Hah. Understandable.
Making roast beef poboys again tonight.
Get your jealous taste buds ready!
That halal looks legit. We need to start experimenting with trying to cook food like that. Last night we ate out (out of town Irish pub) and ordered a "Greek burger" and poutine. The former was lamb burger with feta, tomato, and arugula. The latter was a thin gravy. Neither of us has had poutine so we didn't know what to expect. Both were good, but left the restaurant feeling like we were going to burst. Probably from the poutine.
Yes I am dumb about cooking, but I am having a hard time finding the answer to this on the interwebs:
If you had a recipe that called for whole canned tomatoes, how would you guys go about emulating it with fresh tomatoes? I read that canned is better for certain recipes because of the process, but I really want the fresh taste to it, too. (It's a salsa recipe fyi.) Has anyone done the process before to "can" fresh tomatoes? Did it end up tasting better than store-bought canned? Suggestions? It's like I can taste the can in the recipe, so I want to avoid it the next time I make it.
If you want it to taste like fresh tomatoes, why do you want to emulate canned tomatoes? Just use fresh.
If you want to experiment, the biggest difference I see is texture and flavor. Canned tomatoes are typically softer and have a weaker taste. Chop your fresh tomatoes a day early, cover with water, and let them sit covered in your fridge. Drain, let them sit out for an hour, and then use.
Tomatoes contain soluble molecules and ions. The water you're going to put around it contains lower levels of most of those molecules/ions, but when you expose two solutions to each other they try to become one solution. Imagine If you dump saltwater into fresh water. You now have less salty saltwater because they equilibrated. If, instead, you put freshwater in one tank and saltwater in another tank with a very small hole between the two tanks, they would also very-eventually become less salty saltwater. If you separate your two solutions by a membrane that only allows certain things to pass (semi-permeable), they still "flow down the concentration gradient" and attempt to become equal solutions.
In this case, that semi-permeable membrane in the cell wall. Putting fresh water around the tomatoes is going to leech out some of the things in the tomatoes (including some flavor). However, it can't leech all of it and become tomatowater because some molecules can't pass through the cell wall. In order to equilibrate those concentrations, water will flow into the tomato cells and blow them up. This will probably ruin their structural integrity and make the tomato softer. So you'll get less flavorful but softer tomatoes.
That's why I recommend just using fresh if you want it to taste fresh.
For the "canned" experience, just get the skins off, squeeze it slightly into a bowl and fridge for a day.
I would just use fresh but YMMV. Link the recipe.
iirc canned tomatoes are...boiled?..blanched? If I just use the tomatoes straight up it'll end up being pico de gallo, which is not what I am looking for.
So here's the deal. What I am using is the Chili's salsa recipe as a base point:
http://www.food.com/recipe/chilis-salsa-59635
You have to put a lot more of the lime, salt, etc. then what the recipe says imo to make it close to the way Chili's actually tastes like, but no matter what I can't get that "canned" taste out of it.
With that said, ultimately I want to change up the recipe into something different. Where I grew up there was this TexMex place we went to that had the best salsa I have ever had. We would go often and just get drinks and eat that shit for dinner.
From what I can tell (not a professional by any means) that salsa basically contained the same ingredients as that Chili's recipes. Except the tomatoes were chunky instead of blended. And everything definitely tasted fresh. I also recall there being other peppers in it, too.
Every single recipe I look up for regarding chunky salsa recipes have canned tomatoes as an ingredient. I can't find any that explains what to do if you want to use fresh.
Generally speaking one of the bigger differences taste wise between fresh and various preserved forms is the higher glutamate content as it increases with age and cooking frees more of it. And sometimes other processes they do in canning can add more think some add mild acids and such. Which is good for some things to give it a little more unami but not really what you are looking for in a salsa generally. I'm guessing the recipes you find are looking more for the texture which as Zet suggested you can do achieve with fresh
http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/chunky-tomato-salsa
Chunky tomato salsa, first result in google.
Canned whole tomatoes are literally peeled tomatoes in tomato juice.
Fresh will taste better, guaranteed.
I smoked 2 pounds of bacon and a whole bag of chicken quarters. Lunches for the week, done.
Salsa is one of the easiest things to make. Use fresh ingredients.
Half a large onion or a whole medium onion.
1 Large beefsteak tomato or a couple on the vine
Half to a whole jalapeno
1 clove garlic
1-2 tbsp chopped cilantro
salt and pepper to taste
That's salsa. You could make something similar to the processed stuff if you wanted to roast some tomatoes under the broiler and stuff. It's much easier to just make a chunky salsa, though.
His recipe is for actual salsa (pico de gallo). You also get a ton of juice from those tomatoes. You can also just add lime juice and cumin.
Cilantro should be banned forever.