food

your chef friend is right and shes not talking about diced tomatoes she probably means the steamed whole ones

they wont send the ripe ones to market because they will take too long in transit so they send the unripe ones because they will ripen during that time of transit and storage and also they get frozen and unfrozen

the canned ones get flash steamed or whatever, have some salt added to preserve them and are ripe right there in the can. they are generally much more flavorful for cooking with

if you know someone growing heirlooms those are the best option for fresh if you can get them off the vine they will blow the socks off any store tomato

I'd say if tomatoes are out of season and you're cooking them anyways, like in a stew or a sauce, even bad canned tomatoes are probably better. If you have access to good fresh tomatoes, they can be better than most canned tomatoes, but like high quality canned ones are hard to beat.

Also, the less processed the canned tomato, the better it is. If you want the best tomato flavour, get whole canned tomatoes, rather than diced or crushed.

My gf is a chef and says canned is better than supermarket fresh, but homegrown are better than canned

Tomatoes from the store are refrigerated, which turns them pretty bland, and they probably don't do that to canned tomatoes. I can't say I've ever eaten them straight from the can to compare, though.

Grocery-fresh isn't enough of an improvement over canned for me to give a shit tbh. Garden-fresh is best in all cases, but if that's not an option and they're getting cooked anyway, then I'm fine with saving some prep and cook time with an appropriate canned form.

Raw fresh in season tomatoes are better than canned tomatoes raw. But for sauces or soups or whatever canned tomatoes are better pretty much across the board.

canned tomatoes are canned at ripeness, so in general, a canned tomato from the supermarket would be better than the fresh one for most of the year. that said, not all cans of tomato are created equal. you will likely find better results if you get whole peeled canned tomatoes instead of canned diced, depending on application.

I make a lot of tomato sauces, either for pasta sauce (as I'm making today in the slow-cooker) or for a base when I make certain types of beans like lima beans.

If you're making a sauce I find the sauce is richer if I make it with canned whole tomatoes than from my garden. Of course they're both good, but yeah I'd tend to agree with the chef here.

I bought a 12 case of Pomi tomatoes in cartons off Amazon. 12 cartons for ~$40.

I get my groceries delivered but I never use Instacart. I use my local supermarket and their produce can be pretty bad. The tomatoes are always tasteless trash. I'll have a look at this thread but Pomi is really good and I assume canned stuff simply isn't.

If the tomatoes are going to be turned into a sauce and i’m out of season then yeah whole canned tomatoes all the way, other than that fresh tomatoes even out of season for anything using fresh tomatoes or
diced tomatoes. As far as canned whole tomatoes i feel like they’re really isn’t much of a difference between canned whole tomatoes, everything from the yellow can san marzano to great value walmart whole tomatoes are very good. Only time i ever use canned tomatoes is the fire roasted for my chili but that’s it tbh

An actual fresh tomato, like from a farmer's market, vine-ripened and picked at the peak of freshness?

Amazing, nothing can compare

You'd be a fool for thinking canned could work in it's stead

Now for pasta sauces or chili, where you're cooking it down and losing that fresh flavor? Canned is the way to go.

Cooking tomatoes is so technique and process sensitive that it’s probably better to go with whole peeled instead of trusting a coked out line cook to not fuck them up when five burger tickets come in.

Even at home I’m gonna buy canned for anything that involves cooking them because the weird crap in the produce section is all chosen for looks as opposed to flavor and if I visit the tomato freak at the farmers market or coop or ag extension or pick some out of the garden they’re not making it home anyway and I gotta stop at a dollar general to clean the seats with wet wipes.