Chemist here: The pH scale is a log scale, so a difference of 0.3 across the whole range is actually quite a lot, approximately double the acidity. A pH difference of 1.0 would represent a 10x acidity difference. Great video!
Do human taste buds perceive acidity linearly or logarithmically though? Like would a pH difference of 1.0 cause the food to taste 10 times more/less acidic?
Before the internet, there would be little to no market for a 25 minute geekout over canned tomatoes. What glorious geekouts are possible in this age. And kudos for keeping it entertaining all the way out. No small feat, I imagine.
You're completely nuts! I've _always_ been oriented toward this kind of content, going all the way back to the 1970s. This market has _always_ been there, but it was ruthlessly and cruelly underserved. The underlying problem here is that people with high personal agency are bad consumers. We're fickle, and quick to change horses if the horse starts to go in the wrong direction. We're not so naive as to suppose that what's in the jingle is also in the can. A "good" consumer, as operative for most of my adult life, is a person who can't separate the jingle from the product. Here's the actual problem. Back in the 20th century, you could easily find a market for this kind of geeky content. But the problem was, you couldn't offer this content up, without the risk that your "good" consumers would wander across the aisle, to consume content they didn't deserve. Because a "good" consumer watching good content isn't a "good" consumer any longer. Against their natural tendencies, they might start to actually think. And so the modest amount of money you could make by catering geeky content to geeky audiences was totally undermined by the loss of revenue from less successfully capturing your "good' consumers in jingle-forward consumer ghettos. The miracle of TH-cam is that they've perfected the stickiness of the content to such a degree that the "good" consumers are glued to what they already prefer to consume (hence optimally monetized). Meanwhile, the geeky content can modestly monetize geeky audiences, as a small but additive revenue. They couldn't figure out how to do this in the 20th century with the technology of broadcast networks. So despite the substantial audience for exactly this kind of content, it was never served up, for fear of ruining the social contract with their "good" consumers, meaning those who really paid the bills via huge leaks in their personal agency. By accident, good geek content leaked into the system all the time, to rabid fanfare from narrow quarters. But not very often. James Burke's _Connections._ Anything with Carl Sagan (although he wasn't my own hero). The first season of _Space: 1999._ (They quickly punted the second season to the control of the same guy who ruined the third season of _Star Trek.)_ There was also _The Nature of Things_ on CBC with environmentalist David Suzuki. There were some epic long-format Sunday morning recaps of politics that week. The sitcom _Barney Miller_ was a small, unrecognized gem of brilliantly concealed depth. _Yes Minister_ is also legendary for delivering the goods. (No "good" consumer _ever_ tuned in after reading the dry plot summary in _TV Guide._ You had to be there to find out, and _TV Guide_ existed to ensure this kind of accident never happened within the flock; a current copy of _TV Guide_ on the coffee table in front of the television was a near certain signal that you were a "good" consumer in good standing.) A good rule of thumb was to enjoy it while it lasted, because you never knew when some network bean counter would stab it in the back with his steely knives. Another historical relic you should check out is the epic battles behind the scenes by network television to nerf _Mork and Mindy._ Robin Williams was a worst case scenario. He could layer Saturday's Late Show subversion underneath their weeknight family format. You couldn't prevent this by telling him what he had to do. You could only prevent this by telling him what he was not allowed to _also_ do. Because he could juggle bicycles with one arm, and flaming torches with the other arm, while flipping swords off the ground by stepping on a rake, and then swallowing them whole, hands free. He was Harry Houdini, Knight of the Imperial Order, First Class, in evading network oversight. Many Tums consumed in the trenches of that battle, on both sides. A major casualty in this clash of the titans was the timid geekout over canned tomatoes. Oh, yes, we wanted that _too._ I mean, we wanted that too, and also to have a nearby grocery store that stocked more than two varieties of canned tomato. This was the other problem with food culture in the 1970s. Every decent grocery list in Canada or America began the same way: Trip to France: * passable bread * passable wine Trip to England: * passable warm beer and passable cheddar Trip to Germany: * passable cold beer * passable sausage Trip to Hungary or Spain: * passable paprika And if you couldn't afford that, you did the next best thing: Trip down the street: * passable side of beef * passable fresh fall potatoes Europeans were constantly shocked at how we always ate so much of the same things. Not too many trips to Italy for passable pasta, which was often made with exceptional Canadian winter wheat, so our feeble local approximation was not actually impassable on that one item.
Well except for the cooking geeks who read Cook's Illustrated. I bought the premier issue or whatever it was called back in 1992, I think, and still read it every two months, when it comes out.
As someone who works in the can food industry. There definitely is a difference in quality between brands. Usually it’s not because the vegetables are actually different, but because the best of the crop are saved for more expensive brand packaging to get more profit out of the better quality.
The best of the best tomatoes are selected to make tomato puree here in California for Japenese market . I never tasted anything more delicious related to tomato.
My dad has always enjoyed cooking, has very sensitive palate. He told me years ago that CENTO was the best canned tomato he has ever tasted. I am going to let him know it was one of your top 2 consistently! Thanks . My grand-daughter asked me to make Goulash for supper tonight ( we have a cold windy day ahead), so I told her I knew the perfect tomatoes to buy to make it with! Thank You!
@@maym8849 It's basically a type beef stew originating from Hungary.I'm not hungarian, but here in germany it's seen as their national dish. Idk if that holds up, but it's very popular in germany and hungary.
Cento is very good and more readily available for me at the stores near me for "good stuff". Bianco is a bit better for a pizza sauce IMO but pretty much have to amazon order them get a decent deal but still more expensive than Cento and not really worth almost double the price. I still like adding 4 fresh Roma's to a sauce I'm spending a lot of time on to have extra. If making completely fresh sauce on a budget, cheap peeled Roma's need some added cherry variety for sweetness. They just get picked to early IMO unless you spend more and get organics sometimes.
This is an excellent presentation. As a retired chef, I get asked questions about food all of the time with many of them concerning "Is it really worth it?" The answer of course depends on what product you are talking about. I default to Cento at home and when doing private chef gigs. There is a big difference in the taste of canned tomato product as you just demonstrated just as there is a noticeable difference between the same variety of fresh tomato grown in a hothouse and then artificially ripened and those that are field grown and vine-ripened. What most people do not realize is that a good brand of canned tomato product is generally far better than fresh because canned tomatoes are harvested at the peak of ripeness whereas fresh tomatoes tend to be harvested and shipped underripe so they will last during shipment and on display longer. True San Marzano tomatoes are an heirloom variety so they taste the same today as they did 100 years ago. That's right, tomatoes have gotten more acidic with a firmer structure so they last longer on the shelf and are more favorable for commercial use. You can do the same taste test at home with fresh tomatoes to see if vine ripened are really better than regular or whether heirloom tomatoes taste that much different than commercial varieties. Also, beware that "tomatoes on the vine" are not necessarily vine-ripened. Just like the San Merican canned tomatoes, the "tomatoes on the vine" is questionable marketing because it doesn't mean they were allowed to fully ripen before being harvested and probably weren't. Most are just hot house grown tomatoes harvested in clutches and gas ripened which is why they look so perfect. Support your local farmer and buy from farmer's markets and stands.
@@DrewLevitt Once you've tasted a real field grown, vine ripened heirloom tomato the mass produced, artificially ripened ones are tasteless and IMO not worth buying.
As someone who makes homemade pizza this video was an awesome learning experience. I usually blend tomatoes for sauce and just bought the cheapest ones I could find but now I’m going to be looking for ones without calcium chloride and tomato juice. Thanks Ethan.
Same here, I didn't go for the absolute cheapest because it tastes like acid sauce and metal, but I go for the cheaper stuff. I almost want to do a blind taste test myself with mini pizzas and different sauces. Cento for the acid hit and Delallo for the tomato forward taste looks like 2 I will be using in testing, along with my usual go to, I might throw in that "nicer" one with the calcium chloride so I know the taste difference first hand ... But then you have to factor in raw sauce or cooked sauce too. Pizza is an art, might need to mix 1/2 with a full can to get the right ratio for the perfect sauce
I've stuck with Cento for a couple of decades. Besides being delicious and less expensive than some of the other premium brands, consistency between cans and over years has been outstanding. I'm glad it got good marks in your enjoyable and well produced video. Thanks, Ethan!
I visited Hokkaido, Japan, and worked within the tomato farming community for a small period. The tomatoes were amazing, and had the most flavour! The reason - the farmers were paid on mass x Brix (sugar content + amino acids + other soluble solids). Simply the motivation was to produce tastier produce, than to bulk up the tomatoes by over hydrating, and producing bland tomatoes. If you ever come across Japanese tomatoes, I'd recommend getting some!
Yes I agree; when I visit Sapporo and eat the fruit, I joke that the flavour is so good they must put artificial flavour in the fruits! Sooo flavourful.
My mother has been making a pasta meat sauce for years using regular canned tomatoes and I recently told her about San Marzanos. When she used them in the sauce it made such a difference, everyone thought she had changed the recipe or something. Thanks for all the amazing and informative videos!
I, as an Italian from the region where San Marzano tomatoes grow (the region Campania, in the area of the volcano Vesuvius), have to say that making a pasta sauce with San Marzano tomatoes, compared to other tomatoes, “normal tomatoes”, is a bit like making a Carbonara with Guanciale (seasoned pork cheek), the original Roman one (!) or making it with bacon instead. Those who have never tasted an original carbonara with guanciale actually do not know what a real carbonara tastes like.
I love this style of video. There's a million people on TH-cam making food videos that give us good, usable recipes, but there aren't that many people who dive into the nitty gritty of individual ingredients or cooking methods or what have you. Episodes like this remind me of Good Eats when he did episodes that were focused around a specific ingredient and how to make the most of it.
Absolutely. I love Ethan's videos because they're so reminiscent of the food science that Alton brought us. Not just how to make something good, but why that made it good. There's a big difference between following instructions blindly and understanding why those directions are there, and in that order, and how to sub in lieu of certain ones. It makes you a better chef overall
All I know is I been using the regular green cans for years and this last time I made my sauce I went with the More experience ones and the sauce tasted was to sweet for my liking. I much prefer the regular tomato’s then the more expensive ones.
Ethan, I am a retired Italian chef and just got back from Italy where I went to farms and ate tomato's from the plant. I was raised by my mom and grandma from Migoinico and Modena. The best tomato's I ever had were from my grandmas backyard garden in Brooklyn, we would pick them to make sauce and eat one or two before getting to the kitchen. I am partial to San Marzano's. Your suggestion of reading the label is very important! There are so many companies that flat out lie to you on the front label and try to hide the crap they put in in the ingredients list. There are 56 different ways that food companies describe sugar. Great video! Thanks.
Another problem with tomatoes packed with calcium chloride is that unless you completely purée them beforehand, they will not break down into a smooth sauce, but instead leave you with little rubbery tomato chunks. It is a firming agent so the cell walls stay intact. I call them embalmed tomatoes.
Great point ☝️✔️ I feel like I can always taste it. I can always taste the additives in "jarlic" (jarred, pre-minced garlic) too, even when it's just citric acid. I can't *always* taste all food additives, I'm not a bloodhound or a truffle pig, but those two, yeah.
im not paying more than £0.50 for canned tomatoes, tomatoes are tomatoes, i despise them fresh, but bolognaise is just about fine so no point spending £2-3 a can when normal canned tomatoes taste the same and usually are softer xD ($ price is like $3-4)
Oh big same nor am I gonna put in the effort to blend up canned whole tomatoes when canned crushed tomatoes get the job done easier and usually cheaper
@@mrbanana6464buy from Vitacost ! Thy deliver all over the world . I live in an extremely expensive area as well and I order all my dry goods from them!
@@tyresefarrell canned tomatoes have the advantage that they usually are harvested at the same time every year so if you stick to a brand you like, you always have the same quality of tomato in the can. even the italian facotory that sells the most espensive bolognese sauce in the world is using canned tomatoes so they can keep their standard high.
As a broke Italian living in the US and cooking everything at home (pizza weekly) the generic brand pureed tomatoes from Walmart can be saved by a spoonful of honey, for sauces. I normally prepare my pizza sauce or my ragù by slowly cooking the pureed tomatoes with EVO, honey, salt and basil. After 1 hour or so you get a thick sauce that is not acidic at all, and actually surprisingly flavorful
good tip. am I the only one who would've liked details like "San Marzano from Italy" instead "Cento," "Dellalo," "DOP" ..? Or did everyone else do a perfect job of memorizing each of the specifications of each brand name (ignoring the label even) to then follow the quiz he did..??
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@@trumanhwyou literally had to remember 3 of them and that was it. One of them says generic, the other says DOP, remember 3 and the other is deduction. You are not smart.
I grow San Marzanos in my garden. I actually just turned a bunch into tomato paste just yesterday. They are sweet and packed with umami, while the sourness is extremely low. I also like that the San Marzano plants are extremely prolific, so I get a lot of tomatoes.
