The envelope please...

Hey, I'm back! Miss me? I've been consumed the last couple of days with my food group's canned whole tomato taste test. We started on Saturday at 1:00 and finished up around 10:00. Phew! But no, we were not tasting tomatoes that whole time, in between there was a hands-on pasta making lesson (flour, flour, everywhere), sampling wines from various regions of Italy, talking about food and eating, eating, eating!!!

But I won't keep you in suspense any longer... here are the results... (for more discussion and testing methodology, see here.)

Raw Tomatoes:
(out of a possible 50 points)
37 points -- Hunts
34 points -- Ferrara
31 points -- Redpack and Sun of Italy
29 points -- Muir Glen and Cento DOP
26 points -- Furmano's
23 points -- Flora DOP

Butter Sauce:
(out of a possible 50 points)
34 points -- Furmano's
32 points -- Muir Glen and Redpack
29.5 points -- Hunt's
28 points -- Cento DOP
27 points -- Sun of Italy and Flora DOP
26.5 points -- Ferrara

Olive Oil Sauce:
(out of a possible 45 points)
31.5 points -- Hunt's
30 points -- Redpack
27 points -- Ferrara and Sun of Italy
24 points -- Muir Glen
23 points -- Furmano's
19 points -- Cento DOP
16 points -- Flora DOP

Total Scores:
(out of a possible 145 points)
98 points -- Hunt's
93 points -- Redpack
87.5 points -- Ferrara
85 points -- Sun of Italy and Muir Glen
83 points -- Furmano's
76 points -- Cento DOP
66 points -- Flora DOP

I'm not sure why the pricey imported DOP San Marzano tomatoes fared so poorly, but there was a definite metallic taste to them. And after discussing it at length, we attribute it to either the age of the tomatoes, the addition of basil (this is what I think is the culprit) or it is just the way San Marzano tomatoes taste. We briefly tossed about the theory that the off-taste came from the cans since neither of the imported tomatoes were in cans with a non-reactive interior coating. But that thought was blown out of the water by the fact that the highest scoring tomatoes, Hunt's, were also in non-coated cans.

For me, most of the other tomato brands were pretty interchangeable (with the main difference being the acidity levels). An interesting point was that while I found the Furmano's totally rank to eat raw (I even went back and cut into a different tomato to make sure I had just not initially tasted a random bad one), it was my favorite cooked into the butter sauce. So go figure.

My conclusions...

Once you cook canned tomatoes for an hour or so, add onions, garlic, spices & herbs and put them over pasta, the differences are negligible.

But sure to taste before salting. Some of the brands had considerable salt, while others seemed almost unsalted.

I will not be making 60+ mile trips to buy imported DOP tomatoes anytime soon!