Posted on 03/08/2024 3:28:02 PM PST by nickcarraway
Nice. I’ll try that this weekend
In my experience, canned tomatoes are not always predictable in ripeness or acidity due to brand variation or a less than predictable quality of Athena batch of tomatoes that were processed at the cannery. Therefore you can slavishly follow a recipe, even down to the brand of tomatoes, and still have a batch of sauce that is more acidic than you want. In this circumstance, added sugar in moderation can be useful to tame or mask the acidity.
While I understand some folks may be bothered by the acid, we never have used sugar and have had no issues. Indeed, most Italian chefs do not use sugar...Sicilians excepted.
Being Neapolitan descended, we probably use sweeter tomatoes like San Marzanos. Maybe thats it.
add to own taste...
*
ping
They probably were used to low quality tomatoes. You might have to ad a dab of sugar to common tomatoes. A quarter cup? No way in hell. I use restaurant quality tomatoes that put supermarket fare in the shade but even the supermarket tomatoes never seemed to need sugar at all. A few supermarket brands actually rate pretty close to the “Alta Cucina” brand I use.
With the Altas’ you don’t even have to cook them, they’re so sweet and finished you can “cold cook” them. Just open the can dump it in a bowl add garlic and whatever else you like for flavor let it sit in the refrigerator over night, heat to serving temperature, done!
My very devout Catholic, Sicilian, Grandmother taught me that when I was little. I always use three leaves!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.