@@miradfalco251 There are far too many "roma" tomato varieties, the worst are the ones in your supermarket produce section. Simply picking paste tomatoes ripe will give you a world of difference.
I have trouble wrapping my head around lower acidity being good for tomatoes, because to me the acidity is half the point of using a tomato in the first place
@@MaximusChivus Yeah, but the issue is, when making a cooked sauce, you are _concentrating_ the acidity. I do roasted tomato sauces, so I am losing 55-70% of the weight of the fresh tomatoes in water loss (they get cooked at 300 F for 2.5 hours, browning the skins, which are removed later, and evaporating so much water), meaning that the acidity more than doubles in the roasting process. So if you're planning on using San Marzano tomatoes in a fresh context, their acidity is probably lower than would be ideal. But if you're using them for their intended purpose (they are a paste tomato), then a low acidity is actually quite desirable.
As a home gardener who is getting obsessed with growing tomatoes, I love the depth you went into about the water content and acidity. There are much better tomatoes for eating fresh, but for canning, the plum varieties with low water content and high flesh-to-seed ratios are best, according to what I've learned from the tons of YT gardening videos I've watched.
There is nothing better than a good homegrown tomato that being said I spend way more growing tomatoes than I do buying them lol! I've had some varieties cost up to a couple bucks a piece when I grow them and break down the price
@@johnsheetz6639 never ever break down the price of home growing! It’ll make you weep 😂 I still convince myself it’s worth it though. It is. Right? Hahahah.
My Italian grandmother always said that homegrown and homemade canned tomatoes surpass the quality of store-bought San Marzano tomatoes. Her belief has influenced me greatly over the years, especially since homegrown tomatoes were a key ingredient in her cooking. They made her dishes stand out, and I found nothing else could match their taste. Inspired by her, I now cultivate my own tomatoes every year. It took some time to master the growing and harvesting techniques, but I can confidently say my tomatoes are now much tastier than those I used to purchase at local stores (Canned or fresh). For anyone who uses tomatoes frequently, I strongly suggest learning the art of organic tomato farming and preserving them at home.
san marzano are good, and sure you can grown your own and they may or may not be better...but there are cheap canned tomatoe's and better quality ones...i use a lot of canned tomatoes and i'm not saying you need to buy expensive ones but good canned tomatoes are noticably better than low quality ones...i never buy just the store brand...i at least use a name brand..maybe not san marzano, but definately a higher quality...cause it does make a huge difference.
San Marzano’s are picky plants. They are notorious for blossom end rot even when neighboring plants grow perfectly in the same soil. Plan to add calcium to the planting area (bone meal) to overcome their particular needs. I grew 2 plants and after solving the blossom end rot issue I probably picked 500 tomatoes per plant. The only thing that stopped production was an October snowstorm. I froze whole so I can grab what I need from bulk Ziplock bags. Manga.
@@EthanChlebowski I really appreciate that you avoided recommending a specific brand. As a Canadian, I often see brands recommended which just aren't available here. At the same time, we have different brands which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere. I'm sure this is the case for every country as well as region and even specific store.
@@EthanChlebowski you should have checked to see if location factored in. I don't mean in terms of growing however, I mean in terms of shipping. I've found that sometimes things shipped from places farther away sometimes don't taste as good because maybe the heat of a trip changed the taste of the food. Sometimes a good cheap local brand is good enough for most dishes. So maybe not as cheap as the store brand but not a d.o.p. either. For instance I can get sclafani grown and packed in jersey just a little away from NYC for 2.99. They can be pretty good most of the time especially for anything straight up cooked. While not the cheapest, they also don't run 5+ bucks a can either and can even be on sale for as low as 2.19 sometimes. I save the bianco only for pizza. I'm sure there's other brands local to some states that are comparable.
There was another interesting variable you missed here: the can itself. One of the reasons you might experience the metallic taste is because acid can leech that flavour out of an unlined can. Lining cans increases costs so this step is often skipped by cheap generic brands. The presence of citric acid or firming agents may also indicate the tomatoes were harvested early. I usually avoid those too. You might want to consider two more experiments: 1. Remove the seeds, which can add bitterness. 2. Try a jar of high quality Passata. I switched to those for many applications and found them just as good but cheaper. I learnt those tips from an Italian cooking instructor. Was amazed by the difference it made just like you.
@@dingfeldersmurfalot4560 PASSATA is uncooked sieved tomato puree. My fav is Mutti, very versatile, great taste. Plus, comes in a glass jar, so you don't get the can taste.
sorry for being mean, but: 1. I am very sure most cans are lined/laquered, esp for anything acidic. mostly for not giving people tin poisoning. I imagine this is also even more accessible for the economy of scale white label items can offer. If the can is steel, even more reason to line it. 2. try finding out if a can is lined by looking at it. of course you could just buy all the brands to check but unless you're going to do a video about it or someth where you can reasonably taste test multiple brands I don't see why you would do that.
As someone who works in the can food industry all cans are lined/coated on the inside. Since tomatoes are so acidic they have the most coating (usually 3 coats baked on in stages). Few cans have uncoated tin on the outside anymore. Even a clear coat over the tin preserves the appearance to keep the cans looking better longer.
Adjusting the pH/Acidity of any pressure-canned vegetable or other food prior to canning is an integral part of curbing bacterial growth in the finished product. Commonly used are Citric Acid, Lemon Juice, and Vinegar, with the latter two contributing flavors which may be undesirable in the finished product. Calcium Chloride has multiple uses, the most common of which is a firming aid, which you mentioned. However, it may be used for a purpose other than masking an improperly harvested fruit. If the chosen cooking processes are longer than normal due to the methods used (traditional "batch" Vs. "continuous"), then it may be used to prevent excessive breakdown of the product due to the longer cooking. It is also used pre-harvest to prevent Blossom End Rot. As far as lined cans go, over 95% of cans used for food in the US are lined. The remaining unlined cans used for food service are generally restricted to dry foods where liquid acting upon the metallic can is not an issue. Extended-Storage dry rice and dry beans would be an example. In fact, I had to search a bit to find unlined cans for food service, and could not find ANY without a "Dry Goods Only" disclaimer. Any producer canning tomatoes in unlined cans most likely lacks a legal department which can explain how saving a fraction of a cent per can is false economy when faced with the costs of a single Negligent Death lawsuit.
Hey, food scientist here, the pH actually does not relate to flavor in any direct way at all, rather it’s the titratable acidity that affects how acidic something tastes. pH and titratable acidity are two different things that do not have a correlation and must be measured separately. Look into it it’s pretty interesting, big thing in wine making especially.
@@flobbel as a regular person with access to google i've got to say, maybe being a pharmacist isn't your calling. From a winemakers forum: “pH is a measurement of the strength of acid, while TA is a measurement of the percent by weight of an acid. Different acids have different strengths.13 feb 2020". Now go sort my pills and stay away from my wine :p
I'm currently growing San Marzanos for the first time this year. They need more calcium and more irrigation than your standard heirloom or cherry tomatoes, or you'll get serious end blossom rot, but these tomatoes definitely make a delicious sauce. Very sweet and savory.
Future suggestion: Id love to see an exploration of different types of rice. I grew up with white minute rice only, so trying to figure out the differences in length and type and how it changes things would be useful.
I can’t break it down for you, but I always keep a bag of Long Grain White Rice and a bag of Basmati. Long grain rice is good for recipes like Mexican Rice, Dirty Rice, baked rice recipes, Gallo pinto and really rices that you mix with other ingredients if you’re not eating it plain. Obviously though, it can be eaten plain. With Basmati rice I just love it’s fragrance, texture, and taste. It’s really good with Indian cuisine, but that’s the part where I can’t answer as fully as I did with long grain white rice. I hope this was helpful anyway :)
Generally I keep two kinds, jasmine and short grain/Calrose. Calrose is great for sushi, Japanese/Korean style dishes while jasmine is a great all purpose, very fragrant and the grains just fluffs and stir fries much easier for certain dishes. Speciality dishes like paella or risotto or Briyani may call for some a specific type of rice and you will certainly get better, more authentic results using the right kind of rice. I’ve also found with rice the budget brands do not cook as nice as the name brand ones, the cheaper rice tend to be dryer, more crumbly and less fragrant. Try and experiment and see what you think!
This is, bar none, one of the best videos you've ever made. This feels so on brand and was so useful to watch. I've always loved your content but this is a star. Great work, Ethan.
** Important. The difference is pesticides used in the growing of grains in the US is illegal in Europe due to them causing cancer , obesity Alzheimer’s and joint and bone disease. That’s the difference. The only safe comparison is organic US grown to European
@@TigerKoehn A lot of Italian pasta made in Italy is made with Canadian wheat these day. The major difference is all the flours found in North America are enriched.
Videos like this and the one about bay leaves bring SO much value. You are the only Patreon membership I've ever had. I hope you keep this up and that you are rewarded for it.
German here, over here we LOVE using bayleaves in a wide variety of dishes. Especially soups / stews ( Everyone knows us Germans loving our sausages / beer / bread but our soups / stews are nothing to scoff at either, with wide varietes / recipe influences from all over Europe ) and those bayleaves just give such a nice and savory aroma boost it's a waste not to use them. Just last week I've made a big pot full of homemade lentil soup since it's getting colder over here too and a nice thick rich lentil soup with some nice smoked sausages and thick cut smoked and grilled bacon is just the thing you need on a cold rainy day. Needless to say I've added several nice big bayleaves to it. :p
@@nocjef I didn't understand either, until I made a tea with bay leaves. Try it. It has a camphor taste to it, resin-like. It smells slightly like bay rum. It's very subtle, has a long aftertaste. Now, come down off that hill! 🖖
I wish you had included one more category: imported Italian tomatoes that are _not_ San Marzano "style" or D.O.P. They can be both great-tasting and significantly cheaper than the imported SMDOPs.
That's a really good point. I've been told (in Australia), that many Italian canned tomatoes are superior to many Australian ones because of the short time between picking and packing in Italy. Not sure how true that is, just heard it a lot.
@@APallo17 Yeah, I was hoping he’d include Mutti too. It’s a good brand, from my experience, but I’m curious how it would compare in a blind taste test. Overall, this was a great video though.
I've been using Mutti's canned tomatoes for years, it's just normal tomatoes grown in Italy, but they do taste significantly better than the generic ones grown in my country
It’s also important to note, you may WANT the more acidic varieties in certain dishes, if it’s something that has very little acid elsewhere. So this isn’t necessarily a “don’t get those two” but just a know what you’re getting
I literally spent an hour in the tomato aisle last weekend contemplating this and not knowing what the tradeoffs are in practice. Thank you SO MUCH for this video.
I did that once. I wanted real tomato not paste and the fewest ingredients available. I can tweak the sauce to how I like it. It takes a while to read the ingredients. Cost is also a factor and should be.
This has been really interesting and I enjoy these comparison videos. On the tomato choice topic, I don't normally use whole tomatoes unless they're freshly grown instead of canned. My favorite tomatoes to get at the store are Pomì chopped tomatoes, and they've become my secret to some of my best tomato dishes. There is only one ingredient, tomatoes, and they're Italian. Definitely try them if you haven't
Never would I have thought I would want to watch a 25 minute video about canned tomatoes but I did it was awesome!! You thought of everything and was so precise on each aspect. This was super helpful
Are ANY of the results 335% + better than the generic? Can adding a dollop of Tomato Paste, a squeeze of honey, or a dash of sugar Mellow the Generic out to improve whatever it is he found foul? Cooking it longer will thicken it.
You will probably miss this, but try Sclafani crushed tomatoes. Ingredients are salt and tomatoes, you don't have to reduce it to make pasta sauce, and it costs about 4 dollars - so pretty good on value.
Sclafani whole tomatoes where by far the greatest canned tomatoes you could buy. Grown from jersey tomatoes - unbelievable. Unfotunately discontinued by B&G foods. Crushed variety is still out there but it's not as good.
@@jasonc9061 Thank you for the info! The Italian deli down the road here carries Sclafani products exclusively, and I've always been curious about them.
@@jasonc9061The crushed tomatoes are awesome, idk how you can say they're not good? I use them in my food religiously and they're available on Amazon by the case. I taste tested several brands from Italy when making lasagna for 100 one time. They're still head and shoulders above the rest, the crushed ones that is.This latest batch I got delivered last week which I think is this summers harvest is some of the best in a while. You should definitely try them again.
@@BevoFan1883 the gentleman below me responded correct. I have 4 cans of the crushed in my pantry as we speak. I use one or two with a mix of rienzi or bianco di Napoli for my sauce.
I have a seafood soup/ciopinno recipe I have been making for years that uses canned tomatoes. The fish is always so expensive that I skimp on the tomatoes. This video got me to pick out a good can (on sale so no real budget hit) and I can't believe how bad I have been blowing it all this time. Thank you for these videos, easily my favorite TH-cam cooking chanel.
