Help! Can't balance tomato chutney flavour ... too sweet

[AndiE]

Any ideas how to counterbalance sweetness in tomato chutney?
The recipe calls for white vinegar and sugar (among other ingredients - obviously tomato, onion, apple plus salt, mustard, curry and tumeric).

When I taste it, the first overwhelming thing I get is "too sweet", then I get a little kick of "acidic" - if that makes sense.

Any ideas what I can do to balance the flavours out?

This is the first time I've made chutney using my mum's recipe ... and it really doesn't taste like hers. Unfortunately she's on the phone to someone (constant engaged signal), so she can't help me. I need to do something soon. Argh!

[Ambersky]

I always use red wine vinigar in chutney if you have any maybe add some and simmer it out a bit longer....

[AnyDream]

The acid flavour will settle once it's in the jar. I think some recipes are just too sweet, I got caught out a few times and have decided to just use less sugar because it's easy enough to dissolve some in later.

To fix this batch, maybe try more pepper or chilli to add another flavour dimension other than sweet???

[AndiE]

Hmm, so it's possibly salvageable then. I've been contemplating chucking it, but given the time, effort and cost I've gone to doing that would make me really cranky.

I've already added a bit more white vinegar (don't have any red, but thanks for the thought Ambersky), but that kick of acid I get at the end just intensifies and the sweetness is still there.

Good idea about less sugar next time Marydean. Mum told me to go easy on the vinegar, so I used 750ml rather than 1L ... but I still used the same amount of sugar (1/2kg)

Sigh ... whatever made me think making chutney would be easy