Why We Don’t Make Our Own Sauce—and Why That’s the Point
We get asked why we don’t make our own tomato sauce at Zina’s. The answer’s simple: someone does it better.
Our sauce comes from a small producer outside Parma. Family-run. Copper kettles. Same region, same tomatoes, year after year. They’ve been doing this for decades. They know the soil, the weather, the right week to harvest. We could try to replicate it—but it wouldn’t taste the same. And it wouldn’t feel the same either.
We’ve tasted a lot of sauces. Italy still does it best. Not just because of tradition, but because of systems. They don’t chase flavor—they protect it. No sugar to mask acidity, no starch to fake thickness. Just ripe tomatoes, cooked right.
Italy doesn’t chase flavor — it protects it.
Why Canned Beats Fresh—Especially in Sauce
There’s a reason the best Italian sauces start with canned tomatoes. Not out of compromise, but precision. These tomatoes are picked in season and processed within hours. That snap-freeze moment locks in the flavor—acid, sugar, and color—exactly where it should be.
Preserved isn’t a compromise. It’s a precision move.
Fresh tomatoes can be stunning, but only if they’re truly in season and local. Most of the year, they’re not. Off-season fresh tomatoes don’t cook down the same. They’re watery, inconsistent, and often bland unless doctored. For sauce, especially when you need it to hold up across batches and weeks, preserved is better.
Peeled plum or San Marzano types are the standard for a reason. They emulsify well with oil. They collapse just enough. And they bring depth without needing a long reduction. That matters, especially when you’re feeding thousands, not just making dinner for four.
What We Look For
We use sauces based on real San Marzano or Roma tomatoes. Dense. Balanced. Not too sweet, not too tart. No extra thickening, no burnoff.
The producers we work with know their growers by name. They can tell you which plot had more sun, which rows ripened early. That kind of care shows up in the finish. You see it in the way sauce clings to pasta or melts into a tray of lasagna. No aggressive herbs, no precooked aftertaste. Just clean, steady flavor.
For Home Cooks
Fresh tomatoes are great—when they’re in season, and when you treat them right. A quick sauté of cherry tomatoes in good olive oil? Go for it. But if you’re making a simmered sauce, something that needs time and layers, start with canned. Whole peeled, from a brand that puts region on the label. If it says San Marzano but it’s not from Italy, it’s not the same thing.
At the end of the day, it’s not about choosing canned over fresh. It’s about knowing when each one works. What gives you flavor without guessing. What lets the tomato lead.
That’s what we trust. And it’s why we’ve never tried to do it all ourselves.