We basically do a Mexican style seafood soup base in a big batch and drop whatever seafood we want in it at serving. Otherwise the fish/prawns/clams/squid gets waaay overcooked.
Having grown San Marzano tomatoes in my home in central Utah (among many other varieties), I can attest that this variety is one of the sweetest and pleasant tasting of them all, without the slight acidic tang that most of the others have-which, personally, I don’t mind. Obviously I don’t have the Italian volcanic soil, but the San Marzano variety is one of my favorites. We never had a chance to make a sauce, since we ate them out of hand…
Hmm, I'm something of a tomato grower, myself. I must try to grow some San Marzano tomatoes next season. One time, I was at the farmer's market in Sandpoint, Idaho, and bought some heritage tomatoes from a vendor. One of them was a yellow plum tomato, which she called a 'Mennonite Tomato'. Over several seasons I grew them in my garden, and finally, one year I decided to enter them at the Fall Fair. Gotta blue ribbon! These Mennonite Tomatoes are less juicy, and considered better for cooking, rather than eating fresh.
@@Ottee2 not surprising, those mennonites know what they’re doing when it comes to agriculture should probably just start all heirloom lines with them or the hutterites lol.
@tinkerbellfairy8974Americans are weird. San Marzano tomatoes are perfect for sauces, however they do not taste great for stuff like salads. We use other varieties for that. Why do you put acid in tomato cans? Typical American low quality stuff. Honestly disgusting.
Hi, as far as I know, to reduce to much tomatoes juice product in a can of whole tomatoes is to strain the can and reduce it first to as much as you need to make your sauce the consistency you want. Then add whole tomatoes product. This way you never waste your tomatoes product! I am a Chef of over 57 years and never had a problem with the juice not wanted in the finished product. I hope this helps all of your followers to a better sauce or gravy, Italian style. Chef Joseph Mascolo (60 years as a cook and Chef) P. S. Keep up the great episodes!!!
Thanks for that tip. I've always kept any liquid poured off, and then added some back in to top off, or thin out any sauce. It never occured to me to only use the liquid first, reduce it, then add the product. It is little things like this, that has helped me to improve my cooking over the years. Again, thanks.👨🍳
@@DanielAnchondo The Sicilian-run Italian restaurant I worked at for multiple years used multiple varietals from Stanislaus. The sauce was so beloved by locals (And visitors, including other Italians) that I was bribed for the recipe.
I am so glad to see this being covered! I've struggled with this for a long time and without doing a bunch of side by side comparisons I can't be certain.
Yet another banger of a video! This guy is making quality videos that surpass anything else I see on youtube! A 20 minute watch for something that I can now take with me for the rest of my life. Thanks Ethan!
This is a dilemma I often have using canned tomatoes and whether or not paying extra for more high end brands are worth it. Although your test and trials aren't done in a lab, that's actually more important to me that you simply tested it as a cook in your kitchen. It's more realistic and relatable, and I truly appreciate it. I will give a few other brands a try now and see if that makes a difference in my meals. Given your results, I have no doubt other brands will yield different results, and overall better results. I love your channel, thank you for all you do.
yeah its not "lab-tested" but i really appreciate that he did everything he reasonably could to make it a fair and balanced test, blindfolded taste test, consistency in all the recipes while only changing a single variable, same time and temperature cooking etc. The process was still very scientific (within reason of course)
For me as a home cook, price, especially now, is a big factor. I've gotten by with using the store brand, as the video pointed out once you incorporate it into other things or cook it down, the tin can and acidic taste goes away.
The other day I tried the same kind of experiment just because I was making a big batch and had a spread of different canned tomatoes on hand. I had one generic store brand for a bit over a dollar, a "san marzano style" for about 3 dollars, and the DOP for almost 6 all going in separate saucepans (all to be combined later). Taste wise, the generics were extremely harsh and pretty much just tasted like tart acid, like it felt like it would give me heartburn. The SM style were still tart but nowhere near as acidic, and I could taste more subtle flavors. But the DOP was in a league of its own, the second it went in my mouth I could taste the difference, it's a dark, savory sweetness that isn't covered up by anything. Additionally the budget tomatoes were packed in juice rather than puree, and when that boiled off there were much less solids left over than the other types. I think if I want budget tomatoes I'll be buying crushed only from now on, so that I'm not getting gouged paying for red water. But for Italian tomato sauces I'm splurging on the DOP type from now on, home cooking is already cheaper anyway so I can afford to spend a bit more to make good food.
@@halfisher3598 I got no useful information for you I'm afraid, as a Canadian I ain't got any of the places you have and you won't have any of the places I have except for Walmart, and Walmart only carries the Cento brand that I can see. For what it's worth I get mine at deep discount supermarket FreshCo but that banner and the company as a whole is Canadian only I think. If you live in a city but can't find them in supermarkets your best bet is probably an Italian grocer if you can find one.
@@halfisher3598You can almost definitely find them in any Italian specialty store. Just be wary of Amazon. Lot's on there labeled as DOP but they're usually not. If you have Costco's by you, they have 3-packs of the Cento for like $8 which is almost 1/2 priced compared to what you pay for them in supermarkets. Cento isn't quite as sweet as the DOP but it's nothing a tsp of sugar doesn't fix.
You really opened my eyes with this one. I've made about 10 dishes with canned tomatoes since you posted this and whole peeled tomatoes now feel like my secret weapon. Specifically non-DOP san marzano's, which were the best I could find at my local supermarket. The flavor out of those things is so good! Thank you.
You inspired me, so I did my own experiment today. I cooked one batch of tomato sauce (Vincenzo's TH-cam classic Italian recipe, using a basic soffritto of celerey/carrot/onion/EV olive oil - great recipe, done it about 15 times now) with San Marzano and another batch with Roma canned tomatoes. Both same brand (Mutti), both blended before being cooked out for 1 3/4 hours. Both came out delicious. SM is slightly mellower, but not by much, and we don't think many would notice. In our opinion, the benefit does not justify the extra cost (£1.35 vs £2.85 per can). In our opinion, there are FOUR things which make way more difference than tomato variety (assuming you don't buy cheap, watery canned tomatoes): 1) Use lots more EV olive oil with the soffritto in the beginning - the veg flavour sticks to the fat and carries through the sauce much more; 2) Continue to add salt until the sauce doesn't taste flat, but instead waters the back corners of your mouth (but if it tastes salty, you've added too much and ruined it); 3) Cook for at least 1 1/2 hours until it stops tasting sour/acidic and starts tasting sweet. 4) Use fresh basil instead of dried basil, added in the last 30 seconds of cooking.
@@perotinofhackensack2064maybe because it’s hard to tell the subjectivity to the taste test. In the vid, we can see what measures were taken although you’re right, interesting insight for an individual taste test.
Can't believe I watched the whole thing. Also, can't believe how informative it was. Also, can't believe how well your channel is doing. I subscribed when you had 25k subscribers. You deserve it man!
Italy’s soil is amazing. Years ago I was on highway between Rome and Naples and passed an excavated area where you could see the topsoil was at least ten feet deep, and of a rich black color due to eons of volcanic activity. Oregon has similar volcanic soil, and there produce is also excellent. I, an American, never understood why people even liked tomatoes until I ate one there. The secretin the soil.
Similar soil in much of central North Carolina... the volcanic activity was ages ago so it's safe to live there, but the aftereffects with almost black soil makes tomatoes and about everything else orgasmic to taste buds so long as the farmer is tending to it well (and why not since it's much cheaper to let the land do the work than dousing it in garbage... just grow plants the critters that'll steal the produce don't like being around. :)
Oregon actually has really poor soils for the most part, as the type of volcanic eruptions we have are higher in silica and lower in minerals. The soils in the region that are rich for agriculture are primarily from alluvial activity such as the glacial Missoula floods. Of note though, “rich soil” doesn’t always translate to good flavor. Nutrient stress can sometimes produce some amazing tasting produce. Also, different plants require different types of soils and nutrients.
In the beginning of the video you described perfectly how I have felt before when I have had to buy tomatoes for a recipe. People told me to get actual san marzano tomatoes, but I never really understood exactly why and what the differences were. This video answered pretty much every question I've had at least one point in my life about these canned tomatoes. Great work!
I think this might be your best video yet Ethan. So helpful and loaded with information. In the UK I very rarely see San Marzano tomatoes available (I don't think I ever have, and definitely not in a supermarket) so the extra information about what to look out for and how it affects the flavour was really helpful. Really appreciate the effort you've gone into with this one.
In the UK if you don't have a Waitrose or Italian Deli nearby, there are many small specialty import businesses in the country that will ship those ingredients direct to you.
I once did a bottled water taste test in San Diego with surprising results. I had about 10 different brands. I expected them all to taste about the same, but was shocked to find that I could differentiate and rank every one. Some were flat out bad. Only a few tasted like clean plain water. One had minerals added, which was actually nice. It's a good cheap taste test. I liked what you put out here! Thanks.
It started at our house as "The Pepsi Challenge". We have taste tested water, Dr Pepper and it's copies, cheap beer vs imported, even which hamburger chain was best. Surprised that when you can't tell the difference in flavor one can save lots of money. If you CAN taste a difference, it is worth the extra money. For me Organic carrots and celery taste wildly better and worth the difference. Also prefer distilled water! Our son's taste difference in brand soda, but we don't. All taste tests in blind package, so advertising sway
Been using Cento for years, and this absolutely makes me feel better about my choice and sticking to it. Everything from spicy Italian sausage dishes, to chili, and even a butter chicken recipe. Nice work 👏 👌 👍
Agreed...after I quit canning my own, I went to grocery and came home with 7 or 8 different plum tomatoes..I chose cento as the only tomato I would buy..not as good as mine but close enough for someone with no time.
@@marjoriejohnson6535 It's crazy to think too that the Cento's, while not store brand cheap, are actually pretty competitive in price among the other SM and SM style canned tomatoes. I know it's not that much of a difference between $5 bucks a can versus $6, but depending on how many cans you buy it adds up.
My Italian brother-in-law introduced me to Cento years ago. I love that they’re packed in a thick tomato sauce vs watery juice and they have no salt. Glad you ranked them high!
I absolutely love this style of videos, also the way you show what to look for in a canned tomato instead of what brand to look for is really helpful for people outside the US where brands and varieties may be different. Thanks for the great content!
I admire your dedication and thoroughness. Extremely informative, contained delivery of information in an entertaining manière. It's so satisfying to watch you run these experiments, gather data, and present it. This scratches my itch to combine food and science. My family always swore by Cento and I'm very happy to see that it held its own in this test! Also 3:10 can we take a moment to appreciate how pretty those tins look altogether? They would be beautiful with herbs in or just nothing, placed up around a high shelf.
When making pizza sauce I usually use Cento brand canned tomatoes. They get me nothing but compliments. Highly recommend. I'll have to give Delallo and DOP ones a try. Thanks for the insight.
As a retired Apple engineer - I think videos like this video exemplifies the best of what is possible on the internet.. Damn fine video. 402 thumbs up!
Really appreciate having the general takeaways regarding ingredients as opposed to specific brand recommendations. Helpful for those of us who don't have these exact brands available.
Love this style of video! I find myself spending 10x the amount of time in the grocery store worrying about this exactly kind of detail over ingredients AKA I want to save money if I'm not going to truly get a better product, so finding which ingredients pays you back in the dish vs those that you can afford to purchase the more economical product.
Funny he didn’t go into where the tomatoes were grown. All four of the ones he liked were grown in Italy, the other two were the US! With all the tests- the two bottom were the US grown. There was a brand of “American Tomatoes”, but they were labelled as ‘grown in Italy’. I think that’s the outcome that’s clearest.
Try "desi tamatar" which is the indian variant. That's the best for Indian dishes in my opinion. We love homemade food, and that tomato does give us that feel. Also, hybrid tomatoes are another one we get.
Ethan, this is by far one of the most informative and useful comparison tests I have seen executed by any kitchen show. Great work! I have been buying the brands you favor, so maybe great palates think/taste alike.
My favorite thing is that he made something very tomato forward like pasta sauce, then something where tomato acts as a base like butter chicken, and the spices are the real star of the show. It's the main thing distinguishing Indian food from Western food, and cool to see the tomato types display differences in both. Funny enough, I think Indian/Italian food lends quite nicely as hybrid cuisine, but I don't see it too often. Not even a stereotype, Indian people at Italian places always ask for extra sauce, cuz the gravies are the star of the show in Indian food.
