Best tomato for sauce and soup

[(bryan)]

Thank you all for the replies. I have a few oxheart varieties and some san marzanos i'll try. I have space for about 60 plants so i can try a few different varieties

[lycomania]

It's easy I'm missing something, but for me flavor is the most important part of a tomato. I know we grow sauce and paste tomatoes to have less juice and fewer seeds (to make cooking them down go by faster). But if we want the best taste for our sauces, shouldn't we use the best-tasting tomatoes? Am I being misguided?

I also happen to be a giant fan of tomato seeds and juice. Anyway, that's my take.

[linzelu100]

I haven't tried all of the above tomatoes mentioned. I have tried Rutgers and that is a good one. A good canner too. I grow for my sauce and soup, Italian Heirloom, which I originally got at Seed Savers Exchange. It converted my mother and sister into growing heirlooms, particularly Italian Heirloom, from their much beloved hybrids. They put 10 plants in this year. It is very sweet in my opinion and needs nothing but garlic and olive oil. Tastes great over green beans too. I have tried to upload a photo, but I can't get it to work

Lindsey

[linzelu100]

Ok...I lied, I did get it to work

Lindsey

[Father'sDaughter]

Originally Posted by lycomania

It's easy I'm missing something, but for me flavor is the most important part of a tomato. I know we grow sauce and paste tomatoes to have less juice and fewer seeds (to make cooking them down go by faster). But if we want the best taste for our sauces, shouldn't we use the best-tasting tomatoes? Am I being misguided?

I also happen to be a giant fan of tomato seeds and juice. Anyway, that's my take.

I've found that the cooking process brings out their flavor. I can start with a big pot of so-so tasting paste tomatoes that I wouldn't eat fresh, but after they've been cooked down a bit I end up with a very rich and flavorful sauce.

[ArcherB]

I never have enough of any single variety to make a decent sized pot of sauce with, but I can tell you what I have experienced.

Tome Sol was an excellent tomato, but it was just like any other beefsteak to me, only not red. Made a good addition to a sauce, but the color takes some getting used to. I found it worked better with something like a bruschetta or a salad where the color may contrast against red and/or green tomatoes you have rather than blend in with them. When I made a sauce with Tome Sol and reds, it just came out as a dull looking red sauce. Excellent flavor though. Tome Sol is the only tomato my wife will eat. It doesn't upset her stomach.

Wessell's Purple Pride (Cherokee Sausage) was probably the best IMHO. It has the flavor of a black with all the sauce benefits of a sausage/plum tomato.

San Marzano Redorta and George O'Brien were also winners. Large, sausage type tomatoes with almost no seeds or gel and all meat. Easy to peel and cook down.

Standard San Marzano and Roma type tomatoes would make excellent sauce if they were larger. If you don't have a food mill, you will be peeling these by hand. These tomatoes were easy to peel, but when each one is only 2-4 oz, you are doing an awful lot of peeling for very little tomato.

Blacks make the best sauce for me as they tend to have the best flavor. You'll have to cook them longer than a heart/plum/roma, but they are worth it to me.

Brandywines and other large reds are also work well, but I prefer those on BLT's or salads. These did not work on pizza or otherwise cooked whole as they released too much water and made everything soggy.


I hope to get enough greens, yellows and oranges (KBX, for example) to make a non-red sauce. The problem is that if you add any red tomatoes to a non-red sauce, it will overpower the rest and make the sauce a flat red rather than the deep rich red you would expect.

Also, be sure to remove the seeds from any sauce. They don't cook down well and give your sauce an unpleasant texture.

My $0.02

[indigosand]

I'm not much help in regard to flavor, I mixed everything up last year too. What I do not suggest is San Marzano. I had more BER than I ever care to see again. I probably got 1/3 or less of the full harvest as decent, usable fruits. They were also mealy and bland IMO. Pretty disappointing.

What I DO suggest, is if you want to can a lot of sauce, plant a row of determinates. I was shocked that I really liked the "Health Kick" paste determinate tomato I picked up on a whim last year. I think it was a good classic taste with a nice tart taste that was easy to even out with less sugar. They have more lycopene in them than other varieties, thus the name. With the determinates you will get your whole harvest evenly ripe all at once. No waiting for "enough" to can, or having to can small amounts at a time. Easier to plan for, easier to estimate output. I also like "celebrity" if you'd like a traditional size and shape for other canned goods like whole peeled or diced. HTH!

[TZ-OH6]

I can't say what is best, just what I would never grow for sauce = red paste tomatoes. They make the budweiser of tomato sauces. Others are like microbrews or different types of wines.

You can make sauces of many different flavors. A little experimental results from a few years ago--A mix of oxhearts gave me a savory sauce, Beefsteaks made a sweeter sauce, Costoluto Genoves made a sauce with a sweet citrusy tang, a few Limmony mixed in with oxhearts or beefsteaks mimics the costoluto genovese sauce. Pastes - Opalka + polish linguisa plus something else was rather bland compared to the others. Blacks make a good sauce all their own, Orange-yellow and green-when-ripe tomatoes make sauces with unusual flavors, but not bad. For a 'white sauce' that actually looks like chicken gravy, something like great white mixed with Limmony is very good. Limmony is yellow skin with white flesh, at least the one I think I have is.

But none of them taste like store bought sauce. That might come from the Rutgers/Heinz/Roma type tomatoes, which I haven't grown.


For a sauce garden to fill the freezer with 3-4 flavors, this year I have blacks (Black Krim, Indian Stripe, Black from Tula), hearts (Wes, Kosovo), and Limmony. Costoluto Genovese is temperamental here.

[tlintx]

Thank you, that's very helpful! I'm doing similar varieties (several hearts and blacks), but I hadn't thought to do any yellows. Will definitely have to consider them for fall.

Since most of mine are indets and I'm primarily making gravy, I was actually thinking of putting a bag in the freezer for each variety and filling it up as they ripen (assuming we don't eat 'em). I heard this would make them easier to peel?

But then I thought about it, and if we aren't supposed to refrigerate them... would I be sacrificing all the flavor? I could also just make very small batches whenever possible, I suppose.

[TZ-OH6]

I often just put the Limmony in the freezer whole and pull them out when I have enough of the others to make sauce. If I recall about freezing tomatoes to sauce later, it was better to core/cut shoulders off before freezing, but the skin does peel off pretty easily when they thaw. Or you can just scald them with the rest.

[EarlyStarter]

For a single tomato, I prefer San Marzano for sauce. Generally though, I use a San Marzano base and build on it with a good variety of whatever else I have ready on the vines

[lycomania]

Thanks for that insight, Farmer'sDaughter. I didn't think of that!

[tlintx]

Originally Posted by EarlyStarter

For a single tomato, I prefer San Marzano for sauce. Generally though, I use a San Marzano base and build on it with a good variety of whatever else I have ready on the vines

Hopefully, I'll have a bunch of Viva Italia tomatoes to use as my sauce base!


Tl

[Steve Magruder]

I really liked how Cow's Tit performed as an addition to sauce making, as it's meaty, nearly seedless, and sweet. I suspect Cow's Tit and Opalka are similar in this regard. (They may even be the same cultivar in reality.)

[Steve Magruder]

Originally Posted by TZ-OH6

I often just put the Limmony in the freezer whole and pull them out when I have enough of the others to make sauce. If I recall about freezing tomatoes to sauce later, it was better to core/cut shoulders off before freezing, but the skin does peel off pretty easily when they thaw. Or you can just scald them with the rest.

I haven't ever heard of freezing tomatoes to make sauce later. Does this work without much degradation in flavor?