Italian 🇮🇹 Pantry

Part 1: The BEST Canned Tomatoes & Dried Pasta

Welcome Friends, 🥂

Mamma Mia!

There seem to be a lot of Italian Cuisine 🇮🇹 Fans following. And for good reason. Italy is home to some of the most delicious foods, recipes and traditions on Earth. 

A cuisine characterized by using quality ingredients and treated with simplicity. The curveball is that simplicity doesn’t mean easy. 3 ingredients on a plate can be flavor-heaven, if the technique and ingredients are superb. 

As mentioned in Pantry 101, your Pantry should be a treasure trove of ingredients that you have on hand to make flavor-magic! it’s impossible to recommend a “perfect pantry” because this will be heavily subjective on the foods YOU love to cook. For a reference of Basic Pantry recommendations, see Pantry 101

Pantry Secrets 101

Today we’re gonna take a step into Italian Cuisine and highlight some absolute essentials to have on hand in your pantry to make your trip to Flavor-Heaven a certainty.

Two of these staples are available in every supermarket but have a wide range of price and quality…  we’re talking about dried pasta and canned tomatoes. 

CANNED TOMATOES:

Tomatoes are a magical fruit. At their best, high in sweetness and acidity… and chocked full of glutamates that contribute to the meaty-taste known as Umami. When you have access to a perfectly ripe tomato, picked at just the right time… it’s hard to beat. The issue is, most people don’t. 

This is what makes preserving such a powerful culinary process. Ingredients picked at their prime ripeness are then preserved (or canned) and ready to be used at a moments notice. In reality, a good canned tomato will beat out the flavor of a tomato that was picked green weeks ago then sprayed and ripened en route to your local Supermarket. 

Tomatoes are one of the most stocked, canned pantry items found all across the globe. Essential in a variety of cuisines including Mexican and Indian… but Italian cuisine automatically comes to mind. Red sauces for pasta and pizza have become iconic preparations in Italian Cuisine, especially American-Italian.

So what should you stock in your pantry? 

Let’s break down styles, labels/marketing, countries of origin and then you can decide which tomatoes you want on hand for maximum flavor and quality. 

STYLES

Whole-Peeled: By far the most versatile and “pure” form of canned tomatoes. Minimally process and packed in their own juice or puree of tomatoes. If you’re going to keep one type of canned tomato on hand this would be the one. You can chop, dice, crush, puree or strain which replicates every other type of canned tomato (outside of tomato paste, which is a different type of preparation).

Crushed: Handy for making red sauces or adding to braises, crushed tomatoes can be somewhat chunky depending on the producer. These will cook down or can be blended further depending on the recipe and desired outcome. 

Diced: Somewhat useful for chili’s, soups, or braises.. this is my least favorite type of canned tomato. Note that any diced tomatoes treated with Calcium Chloride will be near impossible to break down into a sauce with heat. Should only be used when the desired outcome is to retain shape. 

Puréed: Puree falls between crushed tomatoes and tomato paste. Tomatoes are cooked, blended and strained leaving a uniform consistency that is thicker that crushed tomatoes. Can be useful for red sauces (or curries! 🇮🇳 ). 

Paste: Used primarily to enrich sauces, soups and stews with more tomato flavor without adding more liquid. When tomato paste is made the tomatoes are puréed then the mixture is put into evaporation tanks to remove water. This is where you get “double” or “triple” concentrated labels. These have been evaporated longer. American tomato pastes are also heated to higher temp’s than Italian makers, this process alters color (Italian brands tend to have a brighter red color).

In addition, tube pastes hold their flavor and freshness for much longer than the larger cans that have to be fully opened. Tubes hold flavor very well for 30-45 days while their canned counterparts start diminishing after 14 days. 

For tomato paste: Cento, Mutti and Amore all make good quality, flavorful tomato pastes that are available in Supermarkets nationwide. 

LABELS & MARKETING:

When it comes to canned tomato labels, there is a lot of marketing to be aware of. Chef’s for decades have preached “San Marzano Tomatoes only!”. Then came a wave of San Marzano labels from Italy that weren’t (tomato can fraud!), then the labeling of US tomatoes as San Marzano (-style; in tiny letters). Then DOP certifications and why is Calcium Chloride a big deal? 

Let’s answer it all! 

Country Of Origin:

Italy 🇮🇹  or USA 🇺🇸? Who wins the tomato battle? 

The answer is… you can find great canned tomatoes from both countries! And also, horrible canned tomatoes from both countries. The primary factor here should always be flavor.

This is measured by sweetness (in Brix) and acid (pH) as well as quality of the fruit. Unless you have a Brix and pH meter at home you go off your own palate and reputation of the brand. 

Example: Important point to make here, one brand that did well for years was Muir Glenn canned tomatoes. Consistently good product for many years, until the last 2-3 years has really fallen off in flavor. 

San Marzano:

So what’s the San Marzano hype?

San Marzano are plum tomatoes, but a separate species from Roma. (Note the similar shape). These tomatoes are prized for their low moisture content, high sweetness, minimal seeds and have been prized in Italy for sauce making (including the Iconic Neapolitan Pizza). 