As a beer brewer I can answer about CaCl2 effect on flavour pretty confidently. Chloride ions are used in brewing, along with Sulfate (SO4), to balance sweetness/bitterness in beer flavour. When both are present (at least ~30ppm of each), their ratio determines which flavour will be intensified: a higher chloride ratio (i.e. 100ppm Cl to 50ppm SO4) will provide a sweeter mouthfeel, while a higher sulfate ratio (i.e. 200ppm CO4 to 50ppm Cl) will enhance hop bitterness and give a drier mouthfeel. So chloride, even from NaCl, in limited amounts (up to 200 or 300ppm) will enhance sweet flavours, which is a desirable feature in canned tomatoes.
Grew up with fresh sauces and pasta from my grandmother whom came to America from Italy. When it comes to the best canned tomatoes for sauce the Cento San Marzanos are hands down the best. They cook down to an incredible texture and flavor. Add in the great price which you can often find for as low as $3.75 for a 28 ounce can and they also have larger cans. They allow you to keep the ingredient list short as it should be for a good red sauce.
Ethan, the flow of this video is so good. I think you nailed the recording of the taste tests making it clear what you were talking about. Also the sequence going from the raw product to a prepared dish is perfect! Great info and I look forward to more!
Awesome. For Neapolitan pizza, I personally love the Cento San Marzano tomatos puréed with a little bit of salt. I don’t cook them at all prior to baking and it’s delicious
I recently became aware of the fact that San Merica tomatoes are not San Marzano, but was OK with it because I assumed they were very high-quality from another region in the US or something. But after this video, I drove straight to the grocery store to grab a whole mess of cans of tomatoes And one San Merica to see why I’ve been spending way more than I should have on tomatoes all these years. Thanks for the great video!
So far I'm 5 videos (20+ min each) deep into your videos and gotta say I'm gaining more insight into cooking and ingredients then following any recipe videos. Love your videos.
This was very interesting. I always buy the H.E.B. brand mostly for price. To be honest I probably couldn't tell the difference with all the different brands, but it was fun to watch.
I didn’t think this mattered until I made sauce recently. It’d had been awhile and I used Muir glen organic canned tomatoes. So damn sour. I added baking powder to try and neutralize the acidity. Cento made a huge difference
Your water would evaporate though. So yes, cooking times and Temps might vary an amount, but is it enough to deduce that water content of the tomatoes would noticeably change the texture, and taste of the sauce??
This was fantastic. Thanks for doing the work that I would have liked to have done, Ethan. This has been a question of mine as well, and I'm really grateful to you for your no bullshit, no frills, but thoughtful testing from various perspectives.
Awesome! I've used the cheap generic tomatoes in my vodka sauce before, and I felt like the sauce didn't come out as well as when I use the Cento SM tomatoes. Since I couldn't taste them side-by-side, I wasn't sure if it was just in my mind or they actually tasted that different. Thanks for taking a well-considered test approach to this.
If you use cheapest option and completely different type there will be difference but i think for sauces where you are going to drop other flavours mid cheap level is sufficient enough and 5x more costly wont that better. Also everyone have different taste there will be people who like cheapest most and there will be one that not touch anything under 5 bucks.
This was a surprisingly thorough investigation, especially for TH-cam which I feel often has videos of this sort which are poorly done and unreliable. Your care and ability in tasting the details of each sauce brought actual insight - it was interesting even though I'm in the UK and (I think) our range of canned tomatoes is slightly different (never seen San marzano). Nice!!
Definitely! Maybe the only thing I think he needs imo is to expand his word precision in describing what exactly he's tasting sometimes, but that's a minor thing! I have the same problem btw; sometimes I really struggle to describe exactly what I'm tasting and why I liked one thing more than another thing.
Thinking about you today! Was picking up some canned tomatoes and I’ve never felt more prepared and knowledgeable going down that aisle! What a rush to be able to decipher all the ingredients and know what to look for! Thank you very much ❤
Where I live, fresh San Marzano or Romano tomatoes are almost impossible to get. So I have no choice but to use canned tomatoes. As I was shopping for them, I always wondered what makes a canned tomato “better” or “different” from brand to brand. This video answered my question perfectly! Thanks for amazing video as always Ethan!
I’m growing San Mariano tomatoes for the first time. I usually grow various Roma. So going back to that Johnny’s chart, I’m growing Plum Regal, Grandero, and San Marzano. We don’t just solely judge by taste, but also by productivity, so far the San Marzano has more blight and some blossom end rot. So unless they taste spectacular, I may not grow them again. But there are lots of varieties of SM, so I may try another variety.
@@funkyfresh1013 plum Regal and Grandero were very productive and worked great in tomato sauce. We canned/froze more tomatoes than ever before. San Marzano was a bust.
I think one very overlooked thing in the kitchen that you could test is different varieties of black pepper. Not sure how you would do it, but I think it would be very interesting. Even more niche would be different salts!
I have tested pepper and find Penzey's pepper (multiple grinds) to be superior. It smells like citrus and flowers and doesn't make me sneeze as it's not full of pepper dust.
Exhaustive but certainly NOT exhausting! Your previous career has bled into your current one in a good way. I've not seen another foodtuber do clear-eyed evaluation of different techniques or ingredients etc better than you Ethan! Well done mate!
@@HeyItsTylerFTW Ethan graduated from NC State with an accounting degree and went to work for one of the big 4 accounting firms in finance and technology consulting. (From his website)
This was super helpful. I watch multiple different cooking TH-camrs who recommend using San marzano tomatoes, but I never understood what the big difference was between regular canned tomatoes and San marzano. The tip about calcium chloride was super valuable to me, as well as the fact that there isn't really any one brand that is necessarily better. Thanks for the awesome content!
Curious if you liked the Cento so much on the last one because of the salt vs citric acid in the packaging? Could have possibly taken on the cream flavor better. Amazing video!
Really thorough and well done. Although I almost always buy SanMarzano tomatoes I couldn’t have explained exactly why except that Lidia Bastianich always recommends them. Thanks!
I've always liked Muir Glen as a good slightly cheaper alternative to San Marzano. San Marzano is best saved for uncooked pizza sauce (generally not worth cooking your pizza sauce, you get better results with uncooked sauce), and dishes were tomato sauce is primary and not heavily spiced/flavored.
I grow LOADS of tomatoes (at least 10 varieties every year), including San Marzanos. Canned is always better for pasta, pizza, or chili though. I can’t remember who, but a TH-cam channel did a huge blind taste testing experiment awhile back, and interestingly, Red Gold whole peeled tomatoes won by a landslide over many more expensive brands.
Red Gold is my choice, as well, for the past couple of decades. For sauces, I really enjoyed Escalon 6-in-1 ground tomatoes (so they're not whole tomatoes), but I have not seen anything smaller than #10 cans since Covid. 7/11 (not the convenience store) ground tomatoes are excellent, too, but I've also only seen restaurant-sized #10 cans of that.
@@pulykamell Escalon crushed toms are very good, not too tangy and with mellow flavor, wish I could find smaller cans (but it freezes well in vacuumbags).
Chemist here: The pH scale is a log scale, so a difference of 0.3 across the whole range is actually quite a lot, approximately double the acidity. A pH difference of 1.0 would represent a 10x acidity difference.
Great video!
Do human taste buds perceive acidity linearly or logarithmically though? Like would a pH difference of 1.0 cause the food to taste 10 times more/less acidic?
@@jramkrishnasamy neuroscientist and chemist here, yes it will!! Our tongues are surprisingly sensitive to acidity!
God here: Yup, good stuff tasted better than the stuff that tastes bad!
I believe you guys because you all sound very sciency.
... Aaaaaaaand found the chemist. Pardon, chemists, if I'm reading he other replies correctly. :3
Thank you for your work, btw. o7
Before the internet, there would be little to no market for a 25 minute geekout over canned tomatoes. What glorious geekouts are possible in this age. And kudos for keeping it entertaining all the way out. No small feat, I imagine.
Alton Brown would have done an episode on the Food Network much less well done.
You're completely nuts! I've _always_ been oriented toward this kind of content, going all the way back to the 1970s. This market has _always_ been there, but it was ruthlessly and cruelly underserved. The underlying problem here is that people with high personal agency are bad consumers. We're fickle, and quick to change horses if the horse starts to go in the wrong direction. We're not so naive as to suppose that what's in the jingle is also in the can. A "good" consumer, as operative for most of my adult life, is a person who can't separate the jingle from the product.
Here's the actual problem. Back in the 20th century, you could easily find a market for this kind of geeky content. But the problem was, you couldn't offer this content up, without the risk that your "good" consumers would wander across the aisle, to consume content they didn't deserve. Because a "good" consumer watching good content isn't a "good" consumer any longer. Against their natural tendencies, they might start to actually think.
And so the modest amount of money you could make by catering geeky content to geeky audiences was totally undermined by the loss of revenue from less successfully capturing your "good' consumers in jingle-forward consumer ghettos.
The miracle of TH-cam is that they've perfected the stickiness of the content to such a degree that the "good" consumers are glued to what they already prefer to consume (hence optimally monetized). Meanwhile, the geeky content can modestly monetize geeky audiences, as a small but additive revenue.
They couldn't figure out how to do this in the 20th century with the technology of broadcast networks. So despite the substantial audience for exactly this kind of content, it was never served up, for fear of ruining the social contract with their "good" consumers, meaning those who really paid the bills via huge leaks in their personal agency.
By accident, good geek content leaked into the system all the time, to rabid fanfare from narrow quarters. But not very often. James Burke's _Connections._ Anything with Carl Sagan (although he wasn't my own hero). The first season of _Space: 1999._ (They quickly punted the second season to the control of the same guy who ruined the third season of _Star Trek.)_ There was also _The Nature of Things_ on CBC with environmentalist David Suzuki. There were some epic long-format Sunday morning recaps of politics that week. The sitcom _Barney Miller_ was a small, unrecognized gem of brilliantly concealed depth. _Yes Minister_ is also legendary for delivering the goods. (No "good" consumer _ever_ tuned in after reading the dry plot summary in _TV Guide._ You had to be there to find out, and _TV Guide_ existed to ensure this kind of accident never happened within the flock; a current copy of _TV Guide_ on the coffee table in front of the television was a near certain signal that you were a "good" consumer in good standing.)
A good rule of thumb was to enjoy it while it lasted, because you never knew when some network bean counter would stab it in the back with his steely knives.
Another historical relic you should check out is the epic battles behind the scenes by network television to nerf _Mork and Mindy._ Robin Williams was a worst case scenario. He could layer Saturday's Late Show subversion underneath their weeknight family format. You couldn't prevent this by telling him what he had to do. You could only prevent this by telling him what he was not allowed to _also_ do. Because he could juggle bicycles with one arm, and flaming torches with the other arm, while flipping swords off the ground by stepping on a rake, and then swallowing them whole, hands free. He was Harry Houdini, Knight of the Imperial Order, First Class, in evading network oversight. Many Tums consumed in the trenches of that battle, on both sides.
A major casualty in this clash of the titans was the timid geekout over canned tomatoes. Oh, yes, we wanted that _too._ I mean, we wanted that too, and also to have a nearby grocery store that stocked more than two varieties of canned tomato. This was the other problem with food culture in the 1970s. Every decent grocery list in Canada or America began the same way:
Trip to France:
* passable bread
* passable wine
Trip to England:
* passable warm beer and passable cheddar
Trip to Germany:
* passable cold beer
* passable sausage
Trip to Hungary or Spain:
* passable paprika
And if you couldn't afford that, you did the next best thing:
Trip down the street:
* passable side of beef
* passable fresh fall potatoes
Europeans were constantly shocked at how we always ate so much of the same things.
Not too many trips to Italy for passable pasta, which was often made with exceptional Canadian winter wheat, so our feeble local approximation was not actually impassable on that one item.
🙂
Well except for the cooking geeks who read Cook's Illustrated. I bought the premier issue or whatever it was called back in 1992, I think, and still read it every two months, when it comes out.
@@MsSavagechef i was just thinking of that Cook from "Nothern Exposure", maybe couse its also from the 90s. well, whatever
As someone who works in the can food industry. There definitely is a difference in quality between brands. Usually it’s not because the vegetables are actually different, but because the best of the crop are saved for more expensive brand packaging to get more profit out of the better quality.
Companies do it this way because they... CAN!
...I'll show myself out
Knowing this, do you buy the more expensive stuff for the better quality?
@@Sekrf hmm…I’ll give you a 7 out of tin for that one.
@@dharm3974 , Depends
The best of the best tomatoes are selected to make tomato puree here in California for Japenese market . I never tasted anything more delicious related to tomato.
My dad has always enjoyed cooking, has very sensitive palate. He told me years ago that CENTO was the best canned tomato he has ever tasted. I am going to let him know it was one of your top 2 consistently! Thanks . My grand-daughter asked me to make Goulash for supper tonight ( we have a cold windy day ahead), so I told her I knew the perfect tomatoes to buy to make it with! Thank You!
What is goulash 😅 sorry I've heard that word but never knew what it was. How do u make it?
