Canned Tomatoes. What do you use?

[pacanis]

So... now that were were talking about canned tomato products, what style does everyone like to keep on hand? Not what brand, but what style, as in whole, crushed, puree, diced, already seasoned (sauce, Italian tomatoes)...?
If you can your own, what do you make the most of, or do you leave them whole and decide when you open the jar what you are going to do with them?

Aside from a can or two of tomato paste I like to keep around, I mainly just buy crushed. If I have ten cans on hand, 8 of them are crushed and maybe one whole and one puree. I like the texture of crushed in sauce and I like the texture in chili. All crushed is not the same though. I bought a yellow can one time, De F something, and their crushed was more like diced. It just didn't have that thick texture of Contadina or Red Pack crushed tomatoes.

So what say ye? What is your favorite texture in a canned tomato product?

 

[Snip 13]

We don't have crushed in SA.
I buy chopped in tomato juice, chopped with onion and a few cans of Indian Style tomatoes for curry in a hurry!

I also buy tomato puree for lasagna etc and cans with Italian flavouring for quick pasta sauces.

I avoid cans with added sugar and things I can't pronounce lol!

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Crushed, puree, diced, sauce, paste, Marinara...seriously, I keep it all, never know what I will want, need or have the time for. Especially this week when I didn't have my extra day for cooking. Easy to stir together a can of garbanzos and a can of diced with pepper for a quick lunch. Cook pasta and sauce with Marinara. I use Marinara with lots of meals.

 

[pacanis]

I'm not sure we have one labeled chopped unless I haven't noticed it, but it's probably pretty similar to one of them.

 

[GLC]

Mostly Hunt's products. Peeled whole, when I want the tomatoes to have a physical presence. Rather than diced, I break up the whole tomatoes. Crushed for most other things, because I can keep it around in place of puree and sauce. And I keep some paste, for when I need the flavor without the liquid. All of them without flavorings, (not Italian, for instance.)

A can of tomatoes is, as the old cowboys knew, one of the best refreshments in blazing hot weather.

 

[pacanis]

Crushed, puree, diced, sauce, paste, Marinara...seriously, I keep it all, never know what I will want, need or have the time for. Especially this week when I didn't have my extra day for cooking. Easy to stir together a can of garbanzos and a can of diced with pepper for a quick lunch. Cook pasta and sauce with Marinara. I use Marinara with lots of meals.

So I'll put you down for no favorite

I forgot about Ro-Tel. I don't use that in sauces, but I always have a couple cans of tomatoes & chilies on hand.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

I'm not sure we have one labeled chopped unless I haven't noticed it, but it's probably pretty similar to one of them.

Likely diced. I have more diced than anything else. I have a tendency to eat the tomato paste out of the can...

 

[PrincessFiona60]

So I'll put you down for no favorite

I forgot about Ro-Tel. I don't use that in sauces, but I always have a couple cans of tomatoes & chilies on hand.

Oh yeah, can't live without Ro-Tel...and pintos. I hope I get lunch soon.

 

[Andy M.]

I buy whole canned tomatoes. San Marzano if the price is reasonable. When I make a pasta sauce, I usually crush them in my hands. When I make pizza sauce, I puree them. I keep two sizes, 14 Oz and 28 Oz.

 

[pacanis]

I don't recall buying much in the way of Hunt's tomatoes. Probably because I don't like their catsup as much as Heinz ketchup

 

[Andy M.]

...I forgot about Ro-Tel. I don't use that in sauces, but I always have a couple cans of tomatoes & chilies on hand.

I don't care for the taste of Rotel. I add chilies to canned tomato as needed.

