# Too much clove in my sauce what can I do?



## chasin elk (Sep 8, 2011)

I slipped with the clove in my tomato sauce today,  is there something I can do to hide it?


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## someday (Aug 15, 2003)

probably not...clove is very very strong, and noticeable. 

I gotta say, clove isn't normally in my ingredient list for tomato sauce...which kind were you making? Also, how did you expect to remove them from the sauce? 

My advice would be to put spices in a sachet so that you can control the amount in advance and remove them if needed, like if the flavor is becoming too strong. 

If it was ground clove, then, well, your SOL. Try not pouring straight from the container...use a spoon or pour into your hand first. It's bad form to take things like salt, spices, etc. directly from the box into the sauce--for exactly the reason that happened to you.


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## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

Try and use sauce for something other then pasta. You can't get this flavor out but you can mask it slightly with garlic and basil. Use it for a caccatorre type or other dish.


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## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

Well, if it isn't a heavy sauce with meat or anything, you could make wonderful ketchup.  Add vinegar and brown sugar and boil some more.  How much - hmm, go by taste, 3 tbsp each maybe per cup of sauce?  Start with less, simmer, and taste, then add.


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## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

Increase the size the of the batch to dilute the impact of the cloves. Freeze what you don't use soon.


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## chasin elk (Sep 8, 2011)

Thanks, my daughter ran in and well, I think making another batch(minus cove) is the way to go.  I have so many tomatoes comming right now that I don't want to waste them.

My recipe comes from my school cook book, it calls for cloves in a sachet, just don't have here what I need to make one. I will fix that soon.

 Thanks all for the respnses.  Jeff


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## chrisbelgium (Oct 2, 2010)

Jeff, whole cloves used in food are so delicious, it gives a typical wintery touch to food, especially when used in stocks! The only thing is that it's so overpowering. Mostly when making a preparation with whole cloves, a few cloves (mostly no more than two!) are pushed into a whole onion which is many times not entirely peeled to keep the onion together (and for color too). When proceeding this way, you can easily remove the onion together with the cloves so they don't get mixed in the preparation. You could use one of those small metal teamaking balls to separate them from the rest.

Many times I use allspice -aka Jamaica pepper- instead of cloves. It spreads a very light clove smell and taste, so you can mix the allspice corns in the preparation. In my own recipe for osso buco (without tomatoes), I use 5 allspice corns in it! Just try them instead of cloves, you'll be surprised.


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## koukouvagia (Apr 3, 2008)

Someday said:


> I gotta say, clove isn't normally in my ingredient list for tomato sauce...which kind were you making? Also, how did you expect to remove them from the sauce?


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