How to Choose the RIGHT Tomatoes

this video is brought to you by privacy privacy lets you buy things online using virtual cards instead of having to use your real ones protecting your identity and bank information on the internet right now new customers will automatically get five dollars to spend on their first purchase go to privacy.com pasta grammar to sign up now [Music] uh yeah ava i'm gonna need backup hi i'm harper and welcome to pasta grammar where we explore all things italian food if that sounds like your cup of espresso hit the subscribe button below ava and i get tons of questions no let me rephrase that ava gets tons of questions about tomatoes there are lots of options in the store how do you pick the right ones when do you get canned tomatoes when do you get fresh tomatoes and most importantly what the heck are san marzano tomatoes so today we thought we would explore the ins and outs of italian tomatoes how to pick the right pomodoro for the right livoro did that make sense that makes sense we went to the store and as you can see ava grabbed a whole bunch of different kinds of tomatoes that are kind of her go-to's um i'm even a little unclear on when to use which kind and what all of these products are so you're gonna have to explain it to me so apple we start from the fresh tomatoes yes i can see of a few different kinds here and the first ones that are really drawing my eye are these i guess they're heirloom tomatoes they're what i would just call a big old tomato this is very close to our italian pomodoro costume so is this like the kind of tomato you would make like into a sauce or something these kind of tomatoes are perfect for a salad because they don't have a lot of juice to make the sauce and they are very very tasty when they eat them by themselves so it's kind of so good you want to just eat it by itself in an unadulterated form absolutely yes well i've never really been a big salad eater but you have blown me away with some salads in the past so maybe you could show me a cool salad that's good for those tomatoes i will show you the most famous italian salad in the world [Music] a beautiful caprese salad this is a caprese salad right that's the real name this is a caprese salad or as we say in italian and it's the real one because i saw several people put for example balsamic vinegar or some vinegar guys just a drop of olive oil salt black pepper if you like and this is the caprese well it is one of my favorite salads of all time although let's be honest it's a salad that's half cheese so like you know that's not saying a lot bon appetit [Music] it just tastes like summer it's a summer dish maybe one of the most iconic italian summer dish also because green white and red yeah this is definitely the kind of dish where if you want to pull this off you need a really good tomato there is no there's nothing to cover it up there's there's nowhere to hide if you don't have an excellent tomato it all falls apart next i see uh these okay i think they're where they plum tomatoes roma tomatoes i see them a ton in the store but i never really know what to do with them because they don't just seem like a normal tomato these are roma tomatoes now roma tomatoes is very good more or less for everything so you can make a salad with them you can make also a very very good sauce with these homemade sauce it's very easy to grow them so that's why right now you find them in every kind of grocery shop well now that you mentioned sauce one of our most requested recipes is your simple tomato sauce which you made as part of a few other dishes but we don't really have a dedicated recipe for so maybe you could show us not only how to make your own homemade sauce with fresh tomatoes but also share your super secret recipe there isn't a secret except to choose the right and good tomatoes to make your own fresh tomato sauce you need this tool and this is a vegetables green blind meal okay this is a vegetable meal and you are going to use this size because this will let just the juice of tomatoes come out while the peel of tomatoes will stay here i bet that a lot of people think that they can use this vegetable meal and i like the name direct with raw tomatoes no you need before to cook your tomatoes and then you use this so what you are going to do is wash obviously your tomatoes take one tomatoes and just smash it [Music] guys after 10 minutes that your homemade tomato sauce is cooking it's time to taste it to see if the amount of salt is right and this is also the moment in which you can understand if your tomato sauce is too acidic in this case you can add a pinch of sugar because it helps to destroy the acidity of the tomatoes [Music] i need more salt when our tomato sauce it has this consistency it's ready and there you have it ava's super secret tomato sauce recipe that is very very complicated and difficult to make simple is always best so it's kind of interesting you've served this on bread which i've never seen before my mama she always made the drink some fresh tomato sauce and what i did i took always a piece of bread and going the for the bread in the sauce so in my opinion is the most the best way in which you can taste if tomato