Canned Tomato Sauce

Canned tomatoes are the flavor in half of what gets cooked from a food store: chili, pasta sauce, soup, rice, beans, stew. They are also the shortest-lived can on the shelf, because tomato acid works on the metal from the inside, which is why the label says 18 to 24 months where a can of beans says 5 years. Two to five years at full quality stored cool; safe past that in a sound can with a darker color and a flat, sometimes metallic taste.

Whole peeled tomatoes are the most versatile and hold texture longest; crushed and diced next; sauce and paste for cooking. Tomato paste in a can is the densest form and the one to stock most of: a tablespoon flavors a pot. Tomatoes in glass jars show no metallic taste and keep as long in the dark. Lined cans (most now are) hold up better than bare steel. Buy case lots at harvest when the price drops.

Cool, dry, dark and off the floor, between 50 and 70°F if you can manage it; twenty degrees cooler, 70 down to 50°F, roughly doubles how long the contents stay at full quality. Never let cans freeze (the seams can fail) and never store them over a furnace, in a garage or in a vehicle. Rotate first in, first out, with the buy date written on the lid. A dented can is fine if the dent is small and not on a seam; a deep dent, a dent on a seam, rust that pits the metal, or any bulge means the can goes unopened.

Tomatoes go at the front of the shelf and rotate through every few months; they are the first cans to show their age and the first to pinhole if the lining fails.

Look before you open: bulging ends, a leak, rust that has eaten into the metal, or a seam dent. Listen and look as you open: spurting liquid, a hiss outward, cloudy liquid where it should be clear, foam, or a foul smell. Any of those and the whole can goes, unopened if possible, into the trash where nothing can get at it, because the thing you are guarding against is botulism, which has no taste and no cure outside a hospital. A can past its date with a sound seal and a clean smell on opening is food.

With tomatoes, watch the can itself: a pinhole leak at a seam or a rusty weep on the outside means the acid got through. A darkened color and a metallic taste in an old can are quality, not safety, if the can is sound.

A 28 ounce can of tomatoes, a can of beans and a can of meat is chili; a 15 ounce can and a tablespoon of paste over pasta is dinner. Tomato paste frozen in tablespoon blobs is the way to keep an opened can. Tomatoes are the vitamin C that canned vegetables mostly lack. Plan on a 28 ounce can per family meal three or four times a week, about a case a month, and rotate the oldest through the chili pot.

Shelf-stable and ready; an opened can of tomatoes keeps poorly at room temperature, so open what the pot needs and finish it.

Shelf-life figures are from the Survival Foods field guide; fridge, freezer and pantry times are from the USDA cold and pantry storage charts. Run the look, smell, taste check before eating anything past its date.