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[jough]

Hey kids,

Today I made a huge batch of Beef Barley Vegetable Soup.  I had a bowl and it was absolutely delicious.

Unfortunately, I accidentally left the burner on while I was having the first bowl, and by the time I went back into the kitchen about 20 minutes later it had burned a little on the bottom, but the entire eight quarts of soup tasted burned.  It's not awful, and if I have to I'll eat it rather than throw it all away, but dang, it sure tastes like burning.

Is there anything that can be done to salvage it?  My dad suggested putting some large-cut sacrificial potatoes into it to filter out some of the burning, but before I bought some spuds I figured I'd ask if anyone knew of a home remedy for taking the burnt taste out of soup.  Surely I can't be the first person to do this.

Google totally let me down on this matter.

[misterqueue]

Yeah.. I was gonna say that hot sauce and paprika in large quantities would pretty much fix about anything. 

[linnea]

Dude, that sucks!  "Tastes like...BURNING" is always a bad thing.

I have had limited success with the sacrificial potato idea. I have heard that if you accidentally add too many chilis or too much salt that the potato will absorb it. Maybe I'm not doing it right, but I didn't find that it helped much.

Hmm... with it being a soup, it's not like you can just pour off some of it and replace it with more broth, since that's where all the flavor is. Dang. Then again, that's also where all the burnination is at. Some kind of soup dialysis would be ideal, but I don't know anyone with spare kidney equipment over in PA.

[wombat]

Oh that is sad.

I know that we collectively know everything, but this is a question I would go and post on the Home Cooking board at Chowhound.com if I were you.

[jough]

Huh.  I've never been to Chowhound before but what a great site!

Thanks for the recommendation.  I hope they can help me in my time of woe.

[Lister]

So did you want barley because of that Good Eats last week, or was that just me?

Also, I know of no way to get rid of the burned flavor.  I have a sort of triage, which involves leaving the burned portion as intact as I can while I ladle out all but the last inch or so of soup, then throwing that part away.  That only works if you know it is burned before you stir, though.

I can say that adding water does not seem to dilute the charred flavor, but does dilute every good flavor.  Don't do that.  I can still taste a batch of chicken 'n' dumplings that had been "fixed" this way, some fifteen years later.  EW.