feel awful.

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2 Answers

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Removing dissolved sugar from a recipe, as in your soup, practically impossible.

You have two main choices:

  • Reduce the impact of the sweetness. Increasing acidity (lemon juice or vinegar for example--since ketchup contains vinegar, vinegar or more ketchup may be most compatible with your specific recipe) may mitigate how sweet the soup seems. This may or may not work--you would have to experiment, and it could make the soup taste worse worse (the risk being you would then still have to discard the soup.)
  • If you really like the borsht, and can eat (or freeze) it all: make a second batch with considerable lower sugar, and combine them. You will now have twice as much soup, but flavor balanced.
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I'm not sure if ketchup would help, because there is more sugar in it. – Mien Dec 23 '12 at 8:12
@Mien Good point, although most ketchup is more acidic than sweet, thus the sugar in addition to the ketchup in the recipe. As I implied, only the second method would be really reliable. – SAJ14SAJ Dec 23 '12 at 12:33
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Heinz (the ketchup I have) is really sweet -- lots of HFCS in it, I think. – tamouse Dec 24 '12 at 5:35
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I would remove some of the borsch and replace with water (removing some of the sweetness) and then rethicken it with a souring agent such as Amchoor (ground unripe Mango). Then add soured cream at the end to further thicken, improve consistency and remove sweetness.

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You realize that removing X% of the soup, only to add additional ingredients is essentially the same as keeping all of the soup, but adding slightly more of the additional ingredients? :-) So no need to remove and waste any of the soup :-) – SAJ14SAJ Dec 23 '12 at 13:10
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@SAJ14SAJ I'm getting somewhat weary of having to constantly justify my answers on this site. You and I don't know how much sweetness needs to be removed. By simply adding ingredients (in the quantity that may be required to remove the sweetness) you risk changing the nature and flavour of the soup. By thinning (you remove sweetness) and rethickening (with less ingredients) you have a better chance of maintaining the underlying flavour. A dollop of soured cream in borsch is frequently used to enhance the flavour anyway. – spiceyokooko Dec 23 '12 at 13:20
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Sorry, but the methods are mathmatically the same, and I didn't mean to make you feel bad. Note the smilies. The difference is whether you discard some of the original borscht, or add more additional ingredients for the same effect, thus ending up with even more finished product. But the outcome in each spoonful is the same. This is a very geeky site, since it is daughter of Stack Overflow, so you will attract a lot of attention from geeks like me. We don't mean anything personal by being geeky-it is just our way. – SAJ14SAJ Dec 23 '12 at 13:24
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@SAJ14SAJ If you don't like my answer or don't feel it's an appropriate solution to the OP's question, please feel free to down vote it. – spiceyokooko Dec 23 '12 at 13:39

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