How do I fix my mistake? (Chefs wanted)

It may be your taste buds...

The black bean thing I can understand as they have a sort of natural sweetness, but the tomato dish? Nope.

Yeah, sorry. I've got nothing on this either. Sure, onions and carrots definitely have some natural sweetness, especially depending on how they're cooked, but to this extent? Dunno....

Add basil or oregano to tomato dishes. Add fish sauce to eastern-inspired dishes.

Onions can be very sweet if cooked until brown and sticky and peppers are also nice and sweet, but not enough to completely overtake the other flavours.

With tomatoes I tend to end up adding a little sugar to balance the tartness so not sure what is going on

Try to avoid the easy option of salt addition, maybe try adding a little lemon juice to bring out other flavours or even some wine vinegar to add tartness

It's the vegetables, especially onions. A lot of veggies (a lot meaning both types and amounts) turn dishes sweet.

Edited to clarify - I know you listed all veggies but even if you had some meat in there, there is still a high possibility of it being sweet depending on vegetables used and the amount....onions and carrots especially in my experience. Tomatoes are tangy, but with the addition of a lot of other veggies - it'll not only sweeten, but in that case increase the tanginess too.

As some others have said - salt. Or maybe try cooking with different types of salt or even bouillons to try to counter the taste. Sour cream is also a good item that helps tone taste down.

Maybe add something spicy, like chili or chipotle powder or fresh peppers (not bell), if you can tolerate spicy stuff. Lots of canned tomato has sugar added, look at the label.

i will take a wild guess it is because you add a sweet onion to the beans without caramalizing the onion first. Also... are you using a sweet onion... or a yellow?


This is how i make savory black beans or lentils.

-- first I caramelize the yellow onion.
-- toast and then add the cumin. toasting the cumin in a dry hot pan first brings out the flavors.
-- then add the beans. --- optional If you soaked dry beans (instead of using from a can) make sure you add some salt and some liquid. Water is ok, but for extra savory use some chicken stock (and home made chicken stalk is very low in calories).
-- then you can add the peppers... for sweet peppers add then right away. For hot peppers... add some at the beginning and then some more later on. By adding different hot peppers/ chilis at different times gives more of richness and full body of the chili/pepper taste.

-- other than that. I recommend searching for a good recipe and following exactly. Some of my favorite place to find good recipes on the web are Martha Stewart, America's home test kitchen recipes,

Just a suggestion if the dish allows it add some lemon juice to bring the sweetness down

Try cutting back on how much onion you are using.

I just remembered... I had this problem a while back. My beans, my marinara sauces were also getting to increasingly sweeter. Then I realized my error with a particular unpalatably sweet batch of beans i made. I was using to TOO MUCH onion!

You just have a sweet tooth that's all!!!!

Some people LOVE savoury, and some people LOVE sweet!!!

I LOVE CEREAL...........LOL!!!

Also, tomatoes can be sweet too even when fresh, it depends on the type of tomato you are using.
When I have made homemade tomato sauce from scratch, we add carrots for sweetness, so it could be that too. And there are definitely sweet varieties of onions on the market. Oh and the peppers. What kind of peppers are they? If they are colored peppers, those are usually sweeter than green ones. Not sure about hot peppers, can't eat hot peppers.

A little bit of chili powder. I had forgotten how much difference a tablespoon if chili powder mad in 5 gal of vegetable soup. I was working for a caterer and the sop just wasn't tasting right. Finally remember I had made soup at home by recipe, which is something I had never done and the recipe called for chili powder. After many additions of salt and pepper, I tried the chili powder iand it knocked everyone's socks off. A very little bit goes a very long way.