Full Red Fully Prepared Pizza Sauce - A Canned Pizza Sauce Available To Restaurants

[DonRocks]

Full Red Fully Prepared Pizza Sauce

This product is only available through food-service distributors; not at retail. The ingredients look okay, until you get to the final two, at which point they become questionable.

The website says it's packed from fresh tomatoes; not from concentrate.

It's produced by Stanislaus Food Products, a family-owned cannery established in 1942.

[JPW]

This product is only available through food-service distributors; not at retail. The ingredients look okay, until you get to the final two, at which point they become questionable.

Citric acid is needed for safe canning (https://www.foodsafety.wisc.edu/assets/preservation/UWEX_addacidtomatoes.pdf )

What's wrong with granulated garlic? I want the flavor of garlic throughout my red sauce for pizza, not chunks of fresh garlic.

[DonRocks]

Citric acid is needed for safe canning (https://www.foodsafety.wisc.edu/assets/preservation/UWEX_addacidtomatoes.pdf )

What's wrong with granulated garlic? I want the flavor of garlic throughout my red sauce for pizza, not chunks of fresh garlic.

Okay, okay, I didn't say "bad," I said "questionable."

[darkstar965]

Okay, okay, I didn't say "bad," I said "questionable."

Was going to ask the same thing Joe did. You did seem to imply something was wrong/bad with the last two ingredients when considering your statement fully:

"The ingredients look okay, until you get to the final two, at which point they become questionable." So, 'not okay' was the same thought I had.

[DonRocks]

One of the best pizza chefs in the city says this:

And after I ordered and ate and judged, I had the privilege of watching their delivery come in and was equally disappointed by the extremely low quality tomato product (see full red tomato sauce) 

And then I use the word "questionable" to describe "citric acid" and "granulated garlic," and get this:

Citric acid is needed for safe canning (https://www.foodsafety.wisc.edu/assets/preservation/UWEX_addacidtomatoes.pdf )

What's wrong with granulated garlic? I want the flavor of garlic throughout my red sauce for pizza, not chunks of fresh garlic.

Was going to ask the same thing Joe did. You did seem to imply something was wrong/bad with the last two ingredients when considering your statement fully:

"The ingredients look okay, until you get to the final two, at which point they become questionable." So, 'not okay' was the same thought I had.

"Questionable" means, literally, "open to question" or "uncertain," and I have questions about both the type and amount of citric acid, and the type, amount, and process used for the granulated garlic, especially in light of Jonathan's condemnation about the product, and in light that every other ingredient seems fairly straightforward.

Maybe instead of saying something was questionable, which of course caused people to think I meant "dubious," or "doubtful as regards to quality," I should have simply let others question the product, like this:

Really dumb question. Partly because my tastes shifted to Neapolitan-style pizza as an adult (from NY style slices years ago) and thus never really considered ingredients in NY style pizza as I do with most anything now.

Is Full Red "extremely low quality" because it's industrially produced and canned? Or, is it respectable since the ingredients are relatively few and clear? (i.e., seemingly no additives, artificial flavors or chem labs).

Can't expect NY slice type shops to be making their own sauce on site? Or should we? Honestly have no idea about this.

More than one way to skin a cat, I suppose.

[Josh]

I did some googling and it seems like this sauce, or at least this product line is very widely used in NY pizzerias, so regardless of quality, it may speak to why the slices taste like home for some of us.

[Sthitch]

On 5/7/2015 at 12:26 AM, DonRocks said:

The ingredients look okay, until you get to the final two, at which point they become questionable.

I just stumbled across this post so it is not really a timely reply.  I do not believe that by reading the ingredients you can tell the quality of this or any product.  Sure you might steer away from products that have ingredients that sound scary to you though just because they have a chemically name such as sodium phosphate or one that causes you to scratch your head for its meaning such as carageenan does not mean that they are either bad or undesirable. Actually if I see sodium phosphate or "naturally derived citric acid" I know exactly what I am getting as opposed to some of the ingredients that you believe to be "okay."  Why is that?  Well here are the questions that I have about each of the other ingredients (aside from granulated garlic as others have already made a case for it).

