Please, not my spaghetti sauce! (Campbell acquires the Rao's Brand)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

I don’t grow tomaters and the heirloom ones I have bought were disappointing. Grape and Roma are better, but canned is very consistently excellent. Don’t say that about many foods.

The San Marzanos make ethereal sauce when cooked, regardless of whatever chemical description. Rao’s restaurant only uses them. The mystique comes not from the provenance of the tomatoes. It is that Rao’s has served great food for generations, is small, has generations of customers who crow about it and its exclusivity. They have a policy of saying “no” to very successful people (which they enjoy) and so has acquired a reputation as one of the hardest lauded restaurants in the world to eat at in person. People years ago bought the right to eat there a couple times a year, I think I recall, and these “dining rights” are considered as rare and valuable as old-fashioned taxi licences.

I can’t fairly comment on their sauce, since I haven’t tried it (or even seen the Bolognese). I doubt it would contain the same hefty amount of meat I use in mine. Fresh is certainly better. It’s not hard to make great Bolognese. The recipe in Rao’s, which one assumes is better than the commercial version, is pretty traditional. Not a lot of added sugar or chemical crap. How much does it cost in the States, normal price and on special?

82

San Marzanos are really among the best for saucing. If you are looking for legit certified from-Italy San Marzanos, you have to look for DOP certification to be certain. That said, I don’t particularly care if they are specifically Italian, as long as they taste good. The SMT and Bianco DiNapoli (both domestically grown) brands are my favorites. I also like Escalon brand/6-in-1 brand crushed tomatoes (also domestic), though I haven’t seen them in anything but #10 (~109 oz) since Covid hit. Cherry tomatoes also work very well for saucing, but San Marzano or San Marzano-style are my favorites.

83

Actually it doesn’t have sugar at all, nor chemicals.

84

Rao’s tomato sauces cost $.33 cents/ounce in my area, compared to the average of 13 cents/ounce for sauces in general. Not “ethereal” enough to account for that difference in my opinion.

Tomatoes like San Marzano, Roma etc. are commercially used for making tomato paste and sauces because of dense flesh and low water content, not taste. And it shows.

I have it on good authority that Rao’s contains threonine, valine, linoleic and linolenic acids, β-sitosterol, campesterol and stigmasterol.

All are chemicals found in tomatoes. :grin:

85

Anywhere from $6-$10 a jar for the marinara. At my usual grocery, it’s $9.99. The other grocery I shop at has them at $7.99. Somewhere I’ve seen a deal like 2 for $12, if you buy a two-pack.

86

While I agree their lower water content and dense flesh makes them especially desirable as saucing tomatoes, I disagree that they don’t have good taste. They are a little sweeter, less acidic and thus gentler and have pure concentrated tomato flavor. Where are you getting your San Marzanos from that they are bland? I can (and have) eaten the suckers straight out of a can. They are fantastic.

87

That’s my point, based on what I remember from looking at the marinara. Just what you’d use at home, nothing more or extra. That’s good. But a hefty premium based on Canadian prices. Costco sells two jars of marinara, no meat, for about C$15 so sounds like it is about the same here after conversion.

88

I’ve eaten at the Rao’s outpost at Caesars Palace. Good, but hardly transcendent. Elton John’s guitarist Dee Johnson was eating with his family at the next table.

I keep a couple of jars of their sauce in the pantry for when I can’t be arsed to cook. Mainly the Arrabiatta. I still add spices.

89

I presume Rao’s also makes passata? (Not seen it in Canada).

Most Italians make their own sauce for a reason. It’s not hard. Sunday gravy makes tougher meats transcendent. Bolognese can have more vegetables than one might expect.

90

There must be people that experience “gentle” and low acid tomatoes as flavorful. I am not one of them.

The “purest” and “gentlest” tomatoes have to be those utterly bland white varieties they sell for people who can’t tolerate a tangy full-bodied tomato.

