I used to buy canned maize corn tortillas before going on rafting trips. Watertight cans are good.
Modern canned veggies aren’t bad if used to pad-out whole lentils or pintos.
I opened a can of squid in black water. The cat hissed and batted at the atrocity.
I do miss canned whole chickens. They worked well at commune feeds.
[quote=“CairoCarol, post:1, topic:845734”]
[li]Corn - While I would not serve it straight up as a side dish, it is great for soups, stews, and casseroles.[/li][/QUOTE]
Corn is one I’ll recommend against canned. Frozen is far superior.
Re: The horrifying. That reminds me of good old “Steve, don’t eat it.”.
All good:
Chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
Water chestnuts
Black olives
Acceptable:
Many canned soups
Personal dislike:
Any canned pasta
Most all canned chili, other than the occasional can of Dennison’s
Generic canned beans; I’ll stick with S&W, thank you
That potted meat food product is its own parody! Wow.
Y’all have reminded me of a few additional canned goods - I can’t let my snobbery get in the way of mandarine oranges. Yum. Great as a cake or tart topping.
Soups I wouldn’t use for the simple reason that I make homemade soup fairly often as a way to use up leftovers. Except for condensed cream of tomato, which is the secret ingredient of tomato cake.
And how could I forget refried beans? I basically don’t buy them anymore because I’m pretty sure it’s healthier to make my own with olive oil as the fat, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are a delicious guilty pleasure.
Also, I’ve had ghee and tahini from a can, though it feels better when I can buy them in glass jars.
As to the black olives - really? There are good ones? When I think of black olives in a can, I think of tasteless little rings that my mother used to put in a particularly hideous casserole of ground beef, taco seasoning, fritos, and grated cheese. Blehh. But if there is a decent brand of canned black olives out there, I want to know about it!
Yeah, Hawaii and Guam are both Spam-obsessed. I didn’t grow up in the islands, though, so it isn’t something I am used to cooking with. Spam musubi is passable but I’ve never made it at home.
This. I’ll be damned if I’m going outside in search of fresh snails.
I love Healthy Choice canned soups, though they’ve discontinued most of their best flavors.
I always have on hand canned tomato sauce, refried beans and chili beans. They are good and dependable. And the canned chili bean options are evolving, now you can get it with red beans, black beans, kidney beans and others. All of the above is always heavily sodium-ed. (Sometimes “no salt added” tomato sauce makes the cut.)
…and canned is arguably better than fresh for making pumpkin pie. If you start with fresh, there’s a danger the pumpkin mash will be too thin and watery (even if you roast it - boiling it is just asking for disaster).
I actually have a recently purchased can of tamales in my kitchen; those don’t resemble “real” tamales either, but I like them occasionally.
I haven’t seen this, but I understand it’s readily available in parts of Europe, and also as a camping or “emergency” food.
This product is often considered a joke, but I first heard of it from a friend whose late mother used it when she made chicken and noodles.
https://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Sue-Chicken-without-Giblets/dp/B00E3AYVA8
And this is not a real product.
You could add me to the list of the people who like canned pasta; beef ravioli is my favorite.
I have about 100 cans stored in my cupboard; they form the bulk of my emergency day food supply.
(cues up the Doobie Brothers) The squid, or the black water, or both?
When I was taking college biology, one of my classmates said he knew a man who had once been a chef at Sonny Bono’s restaurant, and one of the menu items was squid ink pasta, something none of us in the class had ever heard of, not in late 1980s Iowa. I’ve since had it; it gives the dish an extra umami kick and no, unlike other “black” food dyes, it does not turn your poop green.
(Another classmate smiled and said, “Oh, wow, really?” when he mentioned Sonny Bono, and this classmate replied, “Yeah, the guy said he was an asshole.”)
Does that mean the can of whoop-ass isn’t real, either?
Yes it is. I searched Amazon for dehydrated water and found various suppliers, as well as sources for Whoop-Ass (regular and extra strength), Creamed Possum, Bacon & Cheese Giant Waterbugs, and a Public Toilet Survival Kit. I searched for Canned Cthulhu but only got Korean Dried Squid Legs, not canned.
Cheaper store brand tomatoes can be a crap shoot.
That’s why we keep vivid spices handy. Canned toms go with spices into soups, stews, beans, risottos, etc - not for timid consumption. Xalapeños cover many misfortunes.
I’ve had squid ink pasta; bought it at Balducci’s in NYC. It’s ok, but not worth the high price.
I love all kinds of canned seafood. You just want to be sure you’re getting the high quality ones. I don’t mean Starkist tuna and those cheap sardines in water or tomato sauce. If you have an “international” market you should be able to get a variety of brands of sardines - look for the ones imported from Morocco; herring and sprats (try to find ones from the Baltic region), mackerel (I have had canned mackerel from Japan that was quite literally only a small step down in taste from the cooked mackerel sashimi at a good sushi restaurant - find these at an Asian market), and oysters (get them in olive oil or water - avoid the cheap, gross oils like cottonseed.) All of the above should be available for $2-$3 a can (and you’d be surprised just how much they can pack into those cans - it’s more than it looks like from the outside.) Bump up your price a little to the $5-7 range and there are all sorts of kippers (whitefish, herring, smoked to perfection) from Maine. Increase your budget to the $10 and up range and you can get all kinds of premium cuts of tuna in little jars of oil and seasoning, made in Italy. Those are a little expensive for a tiny jar, but they are goddamn great - the king of canned tuna.
I don’t trust any product that isn’t manufactured and distributed by the Acme Corporation.
Libby’s Country Sausage and Gravy. It’s surprisingly good—almost as good as homemade if you add extra black pepper. You still have to make homemade buttermilk biscuits to ladle it over. It’s got to be “Libby’s” brand. Just remember it rhymes with “Tibby’s.”
Canned flat anchovies in olive oil. A must for homemade pizza and calzones.
Spam with Real Hormel Bacon. Slice it thin and fry it crisp.
Royal Dansk Danish Butter Cookies