To think that tomatoes are tomatoes?

[TheHouseOnTheLane]

MIL is staying with us. All food is shared...we cook, she cooks whatever...we all get on nicely in the kitchen.

Tonight DH made a tomato based sauce for pasta. He likes using fresh tomatoes so used what was there.

MIL saw and said "Oh! You used the nice Roma tomatoes for SAUCE!!"

As though he'd shit in the pan.

According to MIL, one should use crappy tomatoes for sauce apparently....the "good" ones should be eaten raw.

DH and I agree that a tomato is a tomato...the better the tomato the better the sauce....AIBU?

YANBU I completely agree with you, there more delicious the tomatoes the nicer the sauce. That said there's nothing wrong with making sauce with cheap/tinned toms, in fact some tinned toms are lovely, I'd say it's up to the cook!

I'm with your MIL.

We use big nets of supermarket tomatoes for sauce, and nice (expensive) ones for eating.

Tomatoes are just the base for the sauce, what you add gives the taste.

Good eating tomatoes are hard to come by.

Of course if you live abroad and good tomatoes are the norm, I guess it doesn't make as much difference.

We do live abroad. We feel that the best sauce is made with the best tomatoes. Why use shit tomatoes in sauce? It would result in less decent sauce!

I like nice tomatoes for both cooking and eating. No shit tomatoes in this house. Win-win for me.

It's like using crap wine for cooking. Agree with you - good tomatoes for sauce, you get a nicer sauce.

All comes down to the cost with me. I'd love to use nice tomatoes for sauce as well as eating, but they are darned expensive! So I will continue to compromise on tom quality for sauce, but not for salads.

I use the cheap tomatoes for sauce and the nice ones for salad so I'm with your mil!

I agree that the better the tomato the better the sauce, but not that a tomato is a tomato so I think I'm firmly on the fence here. I like them red and very ripe for sauce, big greenish ones would make rubbish sauce but are perfect for salad, then cherry ones for snacking etc.

YABU there is a massive difference between a good and a crap tomato.

She is also BU, you can't make good sauce out of crap tomatoes.

If I were in your position, I think my curiosity would lead me to actually resolve this one scientifically: next time, make two batches identically except one uses the lower quality toms, the other the high quality toms. Then get everyone to do a blind taste test.

Roma tomatoes would make a great sauce, however I never buy or grow crap tomatoes.

trouble is that in the UK it is very difficult to buy decent fresh tomatoes; they are all grown for appearance, so have no taste. Like a lot of our produce.

our home grown ones are just finishing and I don't bother buying any. I would have been very cross if the home grown ones had been cooked!

Have you looked at the difference in price between Roma and bog-standard tomatoes?

It'd be nice to be able to use the posh ones for cooking, but not worth the extra money. Tinned tomatoes have more flavour, and that's what I'd use for a sauce. Bog-standard are v disappointing fresh, and they're the ones you've now got left for salad. So I'm with your MIL here.

Nope, a tomato is not a tomato.

I love a good tomato. I am the loon that stands in the supermarket sniffing all the packets to see if I can detect the merest whiff of lovely tomato aroma that you only seem to get with tasty ones.

Whilst I get your theory about the better the tomato the better the sauce it would all depend on what toms you had left to be eaten 'raw'.

If you took the good ones for cooking and left naffer ones for salads I'd be pissed off!

YABU.

The overall result would've been better to use the poorer quality ingredients for the cooked sauce, the taste of that would be impacted less than taste of eating the left over tasteless raw tomatoes.

Obviously you should just not have crap ones in the house.

Roma tomatoes make better sauce, IMO. Although I haven't eaten tomatoes at all for 15y since I found they gave me bad acid reflux etc., but prior to that I was a big one for tomato based sauce and if I could get romas, I would use them instead.

Depends on the type of tomato sauce you are making, tinned are best for some but not others.

Max there were none left! But no salad was planned and MIL wouldn';t eat salad in the evening.

We'd buy more tomorrow anyway! The sauce was marvelous.