# Fix Tomato Sauce Flavor



## nightfire (Feb 3, 2012)

I canned up some plain tomato sauce. I didn't flavor it so I could season it to whatever I was using it for. Basically, I cooked down some tomatoes and canned that.

But bleh when I use it to make chili, it tastes awful! It's so gross, so I did a search on how to try to fix it. Some sites said to use a little bit of baking soda, but that just made it taste gross in a different way! I need help figuring out how to fix this as I would like to can more tomato sauce this coming year, but I won't if I can't get it to taste remotely good. 

It smells great cooking on the stove, but then when you taste it, the flavor betrays what your nose smelled!

So, any suggestions?


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## Bellyman (Jul 6, 2013)

I don't know what I'd do now. We made our sauce with onions, garlic, peppers, basil, oregano and a little salt and black pepper. But that was all roasted and cooked up together before ever being canned.


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## TerriLynn (Oct 10, 2009)

I also cook onions, peppers, garlic and celery with my tomatoes before making them into sauce, or juice. Maybe you just need to add some other veggies next time before you cook it down, to improve the flavor. 

However I never add salt until it has reduced, then I add it just before canning.

What is your method? I cook my tomatoes and veggies all night on low in crock pots, then run through a food mill in the morning, and into an electric roaster to cook down during the day, then I can in the evening.


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## Bellyman (Jul 6, 2013)

For us, we maybe did our sauce a little different than the traditional. We cut up our tomatoes, onions, garlic, and peppers and put them on the grill at maybe 450 degrees for maybe 30 to 40 minutes. That roasts all of that stuff and gets a LOT of the water out fairly quickly. (The grill works better than the oven because the grill lets the steam escape much more easily.) 

When it's all roasted, then we put it through the food mill. What comes out of the food mill is not far from sauce in texture so it then gets put into a stock pot on the stove to finish. It's there where it will get it's basil, oregano, pepper and a little salt to taste. It doesn't really do much cooking down on the stove. It's more a matter of getting the flavors we want, which does take a little time but not that long.

From there, it's into quart jars and into the pressure canner. 

I will say that what we get is a rather delicate marinara sauce, which we absolutely love. We gave a jar to my step-daughter who added some turkey meatballs. It was awful. I don't know whether it was the sauce or whether it was the turkey or whether it was some part of the combination that just didn't mix well but I felt really bad about the flavor. It's entirely possible that a meat sauce takes different ingredients. (?)

Just what works for us.


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## nightfire (Feb 3, 2012)

Thanks for the suggestions.  My BF and I made pizza sauce as a gift for our families for the holidays. The pizza sauce was made from the same tomatoes as the plain sauce, but had seasoning added. I'm not sure what was added to the pizza sauce as dear BF flavored it, but it came out too sweet for my tastes. The plain sauce is acidic and gross :yuck:.

As far as my process, I gathered tomatoes. Pretty much whatever type of tomato we had that we didn't eat right away got the stem end cut off, sliced up and thrown in the crock pot for a day to cook down. Then I put it through a sieve and then into a tupperware container which got thrown in the freezer. When I had a full big pots worth of freezer tomato, I cooked it down on the stove. Some then got flavored, enough for us to have gifts for everyone and a jar or two to try ourselves, and the rest that was left just got canned up as is. I don't think I added anything. No salt or sugar, no seasoning, no lemon juice. I figured I'd be able to just season and use it that way. (I did pressure can since I didn't add lemon juice.)

Did I mention this was my first attempt at canning tomato sauce? I like the consistency, and it smells correct when it's cooking, but the flavor is acidic, which is why I tried to negate that with baking soda. I was so frustrated when I wrote up my original post I see I never mentioned that it tasted acidic, just that it was gross!

Hopefully my follow up post gives some more insight into my process and may get more suggestions on how I can save the rest of these jars? I'll just have to try to make smaller batches this year and flavor them differently to see what we like.


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## nightfire (Feb 3, 2012)

Bellyman said:


> I will say that what we get is a rather delicate marinara sauce, which we absolutely love. We gave a jar to my step-daughter who added some turkey meatballs. It was awful. I don't know whether it was the sauce or whether it was the turkey or whether it was some part of the combination that just didn't mix well but I felt really bad about the flavor. It's entirely possible that a meat sauce takes different ingredients. (?)



That's too bad that your sauce didn't work out with the turkey meatballs! It's not a pleasant day (or meal!) when our home made stuff doesn't work out right with something else. I've had 3 meals of chili that my sauce didn't work in. The first on was a surprise yuck (smelled awesome cooking!), the second one I added waaaay too much baking soda to, and the third one I added a better amount of baking soda, but still didn't fix my issue.

If we had a grill I'd be tempted to try the roasting method, but we are currently in an apartment and don't have one. Sounds like it could be tasty!


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## Marilyn (Aug 2, 2006)

Did you add any salt when you made/canned your tomato sauce? It could just be that it needs a bit of salt.

Also, when I make chili, I dip a serving spoon into the jar of sorghum and stir that into the pot of chili. Just the right touch! - learned it from a sweet old man that made his own sorghum.


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## Werforpsu (Aug 8, 2013)

I can my tomato sauce with nothing added but the salt and lemon juice.

To make spaghetti sauce I: brown a lb of ground beef and 1 med onion. add: 3 pts tomato sauce, 1 can tomato paste, 1 tbls dry oregano, 1 tbls dry basil, 1 tsp garlic powder, salt to taste and sugar to taste ( I like a sweet sauce and add about 1/3 cup). simmer the sauce 15 minutes or so. I don't recommend skipping the sugar completely even if you aren't a "sweet sauce" kind of person. spaghetti sauce has sugar in it.

To make Pizza sauce: Mix, 1 cup tomato sauce with 1 tsp dry oregano, 1/2 tsp dry marjoram, 1/2 tsp dry basil, 1/2 tsp garlic salt. let sit one hour. I will make this with premade/canned sauce OR I will combine the sauce and the seasonings and then can. it works great either way. 1 recipe does 1 pizza.

for chili, I use whole roma tomatoes that I can in water.


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## nightfire (Feb 3, 2012)

So it sounds like I should try adding regular salt. I've got half a jar left of the sauce since I'm making chili for 2! I'll try making more next week and try to remember to post if it helps or not. If not, I've got 4 more jars to see if I can figure it out.

Thanks again for the suggestions! I appreciate them a lot.


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## nightfire (Feb 3, 2012)

Just wanted to post an update in case anyone was interested....

I made chili again with my canned tomato sauce, and I did as you all suggested. I added some regular salt. It was sea salt as that's what I have. I also added a little bit of sugar, not even a full teaspoons worth.

It worked! The sauce tasted a million times better! So THANK YOU all for your suggestions. I'll make sure that I don't forget to add the salt when I can up tomato sauce again this season. :bowtie:


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## Vickivail98 (Sep 26, 2014)

I'm going to try this too, I had the same issues. I'm stuck trying to fix the salsa and pizza sauce


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## nightfire (Feb 3, 2012)

Good luck with it! Let us know if you manage to save your salsa and pizza sauce too. It would be good to know what else it might work on.


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