How To Make Your Canned Tomato Soup Taste Less Acidic
Making your own homemade tomato soup from canned ingredients you have in the pantry is both easy and satisfying. But one of the things about canned tomatoes is that they are by nature fairly acidic, and there's no way to predict how acidic one can will be. If they're overly so, that means eating a whole bowl of tomato soup can get to be a chore on your taste buds after a while.
Fortunately, there are a few easy ways to tone down the acid. Some people add an alkaline substance such as baking soda to their tomato base, which neutralizes some of the naturally occurring acid in the tomatoes. Others add substances like cream or butter to round out canned tomatoes' sharper edges by using fat to coat the palate. While these are practical solutions, they have the side effect of muting some of a tomato's brighter flavors.
But one of the other solutions you can use to soften the acidic taste in your tomato soup base is adding sugar to it. The sugar itself doesn't tame the acid in the tomatoes, since its pH levels are neutral, but it does change the way we perceive the acidity of canned tomatoes, which is enough to make a difference.
You don't need to add much sugar to cut the acidity of tomatoes
It would be easy to assume that when people recommend you add sugar to canned tomatoes, the end product would be noticeably sweet, but the truth is, you don't need very much to make a difference. We suggest you add sugar in baby steps, putting in a gentle pinch at a time until you find that its acidity has been tamed. When we say pinch, we mean pinch, as in a quarter-teaspoon at a time. All you're looking to do is balance the tartness with a tiny bit of sweetness to a point where the bare minimum of sugar changes your perception of its acidity. Really, it's about balance, rather than tipping the scales in the direction of sweetness.
Of course, I think the best way to calm a tomato soup's acidity is by chasing each spoonful down with a bite of grilled cheese (waffle grilled cheese is a fun variation!), but I don't think any scientific studies have been done on the matter yet. I volunteer to be the first test subject. But until that piece of official research has been concluded, we'll just have to stick to a tiny bit of sugar to get us through.