My dear old dad taught me the yummiest and incredibly simple way to enjoy stewed tomatoes:
Dump can into saucepan
Add small dollop of butter/margarine
Tear a few slices of well-done toast into tomatoes
Stir to let toast absorb juice
Eat
I realize this recipe may sound gross to some. But it oes nicely with collard/mustard/mixed greens and blackeyed peas with hotsauce.
My question- How do you use stewed tomatoes from a can? OR, are stewed tomatoes too vile for you to put past your lips?
Stewed tomatos are one of life’s great and simple pleasures.
I use 'em most often for pasta sauces. Here’s a few:
A can of diced tomatoes, a big lump of butter, and half an onion simmered for ~30 minutes makes a lovely mild easy tomato sauce. Remove the onion before you eat (I literally peel the onion, cut it in half and stick the whole thing in the pan).
2 cans of diced tomatoes, anchovies, garlic, olive oil, black olives, and capers makes puttanesca, the food of the Gods. And the whores. Wonderful stuff.
Dice up a pound of bacon, fry it and drain it, throw in 2 cans of tomatoes. Cook for about ten minutes. Layer over cooked spaghetti with shredded cheddar and bake until the cheese is all melty. Bacon spaghetti! Yum!
I just browned some chicken breasts the other day and tossed a can of stewed tomatoes in the pan. Season to taste. Serve over angel hair pasta. Cheap, fast, and good.
I like to get a can of stewed tomatoes and combine it with a can of black beans (drained and rinsed, of course), dice up a half of a red onion, and simmer all of it for about 8-10 minutes. You can make it a little spicier by adding cayenne pepper, cumin, and/or red chile powder.
Then I line the bottom of a shallow bowl with a flour tortilla and ladle the tomato mixture into the tortilla bowl. It makes an easy dish for the family on movie night.
Simply add onions, chopped salty olives, and cayenne. Simmer. Pour over angel hair pasta and drizzle liberally with olive oil.
Yummiest marinara you will ever eat!
Rub it all over myself if I get blasted by a skunk.
Alternatively, use it as the base of red sauce a la Mom.
We use 'em a lot. Pot roast and beef stew are both better when the meat is braised with stewed tomatoes. I also like them plain, served as a side dish (especially in the middle of winter, when no good tomatoes are to be found.)
Do any of you make your own? In two or three weeks, tomato season will be in full swing, and my daughter and I will be canning our homemade stewed tomatoes - a batch or two every week. We generally put up 25 or 30 pints to get us through the winter and early spring until summer’s tomatoes are picking again.
Wow. I’m a bit surprised that stewed tomatoes are this popular. I’ve never ever seen anyone else buy them.
I’ve done the chicken breast & stewed tomatoes over linguine, but I usually sautee thinly sliced zucchini & yellow squash before adding the tomatoes. (actually, i came up with this one night when I was slightly “enhanced” and got the munchies. it was goooood!)
Keep the ideas coming on in! You’re giving me yet more excuses to buy maters!
Oh by the way, do you notice a difference between the store brand and name brand? I’ve found that the store brand is very good, but Hunt’s isn’t as runny & has more onions, peppers and good stuff.
That’s why I love stewed tomatoes! And so versitile, too!
I make Chili ala Dad. His recipe goes like this:
Brown a pound or more of ground beef in a large pot.
Drain off excess grease.
Add 2 or 3 or 4 cans of stewed tomatoes, depending on the size of the herd you’re feeding.
Add an equal number of cans of kidney beans. Do not drain.
Chop up an onion or two and dump them in.
Add chili powder to taste.
Bring to a boil and then let simmer for at least a couple of hours.
Bring the herd together and eat. However, chili always tastes the best the next day so if you can stand the wait, let the pot cool down enough to stick in the fridge and then reheat later. Or just double your batch.
When I became an adult, I altered Dad’s recipe a little. I found I liked Italian style stewed tomatos better than the plain. I also switched to using Tobasco sauce instead of chili powder. It gives a bit more zing.
