Margherita Pizza and a Canned Tomato Taste Test

I received quite the fun little surprise in the mail last week. I was sent my very own taste test! Muir Glen Organic whole tomatoes were recently named the best canned whole tomatoes by Cooks Illustrated.  They and sent me unlabeled cans of whole tomatoes to do my own taste test at home, comparing their award winning tomatoes to a runner up. I didn’t want to just snack on whole tomatoes out of the can, so I decided to make margherita pizzas to test them side by side.

At first look, the whole tomatoes are very distinct. Can A’s tomatoes were perfect and unblemished. Can B were a bit more wrinkled.

I ate a bit of each tomato and honestly couldn’t distinguish much difference in taste between the two, but I preferred the texture of tomato B.

 On to the actual recipe…

Ingredients:

Whole tomatoes, chopped

Fresh buffalo mozzarella, torn into bite sized pieces

Olive oil

Pizza dough (I got mine at Trader Joe’s)

Pepper

Fresh basil, thinly sliced

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Drain the tomatoes and roughly chop. Drain the mozzarella and tear into bite sized pieces.

Take the pizza dough and place on a lightly floured surface. Split the dough into two equal sized balls.

Roll out the dough into two mini pizzas. Add to a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray.

Top the pizza with the chopped tomatoes (I put A on the left and B on the right) and mozzarella. Drizzle with olive oil and top with freshly ground pepper.

Bake the pizzas for 10 minutes. Add the basil.

Bake for another 10 minutes.

To do the taste test, I asked for my boyfriends help for a second opinion. We each ate one half of each of the pizzas. Tomato A is on the black plate and Tomato B is on the white plate.

Well, we were a bit of a hung jury. My boyfriend enjoyed the subtle tomato flavor of Tomato A, but noted that he thought there was salt added. I personally enjoyed the pop of flavor from Tomato B, it tasted more like a fresh tomato where Tomato A tasted more like it came from a can.

Tomato B actually ended up being Muir Glen. Seeing as I’m the cook, the next time we are eating something that uses canned tomatoes I am going to lean towards Muir Glen (oh, the power of the cook). However, my boyfriend did enjoy both tomatoes, we both had a tough time choosing a winner!