Recently I’ve been buying a few cookbooks from the thrift shop. Saves money over getting the new ones, saves second-hand goods from being tossed, and does the job I need in finding recipe ideas.
One of the cookbooks I got is a cookbook on pasta sauces. I’ve been holding off on making pasta until I could portion the servings properly, and I recently just got a portioning tool to help me with that. However, when I wanted to try a recipe from the book, I found surprisingly that the recipes called for fresh tomatoes.
Now, the cookbook is by no means new, seeing how the publication date is 1987. From what I’ve heard, canned tomatoes are actually preferred over fresh, though I can’t recall the reasoning as to why. I was curious about whether culinary knowledge has evolved since the publication of this book where common practice has changed to prefer canned tomatoes over fresh, or if the differences I’ve heard about are unfounded or incorrect.
On top of that, I was curious about other aspects. Would making pasta sauce with fresh tomatoes (namely Roma tomatoes) be cheaper than using canned? Also, since I’m trying to be more environmentally conscious, would canned tomatoes have a higher carbon footprint than fresh, or would the differences be negligible?
Thanks in advance! I likely won’t be able to respond to comments right away, but I do appreciate any and all help.
If you can get local tomatoes that were harvested when actually ripe, go for fresh. If all you can get your hands on are tomatoes harvested green and ripened in the store, take the canned versions.
I used a 4.2kg tin of tomatoes for my Ragu Bolognese last Saturday. Nothing to complain about the result.
Yeah, I strongly agree. If it’s tomato season, and you can grow them yourself, or get them from a neighbor or a local farm (or even a local hothouse offseason), fresh is best. The other 90% of the year, tomatoes that went into a can fresh are going to be better than zombie fruit shipped halfway across the world to get to your supermarket “ripe” in january.