One trick to blanching your tomatoes is to cut a shallow X in the pointy end of the Roma tomato before plunging in the water. When you pull them out the peel curls at the X making it easy to slip the skins off. Works with peaches, too!
Mmm… guanciale. I’m actually going to the Dallas farmer’s market this morning to pick up some jowls from a local rancher/pig farmer to make my own. I’m also getting some “capicola meat” from him as well- guess I’ll finally get into “Salumi” by Ruhlman and Polcyn, now that I’ve had the book for a couple of months without really reading it.
I agree that unless you are using home-grown or fresh from the field local in-season tomatoes, it is quite likely your sauce will taste better if you use canned tomatoes.
Canned tomatoes are not made from the same type of tomatoes you buy out of season in the grocery store. Grocery store tomatoes are grown to be pretty on the display and to last through the rigors of shipping – taste is not a factor to the growers / distributors. Canning tomatoes are grown to taste good – and they are canned within a few hours of being picked.
I bought a can of each brand my grocery store carries and opened all of them to do a side by side taste test to see which I preferred. There is a big difference between brands.
I have found that even if you use fresh-from the field organic tomatoes, the results are not really superior to top quality canned.
I say this because the tomatoes I have most recently used came from my farm share. They were organic, in season, and less than 48 hours off the vine, traveled under 25 miles to my table. The end result was slightly inferior to Pomi crushed tomatoes in the box. As I noted, the ONLY reason I bother is when I get too many tomatoes to use before they go bad.
In any event, as others have said, lengthy cooking time eliminates any superior taste advantage of high quality fresh tomatoes. Almost everything will taste the same after you’ve cooked it 4 hours with garlic, onions, and 4 kinds of meat – ripe, underripe, fresh, less fresh, etc. You’re really wasting top quality fresh tomatoes when you sauce them that way. Something like what Hey Hey Paula describes takes better advantage of the special flavor of fresh ripe tomatoes.
We’re lucky enough to have a vegetable guy not far from our house. Every year we buy locally-grown over-ripes from him at a reduced price and can them ourselves. Less sodium than commercially canned and very flavorful. I agree on the taste difference in canned tomatoes: in my experience, the generic store brand tomatoes are usually inferior in flavor.
Just as an FYI, the last time I made spaghetti sauce I didn’t peel the tomatoes. I chopped them up, sent them on a spin in the food processor and then cooked them down with onions, herbs and wine over a period of many hours. I’d never take the time to peel the tomatoes before making sauce again.
I don’t even seed them. It’s all tomato, especially when you’re making a long-simmered sauce. The only time I seed them is for salsa or other fresh dishes, where the liquid is not wanted.
Honestly, I’ve never had a store tomato that tasted better than a good canned tomato or even anywhere in the same league. They are that terrible, at least around here. You cut through them, they are pinkish-white on the inside and have very little tomato flavor. That’s also why I avoid tomatoes on hamburgers. Invariably, they are made with these same shitty, pointless pink balls of cellulose. And you will notice the difference, even in a long simmered sauce cooked with tons of meat. Those tomatoes never end up tasting good in a sauce, no matter what you do with them. When I was in college, I thought fresher must always be better and wondered why my tomato sauces always sucked and tasted insipid. It wasn’t my recipes. They were fine. It wasn’t that I under-seasoned the sauce. You actually don’t need much seasoning at all if you just have one thing: flavorful tomatoes. And, most of the year, those come in a can. Took me years to figure that out.
I agree. The ones we buy from our veggie guy and can ourselves are grown locally and are over-ripe, usually Roma or other flavorful tomato. The only tomatoes we buy at a grocery are cherry tomatoes, and then only in winter months. Otherwise, we just pick them in the garden. I also keep several cans of San Marzano or Romas in the pantry.
Duckster (#14 above) linked to my recipe for making a fresh San Marzano tomato sauce from scratch. Thanks Duckster.
We’re near the end of the tomato season and when I can’t get great local fresh tomatoes I use canned San Marzano tomatoes from Italy. Here’s a long-cooked Sunday Gravy recipe with lots of meats. Use fresh tomatoes if you can get them or good canned San Marzanos.
Buon appetito!
Duckster (#14 above) linked to my recipe for making a fresh San Marzano tomato sauce from scratch.
We’re near the end of the tomato season and when I can’t get great local fresh tomatoes I use canned San Marzano tomatoes from Italy. Here’s a long-cooked Sunday Gravy recipe with lots of meats. Use fresh tomatoes if you can get them or good canned San Marzanos.
Buon appetito!
You have some interesting variations on my recipe above. I’ll have to give them a try next time I make the dish.