My chef friend is arguing with me and IMO she is just straight up fucking wrong. Cooking tomatoes to death during the canning process isn’t going to do any favors for the texture or flavor. Every canned diced tomato i’ve had has been gross (and the dice is always too big and ugly)
I think she’s 100% confusing a comparison between QUALITY canned tomatoes i.e. real san marzano tomatoes versus shitty greenhouse grown tomatoes but she’s insisting that no actually canned tomatoes are just better
I just want to get a consensus but i’m going to continue to disagree with anyone else who is wrong about this
I’d say if tomatoes are out of season and you’re cooking them anyways, like in a stew or a sauce, even bad canned tomatoes are probably better. If you have access to good fresh tomatoes, they can be better than most canned tomatoes, but like high quality canned ones are hard to beat.
Also, the less processed the canned tomato, the better it is. If you want the best tomato flavour, get whole canned tomatoes, rather than diced or crushed.
I’d say if tomatoes are out of season and you’re cooking them anyways, like in a stew or a sauce, even bad canned tomatoes are probably better. If you have access to good fresh tomatoes, they can be better than most canned tomatoes, but like high quality canned ones are hard to beat.
Well yeah but that’s what I mean when i say i think she’s confusing a comparison between quality canned tomatoes and shitty fresh ones. She’s saying canned is always better because the canning process magically makes it more flavorful. MY OPINION is that there are volatile flavor compounds in fresh tomatoes and by only using canned you miss on a greater variety and depth of flavor.
Also cherry tomatoes blitzed through the food processor just fucking look better than gross chunks of canned diced
Yeah no, I’ve always heard canned tomatoes are best because you’re getting ripe ones, even if you’re using it in the middle of winter. There’s nothing intrinsic to canning that is adding flavor I don’t think.
Maybe the other reason is that the canned ones are usually Roma or preferred and maybe random people off the street might try to make a sauce with beefsteak tomatoes or something.
I like using canned also because I dont have to do the whole thing where you Blanche the tomatoes cut an x in them and squeeE out all the seeds plus seed water/goo. It’s optional but makes a difference for a sauce of your using fresh tomatoes.
your chef friend is right and shes not talking about diced tomatoes she probably means the steamed whole ones
they wont send the ripe ones to market because they will take too long in transit so they send the unripe ones because they will ripen during that time of transit and storage and also they get frozen and unfrozen
the canned ones get flash steamed or whatever, have some salt added to preserve them and are ripe right there in the can. they are generally much more flavorful for cooking with
if you know someone growing heirlooms those are the best option for fresh if you can get them off the vine they will blow the socks off any store tomato
Yep.
I’m a fussy arsehole about tomatoes and in general tomatoes at the market are crap cultivars that were picked underripe. Canned typically has more flavour.
Not true for all brands, some canning companies are buying the ones nobody else wanted, some times of year the ones on the shelf are actually good, sometimes your local coop has tomatoes a cool person picked yesterday afternoon.
In general the most popular cultivars of tomatoes are garbage and bland. They are grown for pest tolerance, shelf appearance, and ease of harvesting. Roma is often better at doing the same things in a dish with more flavour.
the diced ones are the ones I hate using and this whole argument, which you are all wrong about btw I don’t care, is because the sous chef is like “stop using cherry tomatoes use the canned diced ones” and it’s like ughhh it’s gonna make some of my dishes taste worse and uglierrrrrr
its okay we can all have our lib moment where we say “everyone thinks im wrong about the thing… no, it must be all of them who are wrong”
My gf is a chef and says canned is better than supermarket fresh, but homegrown are better than canned
If you’ve ever had some good heirloom tomatoes off the vine you’ll swear your whole life has been a lie.
This is correct imo
Tomatoes from the store are refrigerated, which turns them pretty bland, and they probably don’t do that to canned tomatoes. I can’t say I’ve ever eaten them straight from the can to compare, though.
Stewed tomatoes straight from the can are an occasional craving, they’re very good
Grocery-fresh isn’t enough of an improvement over canned for me to give a shit tbh. Garden-fresh is best in all cases, but if that’s not an option and they’re getting cooked anyway, then I’m fine with saving some prep and cook time with an appropriate canned form.
canned tomatoes are canned at ripeness, so in general, a canned tomato from the supermarket would be better than the fresh one for most of the year. that said, not all cans of tomato are created equal. you will likely find better results if you get whole peeled canned tomatoes instead of canned diced, depending on application.
Raw fresh in season tomatoes are better than canned tomatoes raw. But for sauces or soups or whatever canned tomatoes are better pretty much across the board.
I make a lot of tomato sauces, either for pasta sauce (as I’m making today in the slow-cooker) or for a base when I make certain types of beans like lima beans.
If you’re making a sauce I find the sauce is richer if I make it with canned whole tomatoes than from my garden. Of course they’re both good, but yeah I’d tend to agree with the chef here.
the chef
im also a chef
OK. I don’t agree with them because they’re a chef, but I called them that because that’s how you described them.
I bought a 12 case of Pomi tomatoes in cartons off Amazon. 12 cartons for ~$40.
I get my groceries delivered but I never use Instacart. I use my local supermarket and their produce can be pretty bad. The tomatoes are always tasteless trash. I’ll have a look at this thread but Pomi is really good and I assume canned stuff simply isn’t.
If the tomatoes are going to be turned into a sauce and i’m out of season then yeah whole canned tomatoes all the way, other than that fresh tomatoes even out of season for anything using fresh tomatoes or
diced tomatoes. As far as canned whole tomatoes i feel like they’re really isn’t much of a difference between canned whole tomatoes, everything from the yellow can san marzano to great value walmart whole tomatoes are very good. Only time i ever use canned tomatoes is the fire roasted for my chili but that’s it tbhAn actual fresh tomato, like from a farmer’s market, vine-ripened and picked at the peak of freshness?
Amazing, nothing can compare
You’d be a fool for thinking canned could work in it’s stead
Now for pasta sauces or chili, where you’re cooking it down and losing that fresh flavor? Canned is the way to go.
Cooking tomatoes is so technique and process sensitive that it’s probably better to go with whole peeled instead of trusting a coked out line cook to not fuck them up when five burger tickets come in.
Even at home I’m gonna buy canned for anything that involves cooking them because the weird crap in the produce section is all chosen for looks as opposed to flavor and if I visit the tomato freak at the farmers market or coop or ag extension or pick some out of the garden they’re not making it home anyway and I gotta stop at a dollar general to clean the seats with wet wipes.