sauce is good or not well let's do so baby ava knew what she was doing when she dipped bread in the sauce that is delicious what do you can do also with this if you don't have a good breath for example you can use also the freezer i'm sorry are you talking we can use also the freezer put some good tomato sauce and this tomato sauce it can be used when it's cooked like that to make pasta to make for example the parmigiana i have one more question are you gonna eat that yes and here we have some cherry tomatoes now these i know a little bit about because you've cooked with them before see i've been used to kind of always eating cherry tomatoes by themselves in a salad or even just popping them in your mouth eating them up until i met you i wasn't really used to using them as an ingredient that you cook with a lot but i've come to learn that some of the most amazing dishes you've ever made for me have been made using cherry tomatoes these are as you said the cherry tomatoes in italian we call them pomodori chileagino and these cherry tomatoes are very very tasty they are very sweet so let's say that usually cooking also with them can be a little bit expensive because they cost a little bit more but when you want to have a very quick sauce and you want to have a tasty sauce you can use cherry tomatoes because they give that flavor to your pasta that maybe you don't find in another very complicated recipe cherry tomatoes are perfect when you want to do a very quick pasta like for example los carpariello or when you want to do also like pasta with some capers banana leaves they are delicious speaking of scarpariello that's a dish that we've done before briefly and we don't normally repeat recipes however as i've said before in my opinion that dish best represents what makes italian cuisine so amazing and it's also the first pasta dish eva ever made for me so it's kind of special to us maybe we can make an exception and try some scrap body hello again yeah i mostly just want to eat some but first a quick word from today's video sponsor if you shop online and who doesn't you need to check out privacy.com it's a super cool tool that helps you manage and protect your financial identity online here's how it works you link your debit card so it's all linked up to your bank account and then with just a couple clicks you create a virtual card you can use the virtual card just like a normal credit card online except you have complete control over how where when who all of the above charges it it's very useful in cases where for example you might be signing up for like a subscription service but you only want it for one month but you get a recurring bill and if you forget to cancel then well you know the rest of the story with privacy you can create a virtual card that's set up to pay just that once and then when they try to charge you next month it won't go through if you sign up for the first time you'll get five dollars to use however you want visit the link below that's privacy.com pastagrammer and you'll get your five dollars for signing up do few minutes [Music] the one the only pasta aloe scarpa it's one of my favorites i'm so excited it's unbelievable how the cherry tomatoes the olive oil together with a good pasta can give something so extraordinary because it's like there's so much flavor in those tomatoes that just so quickly without barely any time it cooks in the amount of time the pasta takes to boil it has the richness of flavor of like a ragu that you cook for hours because like normal tomatoes you have to really cook them for a while to concentrate and intensify the flavor but these are they're just already there you just need to cook them for a little while just to sort of release the juices and boom you are in delicious land it's creamy without cream yeah as the cherry tomatoes break down and sort of melt it turns into a very like silky sauce that really clings to the pasta well this is a dish that i just think everyone should try because it is so easy to make you can you can master it really really quickly and it tastes so good that it is like super impressive if you cook it for someone so we ava taught my mother how to make this dish and now every time she has a guest over this is what she makes and there's a reason for that because if someone eats this and they don't know how you made it they just think like you're a master even i can do it now we come to some of the canned prepackaged bottled tubed tomato products that we get a lot of questions about i think understandably so because there are many different kinds and it can be a little bit confusing so let's knock out some of the most common questions that you get number one ava you've made so many recipes with tomatoes tomato sauces and almost always you use either canned or bottled tomatoes why aren't you using fresh tomatoes tomatoes like every natural product it has they have their own season so usually the season for the tomatoes are from may june until september the beginning of october so usually during this period of time is better if you use fresh tomatoes because it's what nature's give to us but when we are in january you don't use fresh tomatoes one because they are not