Most supermarket tomatoes are picked green and allowed to ripen off the vine. The reason is shipping and storage. Ripe tomatoes are too soft to ship well, and they have a short shelf life. Canned tomatoes are ripened on the vine and processed immediately.
Fresh tomatoes in winter have next to no flavor. Canned tomatoes in winter have lots of flavor because they were ripened and canned in summer. Even in summer, most fresh supermarket tomatoes aren’t as good as canned. Where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, there’s a period of about two months when I can get really good tasting fresh tomatoes from specialty markets (dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes are excellent).
One brand of canned tomato (actually boxed) I really like is Pomi. I have a box of their chopped tomatoes here. On the label it says, “Ingredients: tomatoes”. No calcium chloride, no salt, nothing but tomatoes.
Yeah, as pulykamell says, it’s not about improving the flavor, it’s about preserving the flavor. It’s the next best thing to having access to real, non-grocery store, vine-ripened tomatoes.
I agree with this mostly. Salt is salt, when dissolved into recipes. The only difference is in the shape and size of the salt if it’s meant to be eaten still intact; for example sprinkled onto a garden tomato slice placed on a chunk of Bruschetta, with a bit of Mozzarella and fresh basil. hmm, think I’m hungry
I almost always opt for canned tomatoes when tomatoes are needed in a recipe. Fresh tomatoes are just too hit-and-miss taste wise. Some are delicious and the next one is bland. Canned tomatoes gives much more reliable results and are delicious.
On most ingredients, I’m of the “what you can afford/easily get” school. On salt, it has been explained to me that the reason for the preference for kosher salt is exactly what @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness explained, larger chunks makes for less salt in a given volume. This can really affect the outcome of a recipe.
I’m gonna have to disagree with @Beckdawrek about the margarine for cooking. Margarine these days has a lot of extra water added to it, to aid in spreadability or something, I guess. It took me a few failed dishes to figure it out, but that extra water can be a real pain in some recipes. I don’t even bother buying margarine at all anymore.
Amen to that. My kids didn’t understand why their nachos were not as good as my nachos. I watched them make them, and found that they used pre-shredded cheese, as opposed to block cheese I shred myself in the Cuisinart. And before I got this I would make them sometimes with pre-shredded cheese on sale, and they were awful.
I think it is the chemicals added to keep the shreds from turning colors.
Shredded cheese is covered with cellulose to prevent clumping. That interferes with even melting, among other things. Shred your own if you are making pimento cheese!
Oh I agree, Country Crock is my fave too, of the various magarine brands out there. I just got tired of having both butter and magarine in the fridge, made it feel cluttered, confused Vaderling when he was a just a little padawan learning to cook mac’n’chili’n’cheese with corn too. Why was margarine ok for his stuff but not the bread or not the sauce or what ever I was making?
Ignoring the tomato issue for the moment (and I’m snobbish about any fresh tomato I didn’t grow myself) take a look at the average NY Times recipe, which includes ingredients you have to live in NY to find or which you’d need a whole jar of for a teaspoon full - and never use again for years.
Fine for restaurant kitchens, not so good for us normal people.
I am honestly on the look out for a cheese-like Velveeta thing with a lot less salt. I’d use it for a recipe that calls for melty cheese. I’d replace a quarter of the cheddar with it. I’d make cheese sauces to die for!
Personally, what irks me is the extreme amount of DIY that many popular Youtube chefs (Joshua Weissman, I’m looking in your direction) expect their viewers to do for what should be a straightforward recipe. No, I’m not going to make fettucine noodles by hand, or grind my own beef from half a dozen choice cuts, or keep frozen pucks of homemade demiglace in my freezer. Hell, even Julia Child didn’t expect her readers to make demiglace from scratch.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen a video titled “easy mac and cheese” that starts with the host milking a cow while lecturing the viewer in what breeds give the most flavorful milk.
That’s because “sea salt” is table salt. It’s from the sea, all right… They just don’t tell you that the sea it’s from dried up millions of years ago and got covered over with other sediments, so it’s now mined.
Well, I will admit to picking up a bottle of sea salt “from the shore near Mont St. Michel”. Don’t know about the taste (actually, it has hints of… salt). But I feel classy using it. I imagine that dramatic town it came from, and the cute little market I bought it at.
But that’s his brand. I like watching his videos, even though I’m a busy father of two, because sometimes I do want to fuss about a recipe, and I don’t think making pasta by hand is particularly annoying. And the kids love it. And it does make a difference. If you want quick and easy recipes, there’s plenty of folks doing that, too. Most of the time I don’t have time for that shit, but on weekend , I love it.
I wouldn’t say the flavor is any better in tinned tomatoes, I would say consistency is better for a tomato sauce unless you are simmering for.a lonnnng time. Even more so if, like me, you have no time for peeling tomatoes.