 

[msmofet]

Nothing with added seasoning in the can. I like to add my own flavor.
Crushed - for chili
Crushed - for sauce but I sometimes run it through a food mill if there is a lot of skins in the can.
Whole - for making a salsa
Plain unseasoned tomato sauce - for a quick doctored sauce
Paste - for making sauce, sometimes for pizza and for hot dogs and onions
Paste in the tube - for adding a small amount to recipes
Stewed

 

[bethzaring]

I recently had the opportunity to put this question to the test. I moved from Ohio to New Mexico and sold or gave away enough stuff to get my possessions down to a reasonable sized moving van. (I had to sell my MF 265). I was confronted with what to do with about 300 quarts of home canned goods. The potatoes, green beans, corn, and tomato juice I gave away. But some canned foods I had to bring with me, in my car, and schlep them around to keep them from freezing during the 7 day cross country trip, in December. I needed to be really careful about what I packed in the car, and in retrospect I made some poor choices (some cooking equipment would have been nice, as well as my camera, but alas, those items are somewhere in my storage unit). The tomato products I hauled and schlepped were spaghetti/pizza sauce and chili sauce, both recipes from the Ball canning book. The spaghetti/pizza sauce I use for obvious dishes but the chili sauce is used both as an ingredient (taco lasagna/burrito type dishes) and eaten straight out of the jar like salsa. But I do miss my tomato/V8 juice.

 

[pacanis]

That's interesting, Beth. It didn't occur to me that canners would season their canned goods before sealing, rather than opening a jar to use and then seasoning it. Duh.
I'll give my tractor a hug for you today

 

[bethzaring]

That's interesting, Beth. It didn't occur to me that canners would season their canned goods before sealing, rather than opening a jar to use and then seasoning it. Duh.
I'll give my tractor a hug for you today

I was never able to can only tomatoes, even though I tried to many times. If I was canning tomatoes, then I also had onions, garlic, green peppers, celery, basil, parsley, carrots......coming on in the garden. And if I was going to the trouble to can, and was growing all those vegetables, I had to add them to the mix.

That's so sweet of you to hug your tractor for me. I think I may swing by the storage unit and hug my honda generator today. That's the closest thing I have to the MF (they are both red).

 

[Whiskadoodle]

Doink I wish I had a V-8. When I first discovered V-8 comes in 6 packs., I thought cool. Drank 'em all at practically one sitting. Don't buy that anymore. If I have tomato juice, I can doctor it up any-which-way and it's a tasty one time drink. I think the adding a little this/ a little that a shake of tabasco etc is self-satisfying.

I buy San Marzano whole tomatoes and sometimes another brand and break up with my clean hands. Well, they start out clean anyway. I bought diced once, they were ok, so would do it again, am not familiar with a tomato puree.

I usually have a small cans tomsto paste and Ro-tel on hand.

Most often I start out with jarred 'spaghetti" sauce as a base and go from there.

Last and most important-- Real Tomatoes. I know this is very much a seasonal vegetable/fruit. They are getting better about having hot house/ types that are more flavorful.

 

[pacanis]

My neighbor has a Massey. And there is one across the road from me in the grape vineyard right now. They were resetting posts the other day and it is sitting there with the auger bit buried MF's are pretty popular around here.

 

[sparrowgrass]

I can my own--love the chili sauce recipe from the BBB, but I leave out the spices and add more hot peppers. It makes a sweet hot salsa, good for chips, sandwich topping, over pork roast before putting it into the oven, and it makes great Christmas presents!!

I also can salsa without sugar, for tacos or as a chili ingredient.

Most of the tomato jars in the pantry are roasted sauce--I put all the ingredients for sauce (tomatoes, onions, green peppers, garlic, celery, maybe some hot peppers) on a roasting pan at 400 for an hour, run it thru the food processor or use the stick blender, add some vinegar, and can it. I put some of it in half pint jars (just the right size for a pizza) and the rest in pints. Roasting saves me scorching the sauce on the stove top, no sticking or stirring or blops on the stove top, and the roasting pans rinse clean after a few minutes soak. (Can you tell I am a lazy gardener/cook?)

I also do a few quarts of plain old tomatoes--I like them in veggie soup.

 

[pacanis]

Do you make chili, Sparrow? Do you use the roasted sauce for that?

 

[Steve Kroll]

I usually just buy canned whole tomatoes, preferably San Marzano. If I need a sauce, I take a stick blender and whiz it into sauce. Occasionally, if I have a recipe where I need chunks of tomatoes, I'll buy canned diced tomatoes.

Oh, and if I'm making up a quick blender salsa, I also like those Muir Glen fire roasted tomatoes. I find that for some dishes they are just too acidic, but for salsa, they work great and have a nice smoky flavor.