One time, when Dad’s finances were tight but he still had to take care of four growing kids, he discovered he could stretch his budget a little by ladeling the last of the chili over mashed potatos. He found he really liked it that way. Us kids, not so much. We had nothing against mashed potatos but we preferred our chili in it’s pure and unadulterated state. YMMV.
I’d like to add I thank the gods for tomatos. Stewed tomatos, especially. If it weren’t for their yummy flavor, their wonderful versatility and great nutritional value, I’d be a lot more hard put to get anything near my daily requirement of veggies.
Viva la tomato!
I hate to break it to you, but tomatoes are fruit. 
Chop up a few cloves of garlic, brown in the bottom of a pot with some olive oil, then add a can of stewed sliced tomatos (or really any kind of stewed tomatos, since you can kinda dismember them in the pot with a knife if you need to), a can of tomato sauce, and a portion of a little can of tomato paste, along with whatever other veggies are on hand (onions, mushrooms, whatever) and some basil and oregano and then add a pound of hamburger meat (cooked first on a skillet, of course) and mix it all up and let it cook over medium heat for about 20-30 minutes (basically until the spaghetti is done, is how I do it). 
If I’ve run out of the home-canned stuff, I’ll buy Dei Fratelli or Del Monte, but not Hunt’s.
They’re good mixed with canned green beans, and as an ingredient in my mom’s version of goulash – hamburger, elbow macaroni, and stewed tomatoes.
Add sauteed garlic and onion, mushrooms, basil, oregano, salt and pepper, and just a little sugar. Simmer for twenty minutes. Stir in cooked italian sausage and some red wine, cook another 5-10 minutes, and serve with spaghetti and garlic bread.
Oh, everything’s good on mashed 'taters. If he were clever though, he’d have baked the potatoes. They probably charge you $7 for a chili baked potato at most chain restaurants.
We like to add a can of stewed tomatoes to Zatarain’s Dirty Rice mix. If you folks up north and in Canada and elsewhere have never had, or even heard of, dirty rice, boy, you are missing out! Instead of ground beef, we use ground sausage meat. Makes all kinds of difference. Prepare it according to the directions, and then add a can of tomatoes. It cuts through the heat of the spices and gives it a nice flavor.
I also like Spanish Rice-A-Roni, which calls for a can of tomatoes as well.
Quick dinner recipe:
1 can stewed tomatoes (I like the garlic & basil kind)
1 pack Italian sausage
Simmer
You can put the sausage on buns for a quick dinner or make some pasta and put it over that. I like seashells - they hold the sauce in.
My mom has always canned stewed tomatoes. She uses them in sauces and stews and also in a baked macaroni and cheese casserole. I never could get to like tomatoes of any kind so never really appreciated the appeal.
My ex-boyfriend used to drain the juice from the jar and put the tomatoes in a bowl. Then he’d dump a huge amount of white vinegar over them and eat them like that. I think he enjoyed the fact that it grossed me out.
I use croutons instead of toast. Adds a little extra kick. My wife makes funny faces when I eat stewed tomatoes.
I hated all tomatoes until I had my second child. Now? I’d cut you for a good 'mater ;). Canned stewed tomatoes have a place of honor in my pantry.
I pour them, room temperature, over homemade mac-n-cheese. The ONLY way to eat it! I scoop them right out of the can, too. No need to make another dish dirty.
The Cheeseburger Macaroni recipe on the back of the DelMonte can is terrific! No real culinary skills required. My kids love it. We double the batch (or, just double the macaroni and tomatoes, for a less meaty meal).
The guy I’m married to will eat them poured over mashed potatoes. I am not amused.
One of our favorite suppers is pork sausage, mashed potatoes, and stewed tomatoes. Pick up a bit of tomato with a bit of sausage…
I used to think I had a preference between name brand and generic. I was probably wrong. I tend to always grab the DelMonte though. I like plain, regular stewed tomatoes. I don’t like the Italian style, and I won’t try the spicy versions.