Plenty of home cooks are familiar with the delayed gratification of a slowly simmered pot of Sunday marinara or the concentrated umami of tomato paste that’s been thoroughly caramelized. Heat and time can help soften some of the acidity and tinny edge that tomatoes have straight from the can, developing a sweeter, rounder flavor. But when you have a hankering for fresh tomato flavor in a hurry, there’s another way. Just stroll right past those fire truck red San Marzano labels and head for the yellow canned tomatoes.
“I think a lot of people have a limited view of canned tomatoes, or view canned tomatoes as kind of a monolith,” says Rick Easton, a co-owner of Jersey City’s Bread and Salt and coauthor, with Melissa McCart, of the cookbook Bread and How to Eat It. At Bread and Salt, Easton sells two types of canned yellow tomatoes and has used them on the occasional pizza or sandwich. Because of their delicate, sweet flavor, he likes pairing yellow tomatoes with fish, or barely cooking them before adding to a pasta.
“The biggest difference is that the yellow tomatoes are naturally very sweet,” chef and author Giada De Laurentiis tells me. “Red plum tomatoes like San Marzanos have an acidity that’s really important for building balanced flavor in sauces that are long-simmered, like a pomodoro or marinara. Yellow tomatoes, on the other hand, are almost candy-like in their sweetness. The experience is closer to picking a cherry tomato off the vine and eating it.” De Laurentiis’s retail site, Giadzy, sells both jarred yellow datterini tomatoes and jarred yellow Corbara tomatoes.
Corbara Yellow Tomatoes
Because of their sweetness, De Laurentiis tells me, “You don’t want to cook them for long, if at all. I love tossing them with pasta at the last minute, whipping up a quick golden pomodoro or using them as a pizza topping. They’re also really nice on salads in the winter, when fresh tomatoes are a bit sad and flavorless.”
“Yellow tomatoes, for me, in my experience, are all very, very fast-cooking,” Easton agrees. I recently experimented myself by briefly poaching a fillet of salmon in a sauce made from coconut milk and canned yellow datterini tomatoes, and I was blown away by how sweet and flavorful the tomatoes were straight from the can, before adding seasoning or even heat. In Bread and How to Eat It, you’ll find yellow Piennolo tomatoes cooked only for a few quick minutes with garlic and capers before the briny, fresh sauce is tossed with linguine.
Photo by Travis Rainey, Food Styling by Judy Haubert