@@maym8849 It's basically a type beef stew originating from Hungary.I'm not hungarian, but here in germany it's seen as their national dish. Idk if that holds up, but it's very popular in germany and hungary.
Omg please can i please barrow your guloush recipe,i havent had it since i was in jr.high ,my foster mother made the best.
Mine to I. Love CENTO
Cento is very good and more readily available for me at the stores near me for "good stuff". Bianco is a bit better for a pizza sauce IMO but pretty much have to amazon order them get a decent deal but still more expensive than Cento and not really worth almost double the price. I still like adding 4 fresh Roma's to a sauce I'm spending a lot of time on to have extra. If making completely fresh sauce on a budget, cheap peeled Roma's need some added cherry variety for sweetness. They just get picked to early IMO unless you spend more and get organics sometimes.
You’re the only guy who can talk about tomatoes for 23min and make it entertaining. Thank you for passing on your knowledge
He's a cute ginger. 😊
I have to disagree, anyone who spends even 23 seconds thinking about tomatoes needs a real life. It took me 12 seconds to type this.
@@marlelarmarlelar9547 Then how did you end up clicking on a video about tomatoes, and leave a trolling comment? Who needs a real life?
@@dennischiapello3879 with a thick moustachio
@@marlelarmarlelar9547 tomatoes
This is an excellent presentation. As a retired chef, I get asked questions about food all of the time with many of them concerning "Is it really worth it?" The answer of course depends on what product you are talking about. I default to Cento at home and when doing private chef gigs. There is a big difference in the taste of canned tomato product as you just demonstrated just as there is a noticeable difference between the same variety of fresh tomato grown in a hothouse and then artificially ripened and those that are field grown and vine-ripened. What most people do not realize is that a good brand of canned tomato product is generally far better than fresh because canned tomatoes are harvested at the peak of ripeness whereas fresh tomatoes tend to be harvested and shipped underripe so they will last during shipment and on display longer. True San Marzano tomatoes are an heirloom variety so they taste the same today as they did 100 years ago. That's right, tomatoes have gotten more acidic with a firmer structure so they last longer on the shelf and are more favorable for commercial use. You can do the same taste test at home with fresh tomatoes to see if vine ripened are really better than regular or whether heirloom tomatoes taste that much different than commercial varieties. Also, beware that "tomatoes on the vine" are not necessarily vine-ripened. Just like the San Merican canned tomatoes, the "tomatoes on the vine" is questionable marketing because it doesn't mean they were allowed to fully ripen before being harvested and probably weren't. Most are just hot house grown tomatoes harvested in clutches and gas ripened which is why they look so perfect. Support your local farmer and buy from farmer's markets and stands.
great info thank you!
B
Great advice.
It troubles me to think that most people have never really tasted a tomato - or most other vegetables, for that matter.
@@DrewLevitt Once you've tasted a real field grown, vine ripened heirloom tomato the mass produced, artificially ripened ones are tasteless and IMO not worth buying.
As someone who makes homemade pizza this video was an awesome learning experience. I usually blend tomatoes for sauce and just bought the cheapest ones I could find but now I’m going to be looking for ones without calcium chloride and tomato juice. Thanks Ethan.
Same here, I didn't go for the absolute cheapest because it tastes like acid sauce and metal, but I go for the cheaper stuff.
I almost want to do a blind taste test myself with mini pizzas and different sauces. Cento for the acid hit and Delallo for the tomato forward taste looks like 2 I will be using in testing, along with my usual go to, I might throw in that "nicer" one with the calcium chloride so I know the taste difference first hand ... But then you have to factor in raw sauce or cooked sauce too.
Pizza is an art, might need to mix 1/2 with a full can to get the right ratio for the perfect sauce
I use Biancos for my pizzas. I just blend the tomatoes right in the can and scoop it onto my pies. Comes out amazing
@@kingquesoIV Did you watched the video or not?
As someone who doesn't make homemade pizza i find your comment rather shallow and pedantic.
You mean without tomato juice not puree
I've stuck with Cento for a couple of decades. Besides being delicious and less expensive than some of the other premium brands, consistency between cans and over years has been outstanding. I'm glad it got good marks in your enjoyable and well produced video. Thanks, Ethan!
Same. My family has used Cento for well over forty years in all of our sauces - from a simple spaghetti to an all’Amatriciana.
Agree!
Cento never lets me down. 🇮🇹
Add me to the fan club! ☺️
That is an excellent point - consistency is a big deal. I would rather get consistently great rather than 'sometimes amazing and sometimes mediocre'.
I visited Hokkaido, Japan, and worked within the tomato farming community for a small period. The tomatoes were amazing, and had the most flavour! The reason - the farmers were paid on mass x Brix (sugar content + amino acids + other soluble solids). Simply the motivation was to produce tastier produce, than to bulk up the tomatoes by over hydrating, and producing bland tomatoes. If you ever come across Japanese tomatoes, I'd recommend getting some!
I can imagine they are different, just like eggs, chicken, and fruit are noticeably different in Japan.
How did you come to work in that community in Japan?
@@TheAlibabatree good question, I hope we get to hear how.
Yes I agree; when I visit Sapporo and eat the fruit, I joke that the flavour is so good they must put artificial flavour in the fruits! Sooo flavourful.
@@greg.peepeeface Considering the cost of fruit in Japan i would expect it to be. Love the freshness of it all and cant beat it anywhere else.
My mother has been making a pasta meat sauce for years using regular canned tomatoes and I recently told her about San Marzanos. When she used them in the sauce it made such a difference, everyone thought she had changed the recipe or something.
Thanks for all the amazing and informative videos!
I mean she did change the recipe! She changed the base ingredient.
I, as an Italian from the region where San Marzano tomatoes grow (the region Campania, in the area of the volcano Vesuvius), have to say that making a pasta sauce with San Marzano tomatoes, compared to other tomatoes, “normal tomatoes”, is a bit like making a Carbonara with Guanciale (seasoned pork cheek), the original Roman one (!) or making it with bacon instead. Those who have never tasted an original carbonara with guanciale actually do not know what a real carbonara tastes like.
@@jayndough68 😉👍
@@aris1956 girl be fr
I love this style of video. There's a million people on TH-cam making food videos that give us good, usable recipes, but there aren't that many people who dive into the nitty gritty of individual ingredients or cooking methods or what have you. Episodes like this remind me of Good Eats when he did episodes that were focused around a specific ingredient and how to make the most of it.
Absolutely. I love Ethan's videos because they're so reminiscent of the food science that Alton brought us. Not just how to make something good, but why that made it good. There's a big difference between following instructions blindly and understanding why those directions are there, and in that order, and how to sub in lieu of certain ones. It makes you a better chef overall
All I know is I been using the regular green cans for years and this last time I made my sauce I went with the More experience ones and the sauce tasted was to sweet for my liking. I much prefer the regular tomato’s then the more expensive ones.
@Buck Daman Meh. I've tried watching a few of his videos and I don't like his personality.
Ethan, I am a retired Italian chef and just got back from Italy where I went to farms and ate tomato's from the plant. I was raised by my mom and grandma from Migoinico and Modena. The best tomato's I ever had were from my grandmas backyard garden in Brooklyn, we would pick them to make sauce and eat one or two before getting to the kitchen. I am partial to San Marzano's. Your suggestion of reading the label is very important! There are so many companies that flat out lie to you on the front label and try to hide the crap they put in in the ingredients list. There are 56 different ways that food companies describe sugar. Great video! Thanks.
I love how serious and analytical you are about food and food science, it shows this really is your passion.
Ethan has been really stepping up his game lately! They are super in depth, which is appreciated by us food nerds. Please keep it up!
Have you seen his chicken vid on tiktok? He is downhill
@@thebigo3752 wait why?
@@fireflieer2422 he is a meme at this point
@@thebigo3752 you are really still on his dick because he made a not perfectly grilled chicken that had bad color balancing in the vid.
@@thebigo3752 TikTok will melt your brain be careful
Another problem with tomatoes packed with calcium chloride is that unless you completely purée them beforehand, they will not break down into a smooth sauce, but instead leave you with little rubbery tomato chunks. It is a firming agent so the cell walls stay intact. I call them embalmed tomatoes.
This is interesting. I've never come across this problem in Australia. I use the cheapest home brand canned tomatoes from Coles 😂
Great point ☝️✔️
I feel like I can always taste it.
I can always taste the additives in "jarlic" (jarred, pre-minced garlic) too, even when it's just citric acid.
I can't *always* taste all food additives, I'm not a bloodhound or a truffle pig, but those two, yeah.
@@cyberpunkcentral8500that citric acid in your minced garlic is the reason why you are still alive now. 🤣
@@pattrickmerete the point is I don't eat "jarlic" because I don't enjoy the taste of the "life saving" citric acid. JFC.
I wondered what the problem was. I already decided not to buy that brand again. Yes, rubbery chunks. lol.
I love that I watched this entire video knowing I'm never going to pay more than $4 for a can of tomatoes
I wish I could pay $4 for canned tomatoes, unfortunately where I live food is really expensive
im not paying more than £0.50 for canned tomatoes, tomatoes are tomatoes, i despise them fresh, but bolognaise is just about fine so no point spending £2-3 a can when normal canned tomatoes taste the same and usually are softer xD ($ price is like $3-4)
Oh big same nor am I gonna put in the effort to blend up canned whole tomatoes when canned crushed tomatoes get the job done easier and usually cheaper
@@mrbanana6464buy from Vitacost ! Thy deliver all over the world . I live in an extremely expensive area as well and I order all my dry goods from them!
@@tyresefarrell canned tomatoes have the advantage that they usually are harvested at the same time every year so if you stick to a brand you like, you always have the same quality of tomato in the can. even the italian facotory that sells the most espensive bolognese sauce in the world is using canned tomatoes so they can keep their standard high.
As a broke Italian living in the US and cooking everything at home (pizza weekly) the generic brand pureed tomatoes from Walmart can be saved by a spoonful of honey, for sauces. I normally prepare my pizza sauce or my ragù by slowly cooking the pureed tomatoes with EVO, honey, salt and basil. After 1 hour or so you get a thick sauce that is not acidic at all, and actually surprisingly flavorful
Try POMI strained tomato sauce. It is the most tomatoey tasting sauce I have found.
is a spoonful of honey peer can? 400g?
good tip. am I the only one who would've liked details like "San Marzano from Italy" instead "Cento," "Dellalo," "DOP" ..? Or did everyone else do a perfect job of memorizing each of the specifications of each brand name (ignoring the label even) to then follow the quiz he did..??
@@trumanhwyou literally had to remember 3 of them and that was it. One of them says generic, the other says DOP, remember 3 and the other is deduction. You are not smart.
I grow San Marzanos in my garden. I actually just turned a bunch into tomato paste just yesterday. They are sweet and packed with umami, while the sourness is extremely low. I also like that the San Marzano plants are extremely prolific, so I get a lot of tomatoes.
Yes! I gave up in growing Roma years ago, but the San Marzano tastes so much better.
@@miradfalco251 There are far too many "roma" tomato varieties, the worst are the ones in your supermarket produce section. Simply picking paste tomatoes ripe will give you a world of difference.
I have trouble wrapping my head around lower acidity being good for tomatoes, because to me the acidity is half the point of using a tomato in the first place
@@MaximusChivus Yeah, but the issue is, when making a cooked sauce, you are _concentrating_ the acidity. I do roasted tomato sauces, so I am losing 55-70% of the weight of the fresh tomatoes in water loss (they get cooked at 300 F for 2.5 hours, browning the skins, which are removed later, and evaporating so much water), meaning that the acidity more than doubles in the roasting process.
So if you're planning on using San Marzano tomatoes in a fresh context, their acidity is probably lower than would be ideal. But if you're using them for their intended purpose (they are a paste tomato), then a low acidity is actually quite desirable.
@@danmckeever599 I'm not impressed when they're from the garden, so I can't imagine how bland they would be from the grocery store.
As a home gardener who is getting obsessed with growing tomatoes, I love the depth you went into about the water content and acidity. There are much better tomatoes for eating fresh, but for canning, the plum varieties with low water content and high flesh-to-seed ratios are best, according to what I've learned from the tons of YT gardening videos I've watched.
There is nothing better than a good homegrown tomato that being said I spend way more growing tomatoes than I do buying them lol! I've had some varieties cost up to a couple bucks a piece when I grow them and break down the price
@@johnsheetz6639 never ever break down the price of home growing! It’ll make you weep 😂 I still convince myself it’s worth it though. It is. Right? Hahahah.
@@johnsheetz6639 where did you spend the money? seeds and water are just a few bucks, then maybe a net and some sticks....
@@joramk I have to buy soil landlord doesn't want me to dig.😔
@@johnsheetz6639 ouch! that sucks!
