The #1 Manner Folks Destroy Tomato Sauce—and Find out how to Repair It

You’ve got spent hours simmering tomato sauce made with ripe, juicy tomatoes from the farmers market, solely to search out it acrid and bitter. Was your olive oil rancid? Had been the tomatoes spoiled or of low high quality? Or was it merely dangerous luck?

Likelihood is, you have overcooked or burned your garlic. It is a mistake that even essentially the most skilled house cooks could make: You flip your again for a minute, and earlier than you understand it, your garlic is darkish brown and previous the purpose of no return. As our editorial director, Daniel, has written beforehand, garlic can scent and style burned “even earlier than it has totally changed into blackened bits of carbon.” As a result of garlic comprises a excessive focus of naturally occurring sugars, it tends to burn simply. And when garlic is thinly sliced or minced, because the ingredient is commonly known as for in lots of recipes, it is particularly vulnerable to charring. 

You could possibly go away the garlic out to keep away from that bitter chunk, after all, however then you definitely’d lose out on a essential taste element in lots of tomato sauces from numerous cuisines. When sautéed in fats, resembling olive oil or butter, the allium releases flavorful compounds that infuse the sauce with a wealthy, savory depth.

The answer is to maintain the garlic however keep away from burning it—and one of the simplest ways to do this is to cook dinner it over low warmth. 

As Daniel demonstrated in his testing, cooking garlic over low warmth considerably reduces the chance of burning. At excessive warmth, Daniel’s garlic burned in simply 15 seconds, whereas over low warmth, it took his garlic about 4 and a half minutes to succeed in an “undesirable” stage. It is also essential that your garlic is not too finely grated. As Kenji touched on in his Italian-American tomato sauce recipe, garlic pushed by a garlic press or grated on a rasp grater resembling a Microplane quickly burns, so it is best to hand-chop your garlic.

So go forward and make one other batch of tomato sauce. However this time, take note of the best way the garlic sizzles within the pan and make sure to give it the find it irresistible deserves by cooking it over low warmth. Your sauce will probably be candy and flavorful, with no bitter aftertaste of overcooked garlic.