Vine-ripened fresh tomatoes - you can throw away the "vine-ripened" nonsense as it really does not mean anything.  Go to the grocery store and you will find clusters of tomatoes that were snipped off the plant while still green and allowed to ripen on the detached vine that is now 2000+ miles from its original roots.  Also ripened leaves lots of room for interpretation.  How you judge ripeness of a tomato depends on what it is that you are looking for; is it color, flavor, sweetness, texture, or something else.  Also what kind of tomato has been used?  Is it a determinate hybrid that has been developed to produce maximum pulp or an indeterminate heirloom that has evolved to produce a complex, almost meaty flavor but far less pulp or something in between?  How were the tomatoes grown?  Were they field grown or hydroponic?  The answer to each one of these questions will tell you whether "vine-ripened fresh tomato" is an okay product or not.

Blend of extra virgin and pure olive oil - we know that the majority of this ingredient is extra virgin olive oil, but not how much of a majority, I would suspect that it much closer to 50/50 than anything else, but even if it were 100% extra virgin olive oil does not make it an OK product.  As I am sure has been mentioned on this site there is quite a bit of fraud in the imported EVOO market.  No I am not saying that the producer is committing fraud but could be buying EVOO that the FDA might consider economically motivated adulterated (EMA).  No way of knowing when reading the label.  Even if the oil was not EMA that does not mean that it is a quality product, there are plenty of cheap crappy extra virgin olive oils on the market.  To complicate things even more is the pure olive oil.  Here is how the FDA defines olive oil for the purposes of ingredient labeling:

Quote

Olive oil means virgin olive oil, or blends of virgin olive oil and refined olive oil; where virgin olive oil is the oil resulting from the first pressing of olives and is suitable for human consumption without further processing and refined olive oil is the oil obtained from subsequent pressings and which is suitable for human consumption by refining processes which neutralize the acidity or remove particulate matter. 

Pure would fall into the highlighted section, so basically they are saying that it is olive oil that has had its flavors removed.  Still sure this is an "OK" product?

Sunflower oil - why?  I suspect to increase the body of the sauce without having to pay for even more olive oil. 

Salt - it is far enough down the list to not raise any concerns for me.

Oregano - I can't tell by just seeing the word oregano the quality of the product used.  In the case of oregano being fresh is not necessarily superior to dried the primary oils that give it its flavors are not very volatile but the longer they dried leaves sit around the less flavor they have.  Also not all varieties of oregano are equal in flavor or intensity.  So they very well could be using an oregano that tastes more like cardboard than anything else.

Black pepper - I have never added more black pepper to a tomato sauce than granulated garlic so I suspect that this is to help make the sauce taste as though it has a higher percentage of extra virgin olive oil than it does.

Generally speaking the impact of an ingredient to the finished product is proportional to the placement on the ingredient list.  I highly doubt that granulated garlic or naturally derived citric acid plays any role in the level of quality of the product.  It is most likely to be of low quality because they use low quality tomatoes.  

[meatwad]

2 companies make sauce exclusively for the pizza trade. stanislaus and escalon. both use tomatoes grown and packed in ca. they both make some good stuff. not aligned with *current* trends. whatever. definitely tasty and consistent. i guaranteed if you're the average 'murican you've had, and probably enjoyed, sauce from both of these companies. of course being in dc, you're above average.

they both make a variety of spicing, texture and flavor and what i'd call extraction levels. if you make pizza at home grab some and try it. i've never had canned grocery store tomatoes that could hold a candle. 

this is not the scuzzy FL/MX tomato industry. imo this is one of the american food sectors that does right. their distribution is aimed at restaurants, similar to seafood and beef. try and find a real dry scallop in retail!