How To Fix A Sour Soup

It happens.  With all the best intentions in the world, a soup can end up tasting sour and horrible, but how do you try to fix a soup?

It’s when you try that first spoonful and your tongue protests at the sour / acid taste, and you can’t face trying one more sip of a soup you want to chuck in the bin, try something else first.

These are the things to watch out for and what you can do.

1 – Check Your Ingredients

Honestly, really do.  It’s quite simple to use herbs, spices, packets and jars that have gone out of date.  I’ve done it myself.

2 – Consider Your Onions and Garlic

Personally, I can cope with onions and garlic, whether they’ve been sautéed or not.  Some people swear by the frying process to release the flavours, and a touch of oil used in the process can stave off a sour soup.  Some onions just have a strong and pungent taste and if you’re not used to it, those could be your culprit.

3 – Dilute

My first instinct is always to dilute, but to be honest, fixing a sour soup by diluting it, could simply just water down the taste, unless you’ve added something completely different as a new ingredient.

4 – Add Fruit

Some fruit juice might well just combat that acid taste.  Apple or orange juice could well do the trick, but add in very small amounts to try it.

5 – Add Dairy

There are some  nifty chemistry reactions that can happen when you add a little butter or cream, or perhaps a touch of parmesan or cheese.  Not enough to change the flavour, but enough for the protein to neutralise the sour flavour.

6 – Baking Soda

Believe it or not, I’m told a little baking soda can do wonders for fixing a sour soup.  This is one method I haven’t tried yet, so it would be interesting to find out if it really worked or not.

7 – Sweeten

When I started cooking, I’d probably have tried lobbing some sugar into the pot and seeing if that made a difference, after all, sweet and sour seems to be a popular taste for Chinese style food.  I told myself that it could really be some oriental new delicacy, but sour soups tend not to happen to me very often these days.

8 – Spice It Up

Could a little spice change the flavour.  This is a bit of a last ditch effort, but some curry powder or paste, or even some added chillies might take the soup from sour to spice.

9 – Accept Your Taste Buds Recommendation

Let’s face it, we don’t all like every combination of ingredients out there.  Sometimes, our taste buds just don’t like something we’ve cooked, no matter what we do to it.  If you’ve ruled out the other options, then that version of a soup might just not be for you.