We’re not sponsored by Mutti.
Nobody has sent us a box of tomatoes. Nobody has slipped us a brown envelope. We just really like Mutti Polpa Tomatoes.
And when you’re cooking as much tomato-based stuff as we do, finding a tin of tomatoes that actually does what you want it to do is surprisingly important.
Why we like Mutti Polpa Tomatoes.
The first thing you’ll notice with Polpa is the texture. It’s really finely chopped. Not those massive bloody chunks you sometimes get in a tin of chopped tomatoes that somehow survive 45 minutes of cooking.
It’s almost like someone has already done the job for you.
You get little bits of tomato rather than big lumps, but it still has enough texture to make a sauce feel like you’ve actually used tomatoes rather than poured in a carton of passata.
And then there’s the flavour.
It’s fresh. Properly tomato-y. Which brings us onto something we’ve changed the way we cook because of it.
Mutti Polpa – official product information
Stop cooking the shit out of your tomatoes.
There seems to be an unwritten rule that if you’re making a tomato sauce, you have to reduce the living fuck out of it.
We don’t agree.
If you’re using decent tomatoes, you don’t need to cook them down for hours just to try and get rid of that slightly bitter taste.
In fact, that’s one of the things we like about Polpa. Give it a bit of time with whatever else you’re cooking, let everything get to know each other, and leave the tomatoes to actually taste like tomatoes.
Obviously, there are recipes where a long, slow cook is exactly what you want. A proper ragù, for example, is a different beast.
But if you’re making a quick pasta sauce, pizza topping, meatballs, chilli or any of the other things where tomatoes are doing a lot of the heavy lifting, there’s absolutely no need to spend an hour boiling the arse out of them.
Good tomatoes don’t need hiding.
And that fine texture helps too.
Because the tomato is already chopped so small, you don’t have to stand there attacking the pan with a wooden spoon trying to break everything down. It just becomes a lovely, thick, tomatoey sauce without much effort.
Which, as far as we’re concerned, is exactly what we want.
We’re not trying to win a Michelin star on a Tuesday night.
We’re trying to make something fucking delicious without making life harder than it needs to be.
So yes, there’s always a tin or twwelve of Mutti Polpa in our cupboard.
Not because it’s fancy.
Not because it’s Italian.
And definitely not because someone’s paid us to say so.
It’s just really good tomatoes.
And sometimes that’s all you need.
Why not give them a try in Ally’s Legendary Pork Ragu?