tasty certainly because they are a little bit more expensive so in this case we are going to use the canned tomatoes that are much better during winter time why would you use one or the other like why would you use a puree or a pasada instead of whole peeled tomatoes so you use a passata arter when you want for example to make the famous ragu a la bolognese because you don't need the chunk of tomato so when you want a very smooth even sauce perfect but be sure that it's just tomato puree that there is reason as ingredient tomatoes we don't want basil we don't want garlic we don't want other herbs because if we want we are going to add while we are cooking personally i like to use the wall peeled tomatoes when i make for example my pizza sauce because i like adding chunks of tomatoes this doesn't mean that you can't use a passate pomodoro or tomato puree for your pizza sauce personally my preference is for the peeled wool tomatoes okay but even if you decide to go with whole peeled tomatoes you still have a few options and one we get asked about the most is the famous san marzano tomatoes so first of all before we even go into when and why you would use them what are they is it a brand is it a kind of tomato the san marzano tomatoes are a kind of tomatoes and it's a kind of tomatoes that just grow in campagna close to normally very close to the vesuvius so that are the san marzano tomatoes and they are certified they have a dope which means the original protector so if a tomato that resembles a mercano doesn't come from that area isn't as amazon in italy it's very easy to find the summer challenge because they produce a lot of summer some tomatoes here in america because naval is far a little bit far away you can get some marzano tomatoes because they are summertime to me just be sure that there is written product of italy that they are certified and they are a little bit expensive so also myself when i'm here in america because they are expensive i choose usually this one that they are wool peeled tomatoes but they are also very very good so this choice is for when i'm in italy this is for when i'm in america well speaking of which uh our good friend tony recommended that we try these bianco di napoli tomatoes they're tomato they're not san marzano they're grown in california but he is a gentleman who knows what he's talking about and he says that they're just as good if not better you can get them at whole foods and they're definitely cheaper than the san marzano so i was thinking it would be fun to give these a shot and see what you think of them and you did mention pizza earlier so i kind of feel like we should make some pizza [Music] and what i'm going to do is just crush my peeled tomatoes add the olive oil salt and guys that's it you don't have to cook the pizza sauce because he will cook in the oven while pizza is baking so please forget that you need to prepare it before absolutely [Music] not ava normally prefers to make a simple margarita pizza but today on my request we're going to spice things up with some enduia if you guys saw our endura video that we made in calabria you might remember that we had found and mentioned this place called tempesta that makes indoya in the united states but you also may remember that we'd never tried it we didn't know anything about them didn't know how good it was so when we were going through chicago in our last video we stopped in to try it and it's amazing ava what do you miss most about our house in maine me too but hey it gives us a chance to make pizza in telia again or pan pizza which is still pretty good we haven't had it in like forever this is my first india pizza you never had them also in italy no some people make fun of you for cutting the pizza with scissors but i like it it makes sense gun is like with the roller sometimes you can cut sometimes not with it you do this you're sure so this is indoya mozzarella basil and ricotta yes yes yes yes yes for a moment i was so focused on the md i forgot this video was about tomatoes which are delicious by the way they're very good yes yes they are very very good they are very very sweet so if you have a chance to buy them you can make a good choice well guys thank you so much for watching i hope you learned something about tomatoes or at least tomatoes in italian food today let us know if you find any excellent tomatoes out there because as you can see we are always open to suggestions we just found a new favorite if you try any of these recipes please tag us on instagram pasta grammar and follow us while you're there hit the subscribe button if you haven't already and we'll see you next time

Channel: Pasta Grammar

Views: 235,852

Keywords: italian tomatoes, san marzano, tomatoes, are are san marzano, explained, canned vs fresh, canned tomatoes, pasta sauce, pizza, best tomatoes, best tomatoes for, italian food, recipe, caprese salad, pasta, scarpariello, how to make tomato sauce, how to make homemade tomato sauce, homemade tomato sauce, from scratch, vegetable mill, eva, harper, whole peeled tomatoes, puree, passata, sauce, ragu, spaghetti, tomato, pomodoro

Id: 6kvrMI1oZE0

Length: 25min 17sec (1517 seconds)

Published: Sun May 30 2021