My Italian grandmother always said that homegrown and homemade canned tomatoes surpass the quality of store-bought San Marzano tomatoes. Her belief has influenced me greatly over the years, especially since homegrown tomatoes were a key ingredient in her cooking. They made her dishes stand out, and I found nothing else could match their taste. Inspired by her, I now cultivate my own tomatoes every year. It took some time to master the growing and harvesting techniques, but I can confidently say my tomatoes are now much tastier than those I used to purchase at local stores (Canned or fresh). For anyone who uses tomatoes frequently, I strongly suggest learning the art of organic tomato farming and preserving them at home.
san marzano are good, and sure you can grown your own and they may or may not be better...but there are cheap canned tomatoe's and better quality ones...i use a lot of canned tomatoes and i'm not saying you need to buy expensive ones but good canned tomatoes are noticably better than low quality ones...i never buy just the store brand...i at least use a name brand..maybe not san marzano, but definately a higher quality...cause it does make a huge difference.
San Marzano’s are picky plants. They are notorious for blossom end rot even when neighboring plants grow perfectly in the same soil. Plan to add calcium to the planting area (bone meal) to overcome their particular needs. I grew 2 plants and after solving the blossom end rot issue I probably picked 500 tomatoes per plant. The only thing that stopped production was an October snowstorm. I froze whole so I can grab what I need from bulk Ziplock bags. Manga.
@@mjb9176 Limestone works much better than bone meal in my experience.
What type of tomato do you grow?
Agree...1/4 cup of milk every 2 weeks during the bloom period erased .E.R. on my plants last year@@ggbfree
This is so information heavy - it's incredible! Answering literally every question I could have 10/10
I tried to think of every question I have had over the years (which is a lot), so hopefully I covered almost all of them!
@@EthanChlebowski I really appreciate that you avoided recommending a specific brand. As a Canadian, I often see brands recommended which just aren't available here. At the same time, we have different brands which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere. I'm sure this is the case for every country as well as region and even specific store.
@@EthanChlebowski you should have checked to see if location factored in. I don't mean in terms of growing however, I mean in terms of shipping. I've found that sometimes things shipped from places farther away sometimes don't taste as good because maybe the heat of a trip changed the taste of the food. Sometimes a good cheap local brand is good enough for most dishes. So maybe not as cheap as the store brand but not a d.o.p. either. For instance I can get sclafani grown and packed in jersey just a little away from NYC for 2.99. They can be pretty good most of the time especially for anything straight up cooked. While not the cheapest, they also don't run 5+ bucks a can either and can even be on sale for as low as 2.19 sometimes. I save the bianco only for pizza. I'm sure there's other brands local to some states that are comparable.
There was another interesting variable you missed here: the can itself. One of the reasons you might experience the metallic taste is because acid can leech that flavour out of an unlined can. Lining cans increases costs so this step is often skipped by cheap generic brands.
The presence of citric acid or firming agents may also indicate the tomatoes were harvested early. I usually avoid those too.
You might want to consider two more experiments:
1. Remove the seeds, which can add bitterness.
2. Try a jar of high quality Passata. I switched to those for many applications and found them just as good but cheaper.
I learnt those tips from an Italian cooking instructor. Was amazed by the difference it made just like you.
Never heard of or seen passata mentioned anywhere. What is it?
@@dingfeldersmurfalot4560 PASSATA is uncooked sieved tomato puree. My fav is Mutti, very versatile, great taste. Plus, comes in a glass jar, so you don't get the can taste.
sorry for being mean, but:
1. I am very sure most cans are lined/laquered, esp for anything acidic. mostly for not giving people tin poisoning. I imagine this is also even more accessible for the economy of scale white label items can offer. If the can is steel, even more reason to line it.
2. try finding out if a can is lined by looking at it. of course you could just buy all the brands to check but unless you're going to do a video about it or someth where you can reasonably taste test multiple brands I don't see why you would do that.
As someone who works in the can food industry all cans are lined/coated on the inside. Since tomatoes are so acidic they have the most coating (usually 3 coats baked on in stages). Few cans have uncoated tin on the outside anymore. Even a clear coat over the tin preserves the appearance to keep the cans looking better longer.
Adjusting the pH/Acidity of any pressure-canned vegetable or other food prior to canning is an integral part of curbing bacterial growth in the finished product. Commonly used are Citric Acid, Lemon Juice, and Vinegar, with the latter two contributing flavors which may be undesirable in the finished product.
Calcium Chloride has multiple uses, the most common of which is a firming aid, which you mentioned. However, it may be used for a purpose other than masking an improperly harvested fruit. If the chosen cooking processes are longer than normal due to the methods used (traditional "batch" Vs. "continuous"), then it may be used to prevent excessive breakdown of the product due to the longer cooking. It is also used pre-harvest to prevent Blossom End Rot.
As far as lined cans go, over 95% of cans used for food in the US are lined. The remaining unlined cans used for food service are generally restricted to dry foods where liquid acting upon the metallic can is not an issue. Extended-Storage dry rice and dry beans would be an example. In fact, I had to search a bit to find unlined cans for food service, and could not find ANY without a "Dry Goods Only" disclaimer.
Any producer canning tomatoes in unlined cans most likely lacks a legal department which can explain how saving a fraction of a cent per can is false economy when faced with the costs of a single Negligent Death lawsuit.
Hey, food scientist here, the pH actually does not relate to flavor in any direct way at all, rather it’s the titratable acidity that affects how acidic something tastes. pH and titratable acidity are two different things that do not have a correlation and must be measured separately. Look into it it’s pretty interesting, big thing in wine making especially.
Very cool, tnx for that tidbit of info Kristan 🙏
As a pharmacist I gotta say pH and titratable acidity is exact the same thing
If it affects how acidic something tastes, then it does relate to flavor. WTF? This wasn't a battery test, YFM.
@@mudageki yes exactly… the titratable acidity relates to flavor just like I said.
@@flobbel as a regular person with access to google i've got to say, maybe being a pharmacist isn't your calling. From a winemakers forum: “pH is a measurement of the strength of acid, while TA is a measurement of the percent by weight of an acid. Different acids have different strengths.13 feb 2020".
Now go sort my pills and stay away from my wine :p
I'm currently growing San Marzanos for the first time this year. They need more calcium and more irrigation than your standard heirloom or cherry tomatoes, or you'll get serious end blossom rot, but these tomatoes definitely make a delicious sauce. Very sweet and savory.
Future suggestion: Id love to see an exploration of different types of rice. I grew up with white minute rice only, so trying to figure out the differences in length and type and how it changes things would be useful.
Ll
I can’t break it down for you, but I always keep a bag of Long Grain White Rice and a bag of Basmati. Long grain rice is good for recipes like Mexican Rice, Dirty Rice, baked rice recipes, Gallo pinto and really rices that you mix with other ingredients if you’re not eating it plain. Obviously though, it can be eaten plain. With Basmati rice I just love it’s fragrance, texture, and taste. It’s really good with Indian cuisine, but that’s the part where I can’t answer as fully as I did with long grain white rice. I hope this was helpful anyway :)
@@KennieBby Thanks!
@Marie Lehleitner Thanks!
Generally I keep two kinds, jasmine and short grain/Calrose. Calrose is great for sushi, Japanese/Korean style dishes while jasmine is a great all purpose, very fragrant and the grains just fluffs and stir fries much easier for certain dishes. Speciality dishes like paella or risotto or Briyani may call for some a specific type of rice and you will certainly get better, more authentic results using the right kind of rice. I’ve also found with rice the budget brands do not cook as nice as the name brand ones, the cheaper rice tend to be dryer, more crumbly and less fragrant. Try and experiment and see what you think!
This is, bar none, one of the best videos you've ever made. This feels so on brand and was so useful to watch. I've always loved your content but this is a star. Great work, Ethan.
I still haven't finished the video, but I already love the concept, approach, and effort put into it. Amazing, man! Cheers!
Same. But already know it is super useful.
I had the exact same thing. This is premium content I would pay for.
It’s 23 minutes 😂
Bro finish it help our guys video retention stats
@@maxcarothers1315 oh, surely I did it already. More than once btw
The amount of effort that went into making this video is INSANE. First time viewer, subbed!
AMAZING video. I would love to see what American 00 flour compares to Italian 00 flour.
Ayy MIgardener! Thanks for the high intensity tips! You really helped out my gardening these past few years
Italian Manitobaflour is canadian.
It doesn't compare lol
** Important. The difference is pesticides used in the growing of grains in the US is illegal in Europe due to them causing cancer , obesity Alzheimer’s and joint and bone disease. That’s the difference. The only safe comparison is organic US grown to European
@@TigerKoehn A lot of Italian pasta made in Italy is made with Canadian wheat these day. The major difference is all the flours found in North America are enriched.
Videos like this and the one about bay leaves bring SO much value. You are the only Patreon membership I've ever had. I hope you keep this up and that you are rewarded for it.
German here, over here we LOVE using bayleaves in a wide variety of dishes. Especially soups / stews ( Everyone knows us Germans loving our sausages / beer / bread but our soups / stews are nothing to scoff at either, with wide varietes / recipe influences from all over Europe ) and those bayleaves just give such a nice and savory aroma boost it's a waste not to use them. Just last week I've made a big pot full of homemade lentil soup since it's getting colder over here too and a nice thick rich lentil soup with some nice smoked sausages and thick cut smoked and grilled bacon is just the thing you need on a cold rainy day. Needless to say I've added several nice big bayleaves to it. :p
Bay leaves taste like nothing. That’s a hill I’m willing to die on.
@@nocjef Tea leaves taste like nothing as well, but the pungency and astringency makes it what it is.
@@TwiztedHarlequin That's genuinely so interesting, im british myself and the food here is just as a bland as memes make it out to be :0
@@nocjef I didn't understand either, until I made a tea with bay leaves. Try it. It has a camphor taste to it, resin-like. It smells slightly like bay rum. It's very subtle, has a long aftertaste.
Now, come down off that hill! 🖖
I wish you had included one more category: imported Italian tomatoes that are _not_ San Marzano "style" or D.O.P. They can be both great-tasting and significantly cheaper than the imported SMDOPs.
Can you suggest a brand that might be easily available?
@@petergreenwald9639 Mutti is a good one that is found in most grocery stores, atleast in the Northeast.
That's a really good point.
I've been told (in Australia), that many Italian canned tomatoes are superior to many Australian ones because of the short time between picking and packing in Italy. Not sure how true that is, just heard it a lot.
@@APallo17 Yeah, I was hoping he’d include Mutti too. It’s a good brand, from my experience, but I’m curious how it would compare in a blind taste test. Overall, this was a great video though.
I've been using Mutti's canned tomatoes for years, it's just normal tomatoes grown in Italy, but they do taste significantly better than the generic ones grown in my country
wasn't planning on watching a 23 minute vid on canned tomatoes. but i did. and im going to make some pasta sauce now. subscribed. thanks!
And yet, you didn't learn one thing.
Exactly what I’m asking myself every time I buy canned tomatoes. Thanks for doing all the legwork!!
🧡
I never ask, I just go straight for the San Marzano, pay the extra price and know that my sauce will be heavenly.
It’s also important to note, you may WANT the more acidic varieties in certain dishes, if it’s something that has very little acid elsewhere. So this isn’t necessarily a “don’t get those two” but just a know what you’re getting
@@RP-uu7oq Isn't adding red wine pretty much SOP when making any Italian tomato based dish?
I literally spent an hour in the tomato aisle last weekend contemplating this and not knowing what the tradeoffs are in practice. Thank you SO MUCH for this video.
I'm curious to know what you did in that hour 🤔
@@swordchaos1181 yes, a literal hour. Were they building forts from the tomato cans?
💀
I did that once. I wanted real tomato not paste and the fewest ingredients available. I can tweak the sauce to how I like it. It takes a while to read the ingredients. Cost is also a factor and should be.
This has been really interesting and I enjoy these comparison videos. On the tomato choice topic, I don't normally use whole tomatoes unless they're freshly grown instead of canned. My favorite tomatoes to get at the store are Pomì chopped tomatoes, and they've become my secret to some of my best tomato dishes. There is only one ingredient, tomatoes, and they're Italian. Definitely try them if you haven't
I use the Pomi strained tomatoes for pizza sauce and combine with whole San Marzanos for marinara or meat sauce. It's perfect.
Never would I have thought I would want to watch a 25 minute video about canned tomatoes but I did it was awesome!! You thought of everything and was so precise on each aspect. This was super helpful
Are ANY of the results 335% + better than the generic? Can adding a dollop of Tomato Paste, a squeeze of honey, or a dash of sugar Mellow the Generic out to improve whatever it is he found foul? Cooking it longer will thicken it.
You will probably miss this, but try Sclafani crushed tomatoes. Ingredients are salt and tomatoes, you don't have to reduce it to make pasta sauce, and it costs about 4 dollars - so pretty good on value.
Sclafani whole tomatoes where by far the greatest canned tomatoes you could buy. Grown from jersey tomatoes - unbelievable. Unfotunately discontinued by B&G foods. Crushed variety is still out there but it's not as good.
