The tomatoes are peeled either by immersion in a caustic solution (requiring dye to compensate for the loss of color), or by subjecting them to a sequence of scalding and physical trauma until the skin falls off. The long storage times require either preservatives or pasteurization.
I can’t speak for the caustic solution, but the rest of this sounds pretty standard for making tomato sauce (blanching, peeling, adding salt, and cooking).
I suspect the biggest problem with industrial tomato sauce is the very first step: Growing tomatoes that are chosen for their durability instead of flavor.
I actually had heard the exact opposite here. If you buy tomatoes from the store (to make sauce out of), they have to be optimized for duration, whereas canned tomatoes can afford to use a breed optimized for taste.
(I might be conflating canned tomatoes and tomato sauce though)
I think there’s three levels of this. At all levels, you need to optimize for hardiness and pest resistence, but on the flavor/durability scale:
If you grow the tomatoes yourself, you can optimize strongly for flavor, since the tomatoes just need to be durable enough to be hand-picked and then immediately cooked
If you grow tomatoes on an industrial scale for tomato sauce, you need enough durability to survive being picked and processed by machines, but they don’t need to survive weeks of transportation
If you grow tomatoes on an industrial scale to be sold in the produce section, you need to go even farther with durability to survive the initial picking step and weeks of sitting around.
So I would expect high quality industrial tomato sauce to taste better than home-made tomato sauce made from standard grocery store tomatoes, but for home-made tomato sauce made from home-grown tomatoes to taste significantly better.
I can’t speak for the caustic solution, but the rest of this sounds pretty standard for making tomato sauce (blanching, peeling, adding salt, and cooking).
I suspect the biggest problem with industrial tomato sauce is the very first step: Growing tomatoes that are chosen for their durability instead of flavor.
I actually had heard the exact opposite here. If you buy tomatoes from the store (to make sauce out of), they have to be optimized for duration, whereas canned tomatoes can afford to use a breed optimized for taste.
(I might be conflating canned tomatoes and tomato sauce though)
I think there’s three levels of this. At all levels, you need to optimize for hardiness and pest resistence, but on the flavor/durability scale:
If you grow the tomatoes yourself, you can optimize strongly for flavor, since the tomatoes just need to be durable enough to be hand-picked and then immediately cooked
If you grow tomatoes on an industrial scale for tomato sauce, you need enough durability to survive being picked and processed by machines, but they don’t need to survive weeks of transportation
If you grow tomatoes on an industrial scale to be sold in the produce section, you need to go even farther with durability to survive the initial picking step and weeks of sitting around.
So I would expect high quality industrial tomato sauce to taste better than home-made tomato sauce made from standard grocery store tomatoes, but for home-made tomato sauce made from home-grown tomatoes to taste significantly better.
Yeah I’d totally expect the home grown or farmers market tomato sauce to win, but expect most people not to be doing that.