One of the most crucial components of a pizza is undoubtedly the tomato sauce. Making a good tomato sauce is not only about the recipe, but also about the ingredients.
If you look at Naples, there's a clear winner when it comes to tomatoes - The San Marzano tomato. With it, you can make amazing tomato sauces in a very simple way.
In this San Marzano guide, you'll find out everything you need to know about these fantastic tomatoes.
San Marzano tomatoes for beginners
San Marzano tomatoes are a type of plum tomatoes that are often known in Naples as the best - the so-called 'king of tomatoes'. However, this does not mean that only San Marzano is used, as they are both expensive and, according to Neapolitans, do not suit everything.
Like many other peeled plum tomatoes - pomodori pelati - San Marzano tomatoes are great for preserving and then using in sauces and stews.
The difference against many other similar tomatoes is that San Marzano tomatoes are even more flavorful and often have a sharper taste. Many people think that San Marzano is the tastiest variant, but that is up to oneself to decide.
Of course, different San Marzano tomatoes vary in taste, but generally, you get a very flavorful and sweet tomato with a nice acidity, which is also of the meaty kind.
Why should you use San Marzano tomatoes?
Aside from San Marzano being one of the tastiest types of tomatoes, there is another reason for Swedes to choose them: smoother quality. Unlike many other tomato varieties, San Marzano tomatoes are protected by the PDO designation, which states that you cannot market tomatoes as San Marzano unless they are from the Agro-Sarnese-Nocerino area.
There are also rules for how the tomatoes should be grown, harvested, and preserved, which means that you cannot cheat as easily. Furthermore, there are no strange additives, acidity-regulating agents, or colorants. All in all, this leads to San Marzano tomatoes maintaining very even and high quality.
San Marzano tomatoes on pizza
San Marzano tomatoes are ideal for pizza's tomato sauce. This is the case as the tomatoes are produced to suit Neapolitan pizza. If it says San Marzano on the can, it means that the tomatoes - at least most of the time - will be sweet, pretty meaty, very flavorful, and have a nice acidity. Plus, they have the perfect consistency for pizza.
Can you use San Marzano tomatoes for anything else?
Preserved San Marzano tomatoes are versatile and can be used for much more than pizza. They are suitable for many pasta sauces, tomato soups, stews, and more. The flavorful tomatoes have a meaty texture which makes them more noticeable than many other tomatoes. They can also be used in salsas and for bruschetta, risotto, and casseroles.
Lilla Napoli's San Marzano tomatoes
At Lilla Napoli, we offer three different San Marzano tomatoes. All of these are of very high quality and you can make a fantastic tomato sauce with all. But with that said, there are some small differences that you can read about here, but we also encourage experimenting to find the one you like the most.
Gustarosso San Marzano
Each harvest we select the best picking date and the best field from renowned Gustarosso, and that's where we get our tomatoes from. In Gustarossos San Marzano tomatoes you get quality throughout, and we are very proud to have a good cooperation with them.
On each can you can see the batch number and our logo, so you know the tomatoes are selected by us personally. The tomatoes themselves have a nice maturity, good sweetness, and preserved acidity. The consistency is also very good, and it's always nice to support a farmer's cooperative like Gustarosso.
