Australian supermarket tinned tomatoes taste test: the results ‘end my long-term relationship with Mutti’

‘For a food writer, improving the national quality of spag bol is high stakes, so I was eager to find a clear winner’: Nicholas Jordan with a selection of the more than 26 tins of tomatoes he sampled in a blind taste test. Photograph: James Gourley/The Guardian

I go through a lot of tinned tomatoes. The only ingredients more essential to my weekly cooking are probably salt, oil, garlic and eggs. But unlike all those other ingredients, and almost everything that comes into my kitchen, I’d never thought about which tinned tomatoes I should buy, or why I buy the brands I do. If I’m going to be honest with myself, I probably bought La Gina or Mutti because their overtly Italian branding most aligned with my middle-class aspirations.

I suspect many of you are just like me. That’s why this taste test was so important to me. If I can identify the best and worst tinned tomatoes, I could improve the standard of weekly cooking Australia-wide, or at least make it cheaper. For a food writer, improving the national quality of spag bol is high stakes, so I was eager to find a clear winner.