@@jasonc9061 Thank you for the info! The Italian deli down the road here carries Sclafani products exclusively, and I've always been curious about them.
@@jasonc9061The crushed tomatoes are awesome, idk how you can say they're not good? I use them in my food religiously and they're available on Amazon by the case. I taste tested several brands from Italy when making lasagna for 100 one time. They're still head and shoulders above the rest, the crushed ones that is.This latest batch I got delivered last week which I think is this summers harvest is some of the best in a while. You should definitely try them again.
@@BevoFan1883 he said not AS good, not that they weren't good overall
@@BevoFan1883 the gentleman below me responded correct. I have 4 cans of the crushed in my pantry as we speak. I use one or two with a mix of rienzi or bianco di Napoli for my sauce.
I have a seafood soup/ciopinno recipe I have been making for years that uses canned tomatoes. The fish is always so expensive that I skimp on the tomatoes. This video got me to pick out a good can (on sale so no real budget hit) and I can't believe how bad I have been blowing it all this time. Thank you for these videos, easily my favorite TH-cam cooking chanel.
Care to share your recipe? I’ve always wanted to try making it.
We basically do a Mexican style seafood soup base in a big batch and drop whatever seafood we want in it at serving. Otherwise the fish/prawns/clams/squid gets waaay overcooked.
@@fleedermouse That sounds delicious!
I love how wonderfully detailed this video was.
It literally answered all my questions.
Thank you!
Having grown San Marzano tomatoes in my home in central Utah (among many other varieties), I can attest that this variety is one of the sweetest and pleasant tasting of them all, without the slight acidic tang that most of the others have-which, personally, I don’t mind. Obviously I don’t have the Italian volcanic soil, but the San Marzano variety is one of my favorites. We never had a chance to make a sauce, since we ate them out of hand…
Hmm, I'm something of a tomato grower, myself. I must try to grow some San Marzano tomatoes next season.
One time, I was at the farmer's market in Sandpoint, Idaho, and bought some heritage tomatoes from a vendor. One of them was a yellow plum tomato, which she called a 'Mennonite Tomato'. Over several seasons I grew them in my garden, and finally, one year I decided to enter them at the Fall Fair. Gotta blue ribbon!
These Mennonite Tomatoes are less juicy, and considered better for cooking, rather than eating fresh.
@@Ottee2 not surprising, those mennonites know what they’re doing when it comes to agriculture should probably just start all heirloom lines with them or the hutterites lol.
Grow some Orange Wellingtons and Lemon Boys, both are outstanding varieties for eating fresh.
@tinkerbellfairy8974Americans are weird. San Marzano tomatoes are perfect for sauces, however they do not taste great for stuff like salads. We use other varieties for that.
Why do you put acid in tomato cans? Typical American low quality stuff. Honestly disgusting.
Yummmmm luv tomatoes mom had a huge tomato garden 🪴 that’s exactly how I ate them out of my hand ugghhh so good so organic
Hi, as far as I know, to reduce to much tomatoes juice product in a can of whole tomatoes is to strain the can and reduce it first to as much as you need to make your sauce the consistency you want. Then add whole tomatoes product. This way you never waste your tomatoes product! I am a Chef of over 57 years and never had a problem with the juice not wanted in the finished product. I hope this helps all of your followers to a better sauce or gravy, Italian style. Chef Joseph Mascolo (60 years as a cook and Chef) P. S. Keep up the great episodes!!!
Thanks for that tip. I've always kept any liquid poured off, and then added some back in to top off, or thin out any sauce. It never occured to me to only use the liquid first, reduce it, then add the product. It is little things like this, that has helped me to improve my cooking over the years. Again, thanks.👨🍳
Those Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes are god tier!!
The Cento brand is also good and they are sold just about everywhere
I need to give those Bianco a try. You ever had any Stanislaus tomato products?
@@DanielAnchondo i haven't but they;'re really popular in pizzerias!
Whole Food is probably your easiest bet for Bianco tomatoes (:
@@DanielAnchondo The Sicilian-run Italian restaurant I worked at for multiple years used multiple varietals from Stanislaus. The sauce was so beloved by locals (And visitors, including other Italians) that I was bribed for the recipe.
Beware some Centos used to come from Argentina!
The Bianca’s are under $4 at my local supermarket. And I think they have Delallo’s at Walmart.
I guess it's time to up my canned tomato game and not settle for romas in water. great video!
I am so glad to see this being covered! I've struggled with this for a long time and without doing a bunch of side by side comparisons I can't be certain.
Yet another banger of a video! This guy is making quality videos that surpass anything else I see on youtube! A 20 minute watch for something that I can now take with me for the rest of my life. Thanks Ethan!
This is a dilemma I often have using canned tomatoes and whether or not paying extra for more high end brands are worth it. Although your test and trials aren't done in a lab, that's actually more important to me that you simply tested it as a cook in your kitchen. It's more realistic and relatable, and I truly appreciate it. I will give a few other brands a try now and see if that makes a difference in my meals. Given your results, I have no doubt other brands will yield different results, and overall better results. I love your channel, thank you for all you do.
yeah its not "lab-tested" but i really appreciate that he did everything he reasonably could to make it a fair and balanced test, blindfolded taste test, consistency in all the recipes while only changing a single variable, same time and temperature cooking etc. The process was still very scientific (within reason of course)
@@Eralen00 Yes, exactly! I couldn't agree more. I love his channel and everything about it.
Canned tomatoes have lycopene more than fresh ones. I love Margherita pizza. Just tomato, mozzarella slices and basil.
The hidden truth revealed; are you brave enough? 🌳The Connections (2021) [short documentary] 🌳
For me as a home cook, price, especially now, is a big factor. I've gotten by with using the store brand, as the video pointed out once you incorporate it into other things or cook it down, the tin can and acidic taste goes away.
The other day I tried the same kind of experiment just because I was making a big batch and had a spread of different canned tomatoes on hand. I had one generic store brand for a bit over a dollar, a "san marzano style" for about 3 dollars, and the DOP for almost 6 all going in separate saucepans (all to be combined later). Taste wise, the generics were extremely harsh and pretty much just tasted like tart acid, like it felt like it would give me heartburn. The SM style were still tart but nowhere near as acidic, and I could taste more subtle flavors. But the DOP was in a league of its own, the second it went in my mouth I could taste the difference, it's a dark, savory sweetness that isn't covered up by anything. Additionally the budget tomatoes were packed in juice rather than puree, and when that boiled off there were much less solids left over than the other types. I think if I want budget tomatoes I'll be buying crushed only from now on, so that I'm not getting gouged paying for red water. But for Italian tomato sauces I'm splurging on the DOP type from now on, home cooking is already cheaper anyway so I can afford to spend a bit more to make good food.
I completely agree with your conclusion. To splurge is to be happy 😊
100% San Marzano's are usually NEVER bitter or Harsh.....if you care about your sauce use them.
Where did you find the DOP? I have Vons/albertson, walmart, sprouts, maybe a few others but not sure if I've seen DOP in any of them.
@@halfisher3598 I got no useful information for you I'm afraid, as a Canadian I ain't got any of the places you have and you won't have any of the places I have except for Walmart, and Walmart only carries the Cento brand that I can see. For what it's worth I get mine at deep discount supermarket FreshCo but that banner and the company as a whole is Canadian only I think. If you live in a city but can't find them in supermarkets your best bet is probably an Italian grocer if you can find one.
@@halfisher3598You can almost definitely find them in any Italian specialty store. Just be wary of Amazon. Lot's on there labeled as DOP but they're usually not. If you have Costco's by you, they have 3-packs of the Cento for like $8 which is almost 1/2 priced compared to what you pay for them in supermarkets. Cento isn't quite as sweet as the DOP but it's nothing a tsp of sugar doesn't fix.
You really opened my eyes with this one. I've made about 10 dishes with canned tomatoes since you posted this and whole peeled tomatoes now feel like my secret weapon. Specifically non-DOP san marzano's, which were the best I could find at my local supermarket. The flavor out of those things is so good! Thank you.
You inspired me, so I did my own experiment today. I cooked one batch of tomato sauce (Vincenzo's TH-cam classic Italian recipe, using a basic soffritto of celerey/carrot/onion/EV olive oil - great recipe, done it about 15 times now) with San Marzano and another batch with Roma canned tomatoes. Both same brand (Mutti), both blended before being cooked out for 1 3/4 hours. Both came out delicious. SM is slightly mellower, but not by much, and we don't think many would notice. In our opinion, the benefit does not justify the extra cost (£1.35 vs £2.85 per can).
In our opinion, there are FOUR things which make way more difference than tomato variety (assuming you don't buy cheap, watery canned tomatoes):
1) Use lots more EV olive oil with the soffritto in the beginning - the veg flavour sticks to the fat and carries through the sauce much more;
2) Continue to add salt until the sauce doesn't taste flat, but instead waters the back corners of your mouth (but if it tastes salty, you've added too much and ruined it);
3) Cook for at least 1 1/2 hours until it stops tasting sour/acidic and starts tasting sweet.
4) Use fresh basil instead of dried basil, added in the last 30 seconds of cooking.
Quite a good comment. You deserve a response. You got no responses. Surprised. Thanks for sharing. Sounds logical.
@@perotinofhackensack2064maybe because it’s hard to tell the subjectivity to the taste test. In the vid, we can see what measures were taken although you’re right, interesting insight for an individual taste test.
Can't believe I watched the whole thing. Also, can't believe how informative it was. Also, can't believe how well your channel is doing. I subscribed when you had 25k subscribers. You deserve it man!
Italy’s soil is amazing. Years ago I was on highway between Rome and Naples and passed an excavated area where you could see the topsoil was at least ten feet deep, and of a rich black color due to eons of volcanic activity. Oregon has similar volcanic soil, and there produce is also excellent. I, an American, never understood why people even liked tomatoes until I ate one there. The secretin the soil.
Similar soil in much of central North Carolina... the volcanic activity was ages ago so it's safe to live there, but the aftereffects with almost black soil makes tomatoes and about everything else orgasmic to taste buds so long as the farmer is tending to it well (and why not since it's much cheaper to let the land do the work than dousing it in garbage... just grow plants the critters that'll steal the produce don't like being around. :)
Similar soil in Mexico. Where I had the first tomato I actually liked. Volcanic soil is the key to better flavor
🦠💚
Never like tomatoes until I lived in napoli.
Oregon actually has really poor soils for the most part, as the type of volcanic eruptions we have are higher in silica and lower in minerals. The soils in the region that are rich for agriculture are primarily from alluvial activity such as the glacial Missoula floods.
Of note though, “rich soil” doesn’t always translate to good flavor. Nutrient stress can sometimes produce some amazing tasting produce. Also, different plants require different types of soils and nutrients.
In the beginning of the video you described perfectly how I have felt before when I have had to buy tomatoes for a recipe. People told me to get actual san marzano tomatoes, but I never really understood exactly why and what the differences were. This video answered pretty much every question I've had at least one point in my life about these canned tomatoes. Great work!
I think this might be your best video yet Ethan. So helpful and loaded with information. In the UK I very rarely see San Marzano tomatoes available (I don't think I ever have, and definitely not in a supermarket) so the extra information about what to look out for and how it affects the flavour was really helpful. Really appreciate the effort you've gone into with this one.
I've only seen them in speciality Italian food shops in London
Waitrose have Mutti in some shops , personally I think "Cirio Pelati" are as good
@@pooroldpedro yeah these are the two that I use regularly
In the UK if you don't have a Waitrose or Italian Deli nearby, there are many small specialty import businesses in the country that will ship those ingredients direct to you.
I’m watching this on Friday rainy evening! So relaxing and exciting! Leaned so many new thing!
Thank you kindly! So grateful
I once did a bottled water taste test in San Diego with surprising results. I had about 10 different brands. I expected them all to taste about the same, but was shocked to find that I could differentiate and rank every one. Some were flat out bad. Only a few tasted like clean plain water. One had minerals added, which was actually nice. It's a good cheap taste test. I liked what you put out here! Thanks.
It started at our house as "The Pepsi Challenge". We have taste tested water, Dr Pepper and it's copies, cheap beer vs imported, even which hamburger chain was best. Surprised that when you can't tell the difference in flavor one can save lots of money. If you CAN taste a difference, it is worth the extra money. For me Organic carrots and celery taste wildly better and worth the difference. Also prefer distilled water! Our son's taste difference in brand soda, but we don't. All taste tests in blind package, so advertising sway
Fun thing to do on a rainy day!
Arrowhead here in San Diego is utterly revolting. I've heard it's less bad on the other side of the Mississippi, but it's disgusting here.
