Canned tomatoes – and tomatoes in general – are an incredibly underrated and misunderstood necessity in everyday life.
Why canned tomatoes?
A pantry packed with canned goods is not only prepared for the apocalypse, but everyday life.
While food packed with preservatives to achieve the longest possible lifespan is not what one might first think as “healthy eating,” there are certain health benefits to canned foods. Like dried fruits, canned vegetables are a cheaper and storable alternative to normal produce, which is both expensive and perishable if not consumed within a few days. Keeping canned foods at hand does increase consumption of vegetables overall, as having nutrient rich food in the pantry is more convenient than buying fresh produce whenever you feel like it is time to have some green on your plate.
Chunky Tomato Sauce
Canned tomatoes come in a wide variety, but diced tomatoes are a great and easy starting point, for pasta especially. Because of their texture it’s easy to add additional flavors, like diced garlic and onions. In general, it’s always easier to fry anything in butter, but olive oil also adds additional flavor to the sauce as a whole. Adding salt, pepper and all sorts of dry herbs, such as oregano, rosemary or basil, can really accentuate the scent of the sauce as a whole. Allowing the onions and garlic slices to saute in the fat before adding the tomatoes brings greater depth of flavor to your sauce.
Tomatoes are naturally acidic, so allowing other flavors will help accent the flavor overall, and really allow for a potent, flavorful scent. It is important to dull the acid and accentuate the inherent sweetness of the tomatoes. A pinch, or even a spoonful of sugar will do the trick – depending on how sweet you like your pasta sauce – to really bring out the flavor of the tomatoes, garlic and onions.
As the tomatoes ease to a steady boil, pouring it fresh over just-boiled packaged pasta really allows it to mix and mingle with the additional moisture from the pasta water. Allowing the pasta to retain some moisture when fresh from the pot really allows it to have that soft texture, the kind that melts in the mouth. And of course, the perfect pairing to freshly prepared sauce and pasta is some chilled parmesan and mozzarella, allowing the cheese to warm and melt in the sauce, or even become a rather cool companion to the hot dish overall.
The Ease of Tomato Paste
If you’re not the biggest fan of texture and having chunks of mutilated fruit in the food, tomato paste is another approach to the classic and well-known red sauce. Tomato paste is intensely concentrated with flavor, as tomatoes are cooked, strained and cooked again to maximize the acidity of tomatoes.
Tomato paste can act as the base of the red sauce. It is even easier to work with than diced tomatoes, and packs incredible flavor. Because tomato paste lacks the juices that diced tomatoes have, it is important to slowly add liquid and stir the tomato paste until it reaches a looser consistency before adding other ingredients.
Adding heavy cream to the tomato paste can also minimize the intensity of the tomato paste, giving the sauce a creamier and softened flavor. The cream reduces the acidity of the tomatoes overall, making the sauce milder and sometimes sweeter depending on the added sugar. The addition of the heavy cream makes the sauce so much runnier and even easier to work with, sneaking into the crevices of a classic rigatoni pasta. And with a little bit of parmesan on top, it is an absolutely decadent sauce for dinner.
Tomato Soup
Not only are canned goods convenient, but they are lifesavers when you have the common cold away from home. Though tomato soup is ideal with the addition of chicken broth (or any sort of flavored broth for that matter), it can be easily substituted with a sort of brine or even water.
Tomato soup spawns mainly from diced tomatoes (which would require a blender), or some additional boiling of the tomato paste. With a sore throat and an inability to move with the common cold, tomato soup is an incredibly convenient and available food, one which is largely at the mercy of how much canned tomatoes are in the pantry.
There is a great variety of canned fruits and vegetables, but superior to diced peaches and canned pineapples, canned tomatoes can be applied to just about anything. Flexible and easy to work with, the acidity of canned tomato products creates the perfect stage for garlic and onion, lightly fried in butter, and allowed to simmer and boil the sauce. The smell of a well-seasoned sauce, even based on cheap ingredients like canned food, is an instant comfort food when far from home. The classic base to pasta sauce, the perfect soup for grilled cheese, and an accompaniment to just about any protein, canned tomatoes are the perfect addition for a boost of flavor and nutrients to your dishes.