Being the top vote-getting canned tomato in a Wirecutter staff taste test is not all that great an honor.

91

Lol, I should have said “added chemicals.”

92

Well, your tastes are your tastes. Taste test after taste test, San Marzanos and their varieties show up on top:

It’s not a tomato I like for sandwiches – I’m more a Black Krim guy when it comes to that – but after tasting probably dozens of different canned varieties, two come out on top for me, and those are the ones mentioned in that article, though I’d flip their number one and number two.

93

I agree affecionadios claim fresh heirloom is better and know Italians who grow their own. That’s just not my personal experience. And the best Italian restaurants use quality canned for consistency.

Fresh Canadian tomatoes from the usual grocers, even with a smidgen of vine, usually aren’t very flavourful. The ones sold in Mexico taste much better for whatever reason.

The link below might be walled. Consumer Reports likes Rao’s saying it tastes homemade. It is not their highest pick, which they specifically say is due to its high salt content, which is kind of bullshyte for those with healthy kidneys. (Their readership is likely old, so this may be unfair.)

They give good advice for improving any commercial sauce: (excerpt)

Jazz Up Your Jarred Sauce

While many of the sauces we tested are delicious as is, you can easily add more flavor if you like. “In not much more time than it takes to heat jarred sauce, you can create some really special flavors,” says Celine Beitchman, director of nutrition at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. Here are some of her favorite hacks.

Enhance the Texture
Save a little of the starchy water your pasta was cooked in and mix it into your sauce. The liquid will release its starch molecules and add body and creaminess.

Repurpose Leftovers
In a [skillet], heat cooked ground meat, pork, or chicken (or fresh or cooked mushrooms or other veggies) in olive oil, then stir it into your sauce.

Boost Flavor With Wine
Sauté garlic and onion; add ¼ cup of wine, cook for 2 to 4 minutes, then add to the sauce. Or combine sauce with a cooked-down mixture of vodka, cream, and red-pepper flakes for a spicy vodka version.

Spice It Up
Stir fresh herbs such as basil into your sauce as you heat it up. If you only have [dried spices], sauté them in olive oil for 30 seconds to enhance their flavor, then add to your sauce.

94

Supermarket bought tomatoes are absolute garbage. Even when I’ve bought heirloom varieties at the store, they haven’t been terribly great, but the supermarket bought tomatoes – especially romas – are a mere simulacrum of an actual tomato. I’ll tolerate a vine-ripened grocery tomato for a sandwich or a salad, just because I want another texture and some liquid, but the romas are like styrofoam. Hence why I will never make sauce from supermarket fruit.

95

I agree, but I phrased it in Canadian.

Kitchn similarly gives highest ratings to a San Marzano brand. Cooks Illustrated likes Muir Glen.

96

Judging from the ingredients list, they are already using powdered garlic. (Hopefully not rancid.) Salt is listed before garlic. In order for that to be heavier by weight, it has to be desiccated garlic.

97

I’ve been using Muir Glen as an acceptable brand at Chez Pulykamell for about twenty years, and while being good, I find it surprising they’re at the top of the heap. They don’t blow me away, at least straight up for a simple pasta sauce. But they are solid. I got lucky and found a bunch of 28 oz cans of them at a Dollar Tree for a $1.25 a few months ago. You bet I bought up most their stock!

98

I tried to eat at Rao’s once, turned out that’s nearly impossible. The local “Families” (think Soprano) have regular tables, and they are all spoken for. Unless you have a connected friend who can invite you, you can’t eat there.
Here’s a story from a guy who managed it:

99

This article, by a fan, thinks the high price is the point and Campbell’s really won’t change it. The company behind Rao’s sold $600m worth of product last year. Is Rao’s a luxury good? Is it almost a Veblen good?

100

I am now eating pasta with their Four Cheese sauce. Great stuff.

(if you can make it better at home from scratch, I don’t care)