@katlicks Agreed, arrowhead was terrible, but Fiji was worse, sad to say. They were the bottom two. They both tasted dirty.
fracked water from the US , yummy
Been using Cento for years, and this absolutely makes me feel better about my choice and sticking to it. Everything from spicy Italian sausage dishes, to chili, and even a butter chicken recipe. Nice work 👏 👌 👍
If you see the bianco dinapoli you should try it. It's very similar to cento just more tomato forward. Source: trust me bro
cento gang 💪💪💪
Agreed...after I quit canning my own, I went to grocery and came home with 7 or 8 different plum tomatoes..I chose cento as the only tomato I would buy..not as good as mine but close enough for someone with no time.
@@cdiggidydon't have them in any store near me.
@@marjoriejohnson6535 It's crazy to think too that the Cento's, while not store brand cheap, are actually pretty competitive in price among the other SM and SM style canned tomatoes. I know it's not that much of a difference between $5 bucks a can versus $6, but depending on how many cans you buy it adds up.
Never seen this guy before in my life, wasn’t looking up anything tomato related but the TH-cam algorithm has struck gold again! Well done Sir
My Italian brother-in-law introduced me to Cento years ago. I love that they’re packed in a thick tomato sauce vs watery juice and they have no salt. Glad you ranked them high!
I absolutely love this style of videos, also the way you show what to look for in a canned tomato instead of what brand to look for is really helpful for people outside the US where brands and varieties may be different. Thanks for the great content!
I admire your dedication and thoroughness. Extremely informative, contained delivery of information in an entertaining manière. It's so satisfying to watch you run these experiments, gather data, and present it. This scratches my itch to combine food and science. My family always swore by Cento and I'm very happy to see that it held its own in this test!
Also 3:10 can we take a moment to appreciate how pretty those tins look altogether? They would be beautiful with herbs in or just nothing, placed up around a high shelf.
bro I see you everywhere lol we must have similar interests
It’s very interesting that they have such similar color schemes and artistic style to them!
When making pizza sauce I usually use Cento brand canned tomatoes. They get me nothing but compliments. Highly recommend.
I'll have to give Delallo and DOP ones a try. Thanks for the insight.
Same. Cento is my go to for tomato based soups and sauces.
As a retired Apple engineer - I think videos like this video exemplifies the best of what is possible on the internet.. Damn fine video. 402 thumbs up!
Really appreciate having the general takeaways regarding ingredients as opposed to specific brand recommendations. Helpful for those of us who don't have these exact brands available.
Love this style of video! I find myself spending 10x the amount of time in the grocery store worrying about this exactly kind of detail over ingredients AKA I want to save money if I'm not going to truly get a better product, so finding which ingredients pays you back in the dish vs those that you can afford to purchase the more economical product.
i feel a lot better about the fact i buy Cento for my sauces, and feel a lot less bad about not seeking out offical DOP certified tomatoes.
Yeah I always buy cento, I just liked the fact the ingredients list was "tomatoes" and nothing else
Funny he didn’t go into where the tomatoes were grown. All four of the ones he liked were grown in Italy, the other two were the US! With all the tests- the two bottom were the US grown. There was a brand of “American Tomatoes”, but they were labelled as ‘grown in Italy’. I think that’s the outcome that’s clearest.
@@karenneill9109 The Bianco brand he liked was grown in the US.
@@hatchhermit77 Oh! I missed that! Interesting. I’ll know to avoid them, then! (I’m allergic to most American brands).
@@hatchhermit77 Oh! I missed that. Interesting!
Your observations, explanations, range of information, and delivery hits so many sweet notes - thank you. This has been very helpful to me.
Try "desi tamatar" which is the indian variant. That's the best for Indian dishes in my opinion. We love homemade food, and that tomato does give us that feel. Also, hybrid tomatoes are another one we get.
Ethan, this is by far one of the most informative and useful comparison tests I have seen executed by any kitchen show. Great work! I have been buying the brands you favor, so maybe great palates think/taste alike.
My favorite thing is that he made something very tomato forward like pasta sauce, then something where tomato acts as a base like butter chicken, and the spices are the real star of the show. It's the main thing distinguishing Indian food from Western food, and cool to see the tomato types display differences in both.
Funny enough, I think Indian/Italian food lends quite nicely as hybrid cuisine, but I don't see it too often. Not even a stereotype, Indian people at Italian places always ask for extra sauce, cuz the gravies are the star of the show in Indian food.
As a beer brewer I can answer about CaCl2 effect on flavour pretty confidently. Chloride ions are used in brewing, along with Sulfate (SO4), to balance sweetness/bitterness in beer flavour. When both are present (at least ~30ppm of each), their ratio determines which flavour will be intensified: a higher chloride ratio (i.e. 100ppm Cl to 50ppm SO4) will provide a sweeter mouthfeel, while a higher sulfate ratio (i.e. 200ppm CO4 to 50ppm Cl) will enhance hop bitterness and give a drier mouthfeel.
So chloride, even from NaCl, in limited amounts (up to 200 or 300ppm) will enhance sweet flavours, which is a desirable feature in canned tomatoes.
Grew up with fresh sauces and pasta from my grandmother whom came to America from Italy. When it comes to the best canned tomatoes for sauce the Cento San Marzanos are hands down the best. They cook down to an incredible texture and flavor. Add in the great price which you can often find for as low as $3.75 for a 28 ounce can and they also have larger cans. They allow you to keep the ingredient list short as it should be for a good red sauce.
Ethan, the flow of this video is so good. I think you nailed the recording of the taste tests making it clear what you were talking about. Also the sequence going from the raw product to a prepared dish is perfect! Great info and I look forward to more!
Awesome. For Neapolitan pizza, I personally love the Cento San Marzano tomatos puréed with a little bit of salt. I don’t cook them at all prior to baking and it’s delicious
I recently became aware of the fact that San Merica tomatoes are not San Marzano, but was OK with it because I assumed they were very high-quality from another region in the US or something. But after this video, I drove straight to the grocery store to grab a whole mess of cans of tomatoes And one San Merica to see why I’ve been spending way more than I should have on tomatoes all these years. Thanks for the great video!
Thanks for the infor. I used some inexpensive canned tomatoes recently and they wrecked my sauce.
So far I'm 5 videos (20+ min each) deep into your videos and gotta say I'm gaining more insight into cooking and ingredients then following any recipe videos. Love your videos.
This was very interesting. I always buy the H.E.B. brand mostly for price. To be honest I probably couldn't tell the difference with all the different brands, but it was fun to watch.
Yeah Aldis crushed tomatoes make a great pizza sauce. The fam actually likes it better than the centro tomatoes that i crush by hand. Hmmh?
I didn’t think this mattered until I made sauce recently. It’d had been awhile and I used Muir glen organic canned tomatoes. So damn sour. I added baking powder to try and neutralize the acidity. Cento made a huge difference
Your water would evaporate though. So yes, cooking times and Temps might vary an amount, but is it enough to deduce that water content of the tomatoes would noticeably change the texture, and taste of the sauce??
This was fantastic. Thanks for doing the work that I would have liked to have done, Ethan. This has been a question of mine as well, and I'm really grateful to you for your no bullshit, no frills, but thoughtful testing from various perspectives.
Awesome! I've used the cheap generic tomatoes in my vodka sauce before, and I felt like the sauce didn't come out as well as when I use the Cento SM tomatoes. Since I couldn't taste them side-by-side, I wasn't sure if it was just in my mind or they actually tasted that different. Thanks for taking a well-considered test approach to this.
If you use cheapest option and completely different type there will be difference but i think for sauces where you are going to drop other flavours mid cheap level is sufficient enough and 5x more costly wont that better. Also everyone have different taste there will be people who like cheapest most and there will be one that not touch anything under 5 bucks.
This was a surprisingly thorough investigation, especially for TH-cam which I feel often has videos of this sort which are poorly done and unreliable. Your care and ability in tasting the details of each sauce brought actual insight - it was interesting even though I'm in the UK and (I think) our range of canned tomatoes is slightly different (never seen San marzano). Nice!!
Definitely! Maybe the only thing I think he needs imo is to expand his word precision in describing what exactly he's tasting sometimes, but that's a minor thing! I have the same problem btw; sometimes I really struggle to describe exactly what I'm tasting and why I liked one thing more than another thing.
they sell San Marzano everywhere in London
Go an Italian shop if u can’t get them Tesco or sainsburys but I swear I see it. Maybe cause I’m half Italian
@@frankmcnulty1515 london does not equal all of uk
Also fresh San Marzano tomatoes are available in supermarkets including Tesco.
This video was recommended by Brian Lagerstrom. First time watching and I became a subscriber. Thank you.
I didn't wake up this AM thinking I'd watch a tomato sauce straw taste test, but here I am. Lol. I've wondered the same thing in the tomato aisle!
Thinking about you today! Was picking up some canned tomatoes and I’ve never felt more prepared and knowledgeable going down that aisle! What a rush to be able to decipher all the ingredients and know what to look for! Thank you very much ❤
Where I live, fresh San Marzano or Romano tomatoes are almost impossible to get. So I have no choice but to use canned tomatoes. As I was shopping for them, I always wondered what makes a canned tomato “better” or “different” from brand to brand. This video answered my question perfectly! Thanks for amazing video as always Ethan!
You don’t have grocery stores in your area ? Those🥫 are everywhere
Cheers from San Diego California 🇺🇸
Canned tomatoes are usually picked when they are riper
@@JohnHausser not everyone lives in america
I’m growing San Mariano tomatoes for the first time. I usually grow various Roma. So going back to that Johnny’s chart, I’m growing Plum Regal, Grandero, and San Marzano. We don’t just solely judge by taste, but also by productivity, so far the San Marzano has more blight and some blossom end rot. So unless they taste spectacular, I may not grow them again. But there are lots of varieties of SM, so I may try another variety.
How’d the tomatoes turn out?
@@funkyfresh1013 plum Regal and Grandero were very productive and worked great in tomato sauce. We canned/froze more tomatoes than ever before. San Marzano was a bust.
I think one very overlooked thing in the kitchen that you could test is different varieties of black pepper. Not sure how you would do it, but I think it would be very interesting. Even more niche would be different salts!
Make tea and cup them like coffee!
I have tested pepper and find Penzey's pepper (multiple grinds) to be superior. It smells like citrus and flowers and doesn't make me sneeze as it's not full of pepper dust.
Exhaustive but certainly NOT exhausting! Your previous career has bled into your current one in a good way. I've not seen another foodtuber do clear-eyed evaluation of different techniques or ingredients etc better than you Ethan! Well done mate!
What did Ethan do before being a food TH-camr?
@@HeyItsTylerFTW professional fudge packer
@@HeyItsTylerFTW I'm curious as well!
@@HeyItsTylerFTW Ethan graduated from NC State with an accounting degree and went to work for
one of the big 4 accounting firms in finance and technology consulting. (From his website)
@@HeyItsTylerFTW He was an accountant
My Italian grandmother always used Cento, so that's my go to :)
Cento San Marzano is good, reliable and can often be had at great prices. It’s my go to for all applications.
This was super helpful. I watch multiple different cooking TH-camrs who recommend using San marzano tomatoes, but I never understood what the big difference was between regular canned tomatoes and San marzano. The tip about calcium chloride was super valuable to me, as well as the fact that there isn't really any one brand that is necessarily better. Thanks for the awesome content!
As someone who grew up eating regular old canned whole peeled tomatoes, this was really eye opening. Thanks!
Curious if you liked the Cento so much on the last one because of the salt vs citric acid in the packaging? Could have possibly taken on the cream flavor better. Amazing video!
I only cook with Cento whole peeled. There was no going back. Everything else tastes like a poor facsimile of what I'm looking for. Great video!
Really thorough and well done. Although I almost always buy SanMarzano tomatoes I couldn’t have explained exactly why except that Lidia Bastianich always recommends them. Thanks!
I've always liked Muir Glen as a good slightly cheaper alternative to San Marzano. San Marzano is best saved for uncooked pizza sauce (generally not worth cooking your pizza sauce, you get better results with uncooked sauce), and dishes were tomato sauce is primary and not heavily spiced/flavored.
I grow LOADS of tomatoes (at least 10 varieties every year), including San Marzanos. Canned is always better for pasta, pizza, or chili though.
I can’t remember who, but a TH-cam channel did a huge blind taste testing experiment awhile back, and interestingly, Red Gold whole peeled tomatoes won by a landslide over many more expensive brands.
Red Gold is my choice, as well, for the past couple of decades. For sauces, I really enjoyed Escalon 6-in-1 ground tomatoes (so they're not whole tomatoes), but I have not seen anything smaller than #10 cans since Covid. 7/11 (not the convenience store) ground tomatoes are excellent, too, but I've also only seen restaurant-sized #10 cans of that.
I use Red Gold. Love it.
@@pulykamell Escalon crushed toms are very good, not too tangy and with mellow flavor, wish I could find smaller cans (but it freezes well in vacuumbags).
I'm Italian and this video captivated me more than it should have.