Mutti San Marzano peeled tomatoes, 6x 400g

Product Information

When I first opened the can, the smell of tomatoes and basil hit me – a very familiar smell! It smelled fantastic, and I instantly recognized the smell. It really reminds me of proper Neapolitan pizza sauce. This is very promising! How Does It Taste? Whole tomatoes are gently steamed and peeled before being immersed in a smooth velvety passata. These tomatoes have a delicate flavour and a firm and fleshy texture which remains even after long and slow cooks. They are extremely versatile – use them whole, sliced, chopped, crushed or blitzed depending on your recipe. Mutti believes every great recipe deserves a great tomato and that there is a best fitting tomato for every dish. From traditional chopped tomatoes for cooking from scratch to ready-made pasta sauces created with traditional recipes and modern cooking in mind, Mutti offers inspiration for all home cooks. I was recommended Mutti Pizza Sauce Spices by a Michelin restaurant chef a while ago. He told me that this is a good sauce that tastes very similar to traditional Neapolitan pizza sauce. As a huge fan of Neapolitan pizza sauce, this made me curious. Could Mutti pizza sauce really be as good as the real deal? When I finally tried it, I was honestly surprised!

We compared like with like, an initial tasting of 21 different types of raw tomato, narrowing it down to the top eight, which I cooked down with olive oil, salt, fresh basil and garlic. Finally, we tried each sauce with a forkful of spaghetti. After much slicing, dicing and tasting, our Test Kitchen team found four brands of canned tomatoes that really stood out. Here are the favorites and how to use each. Best Homegrown Flavor: Hunt’s San Marzano Style Tomatoes These tomatoes were exactly what our team wanted of San Marzano tomatoes: sweet without that bracing acidity. While canned, these tomatoes were still plump and juicy. One of the best ways to make use of a can of San Marzano tomatoes is to make pasta sauce. San Marzano tomatoes are slightly sweet, not too acidic and lend themselves well to flavors like basil and oregano which you’ll find in this marinara recipe. And the best San Marzano tomatoes for your homemade sauces have to be Alessi Pomodoro San Marzano, according to our Test Kitchen. Next was to try the taste. I first tasted the sauce raw. The taste of the tomatoes was delicious, definitely quality tomatoes (but not San Marzano). The taste of basil and oregano also really came through. The sauce was a little bit salty side, not very salty, but more than I expected, since it’s supposed to have less salt than I usually use in my own sauce. Let’s Try the Sauce on Pizza!Having worked in the food and restaurant industry for a decade, I can tell you that no two brands of canned tomatoes are exactly alike. Some tomatoes are velvety, brilliantly red, and full of flavor, while others are tough, underripe, and insipid. To date, we’ve assessed over 25 different cans of whole peeled tomatoes—some with our colleagues at NYT Cooking—to find the best. In our quest for perfection, Joe sacrificed four tins from his precious collection. Dino chaperoned two tinned and two jarred tomatoes. I brought the rest, a mix of tinned tomatoes from online delicatessens and supermarkets. Napolina, Waitrose own brand, Heinz, Mr Organic and La Tarantella, all of which can be found in high-street grocers, didn’t score badly but paled in taste beside brands imported from Italy. In general, the standard was higher than we expected, although Ocado’s unpleasant own-brand offering was dubbed “a crime against humanity” by Joe. Joe’s years of tomato tasting had taught him “not to be deceived by trophies, baubles and badges that make them look impressive, when they don’t actually taste so good”. He was inspired. “I’m going to start eating my collection and experimenting,” he proclaimed. Flavor: How did the tomatoes taste? Did they taste fresh? Did they have that distinctive San Marzano flavor: sweet and not too acidic? Are there any other additional tastes coming through—good or bad? To find the best of the best canned tomatoes, our Test Kitchen experts sampled nine San Marzano tomato brands. The tomatoes were tasted blindly and our prep crew also sliced, diced and pureed these tomatoes to see how they were to work with. All the while our pros kept these criteria in mind: The taste of tomatoes was good, and I could also taste the lovely basil flavor. The saltiness didn’t bother me when the sauce was used on the pizza. It was well-balanced and tasted like it was made from decent ingredients. How Does Mutti Pizza Sauce Compare to Neapolitan Pizza Sauce?

Even though the sauce is made from fresh, quality tomatoes, it can’t live up to the standard of San Marzano tomatoes. The can doesn’t state what kind of tomatoes are used, but I suspect it’s a cheaper type of plum tomatoes, despite the price of the sauce being as high, or even higher than, canned San Marzano tomatoes.The main ingredient (99%) in Mutti pizza sauce is fresh tomatoes. In addition to that, it contains salt, basil, and oregano. Mutti’s recipe is therefore very similar to traditional Neapolitan pizza sauce. Since no animal products are used in the sauce, it’s also vegan. In fact, the flavor of these tomatoes was so good, you could use them in any recipe where tomatoes are the star. These Hunt’s tomatoes will shine. When it comes to tomatoes, quality is important. We’ve used our fair share of tinned tomato products over the years and come to realise that not all tins of tomatoes are created equal – there are massive differences in quality and flavour depending where you buy and how much you’re willing to spend. Good tomato products should have a nice deep red colour, a pure tomato flavour, a freshness and a sweetness. That’s not always easy to find, but for our money, Mutti tomato products have always delivered on all fronts. You know by now that a can of tomatoes is a great start to many Italian-inspired dishes, particularly pasta sauces. But you don’t need to stop there.