Date Tested: November 3rd, 2024

Competitors: True Goodness (Meijer Organic), Meijer, Red Gold, Hunt’s, Cento, Bianco DiNapoli, Dei Fratelli

Test Description: Did both warm and room temperature tastings. Double elimination bracket. Not blind.

This was a crazy one folks. Crushed tomatoes are a cutthroat game and these cans came to play. The budget minded among the readers will recognize crushed tomatoes as I do; A cheap and flavor dense base from which many a wonderful home cooked meals may sprout. The tomato elitists might point out, however, that crushed tomatoes are just a company’s way of passing off bruised, blemished, off-colored bits and leftovers from other products that didn’t make the cut for whole or diced tomatoes as a separate product. The hot dog of canned tomatoes if you will. Well I don’t care. I love hot dogs and I love crushed tomatoes. Lets get to the taste test.

Crushed tomatoes (as a base for marinara, chili, curry, etc.) are a staple in my monthly diet. They’re also cheap enough that I don’t mind ponying up for the more premium brands. However, tomato quality varies widely. It’s affected by the type of tomato, how it’s handled, when it’s picked, and even the soil in which it’s grown. So obviously, I set out to find who makes the most consistently delicious crushed tomato in a can. Our competitors vary wildly in price. At the most expensive end, we have Bianco DiNapoli at a whopping 20 cents an ounce. Bianco comes in a beautiful blue can that would look right at home in a Trader Joe’s. They boast NorCal-grown tomatoes and have been voted “Best Canned Tomatoes” for four years running. We’ll see about that. On the other end, we have Meijer brand crushed tomatoes at only 7 cents an ounce. They don’t boast anything. Years ago, an old lady at Kroger told me Cento made the best canned tomatoes and that it would bring my pasta sauce up a notch. Ever since, that’s what I’ve bought—so I naturally included them in this test. Filling out the bracket was every other brand I could find at Meijer: the household names Hunts and Red Gold, Meijer’s organic brand True Goodness, and finally Dei Fratelli—a brand targeting the same price point as Cento.

I won’t bore the audience with the minor details of the bracket competition, but I will of course point out the highlights. Each match-up, the sauce was tasted two ways – at room temperature and warm. We found sometimes drastic changes in the flavor profile depending on the temperature. When it was too close to call, the tie was given to the one that tasted better warm.

Now for the results. The Meijer tomatoes were awful—very sweet, with little discernible flavor. They were easily the worst out of all the cans. Red Gold was better, but still bad, and had a strange orangish color. Both were also the most watery of all the competitors. Hunts had an impressive showing, beating competitors twice its price (Cento, Dei Fratelli) until it was knocked out by one three times its cost (Bianco). Hunts was very acidic in the cold tastings but mellowed into a beautiful dark red sauce once warmed up. True Goodness and Cento were fine, but struggled to stand out in a field so large. Bianco sailed through all competition into the finals. Sometimes the priciest products fall flat on their face, but Bianco seemed, in some way, to be trying to justify its high price.

In an interesting turn of events that you only find in double elimination tournaments, the winner of the loser’s bracket ended up beating Bianco. That was, of course, Dei Fratelli. Apparently that’s Italian for “great crushed tomatoes”. Despite losing to Hunt’s in an earlier matchup, DF sailed right throuhg the loser’s bracket and even won its rematch with Hunts. Incredible. I found Bianco and Dei Fratelli to be vey similar on taste, color, and consistency. I ended up giving the game to DF over Bianco and I honestly can’t remember why. It wasn’t a blind test, so maybe cost had something to do with it. Regardless, Dei Fratelli, Bianco, and Hunts earned the top three spots and I have to say, I think there is a big gap between this group and the others. I will be reaching for Dei Fratelli in the store, but will no longer turn my nose up to Hunts if my new favorite isn’t available.

Ciao