DOP:

In addition, a protective certification was developed: DOP stands for the Italian phrase Denominazione d'Origine Protetta and is used as a sign of authenticity. 

The DOP dictates

-What strain of tomato is permitted

-Where in Italy they can be grown

-How they are to be grown

-The size, shape, and color when harvested

-That they be harvested by hand

-That they are peeled when packed

Think of this like the Champagne designation vs other “Champagne-style” sparkling wines. 

This of course allowed producers to charge a premium for DOP and inevitably fraudsters wanted to capitalize as well. Remember, the DOP is regulated by Italy, not the USA. 

Danielle Roitmayr of Gustiamo, (one of my favorite Italian stores in the US) commented on this years ago. 

“We see all these crazy, sketchy things. Italians will send tomatoes to the U.S. with no label, and companies here will put a DOP label on. In America, you can’t put a USDA Organic label on anything, but DOP is not regulated here.” 

The Marketing machine is very prevalent. One US brand is named “San Marzano” but is not even from Italy. At the bottom of the label it says “Grown Domestically in the U.S.”

In the end, paying a premium for DOP San Marzano tomatoes is more about trusting the importer/purveyor. And. Remember. Taste is subjective

Calcium Chloride:

Finally we get to calcium chloride. Used as a firming agent to keep the tomato fruit from breaking down during the packing and canning process. The rationale is that when using perfectly ripe fruit, the heat and packing would cause some degradation. So calcium chloride is used to strengthen and firm the cell walls of the tomato. 

This is vital in having uniform, diced, canned tomato pieces that hold shape. And this is the reason that if you try and use diced tomatoes as a time saver to make a sauce you will be sorely disappointed. The increase of tomato surface area in contact with calcium chloride makes the tomatoes virtually bullet-proof to breaking down in heat. 

Most US producers use some calcium chloride in packing canned tomatoes. 

THE OCTOPOD WINNERS:

Economy:

Following are some Economy (widely available) canned tomatoes. These have shown consistency and great flavor for years and would stock in my pantry as solid Economy Options!

Bianco DiNapoli (🇺🇸):

SMT (🇺🇸):

Cento (🇮🇹):

(For Tomato Puree, Mutti makes a good product; remember it will be thicker than crushed tomatoes)

Premium:

Ok, so you want to up your game, and shell out some extra dollars for Tomato 🍅 Nirvana 🙌 ?

There’s one place I recommend and you can order online. 

This company has a stellar reputation and I’ve been a customer for many years. For a true, legit, premium Italian 🇮🇹 🍅 product selection, definitely go check out my friends at Gustiamo (Not an affiliate, just a loyal customer for years). 

Gustarosso

Terra Amore & Fantasia Plum Tomatoes

Remember Taste and Flavor is Subjective… but this 🐙 Palate stands by the recommendations above. 

PASTA:

Moving on to dried pasta. If you have canned tomatoes and dried pasta you can now easily have 200+ different meals based on pasta shapes and sauce variations along. 

Dried Pasta tends to be an afterthought though. Like a blank canvas that only serves as a vehicle for sauce. 

This is a tragic misconception as you’re missing out on a lot of depth and flavor by dismissing pasta as pure “filler”. When speaking of Dried Pasta we are talking specifically about Semolina (Durum) Pasta’s, which have an earthy flavor and do well when dried.

INGREDIENTS:

Dried pasta is extremely simple. Semolina + Water. As stated above, simplicity doesn’t mean “easy”. Combining just 2 ingredients to achieve alchemy means that those two ingredients must be top quality. 

Water: If you’re into coffee ☕️ at all, you know how important water is. Mineral content, filtered (or not), RO, etc all have a profound effect on flavor.

Semolina: A flour made from Durum wheat, which is known as a “hard” wheat. This creates a coarse flour when it’s milled. The word Semolina comes from the Italian word "Semolino", meaning bran. Bran refers to the pieces of grain husks that's separated during the milling process, making this coarse flour.

Supermarket 

DeCecco (🇮🇹):

Since 1886, this pasta making family has scaled up in a big way. Once a small family business has now expanded and offers egg pasta products as well as prepared potato gnocchi. Would recommend just using the durum wheat dried pasta. For a supermarket available pasta, this is a good option.

Martelli (🇮🇹):

Martelli Pasta is a family-run business located in Lari, a small medieval village near Pisa, that has been making pasta using old-style traditions since 1926. Fewer varieties are available, however this

Premium:

As above, go to my friends at Gustiamo for some amazing dried pasta options

Faella (🇮🇹):

(Bucatini is one of my favorite pasta shapes… and this one is legit 👌 )

Molini del Ponte (🇮🇹 Sicily):

“Filippo Drago is Sicilian grain miller, bread baker, and pasta maker who is revolutionizing the way Sicilia (and Italy) thinks about heritage grains. Filippo works with ancient Sicilian grains from his mill located in the heart of Castelvetrano, Sicilia.” -Gustiamo

That should be enough to chew on for now…

On Friday, the Paid Substack will Explore More 🇮🇹 Essentials: 

Pancetta vs Guanciale 

Parmesan vs Grana Padano 

Balsamic Vinegars

And include (2) recipes:

-Perfect Gnocchi

-Red Sauce Alchemy

Until Next Time 🥂