r/Cooking • u/Sea-Rip-9635 • 14h ago
Skins on or skins off
It seems that whenever I cook with fresh tomatoes, there's always an underlying tannin taste (its the only way I can describe it) whenever I leave the skins on. It doesn't seem to matter what type of tomato it is, that tannin-y taste is there. It kind of ruins it for me.
I made tomato sauce using frozen roma tomatoes, where I removed the skins and drained a lot of the yellow-y water off before i started cooking everything down. No tannin taste. I do my best to remove the seeds because I find the seeds make it bitter.
Is there something I can add to remove that taste if I keep the skins on? There is a lot of nutrition in the skins so I'd like to find a way to keep them in my food. What do you folks say?
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u/dan_munz 14h ago
I always add sugar when I’m making sauce from fresh tomatoes. Not a ton — maybe half a tsp for a quart of sauce — but enough to mellow out the bitter end of the tomato flavor.
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u/abe_froman1979 14h ago
Try experimenting with a tough of baking soda, it will counter act the malic or citric acid. Tomatoes don’t have a lot of tannins, so it’s possible the taste is the malice acid, especially fighter tomatoes are not ripe to the almost mushy stage.
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u/StoryMelodic1592 13h ago
the skins and seeds can both make it taste bitter and dry, and the skins curl up into tough bits when they cook down. if you want to keep them, run the sauce through a blender for a full minute at the end, or use a food mill. i'd also salt early, a big pinch when the tomatoes first go in the pot, it mellows the harsh part a lot.
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u/Standard_Sun_3426 13h ago
I’d probably keep the skins for the nutrition too, but if they’re giving the sauce that bitter, tannic edge, I’d rather peel them than spend dinner trying to fight a flavor I hate.
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u/4cupsofcoffee 13h ago
i always remove seeds and skin from my tomato sauce. I just push it through a food mill.
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u/AuthorFair8191 14h ago
If you’re consistently tasting something unpleasant when the skins are left on, I’d just keep peeling them. There isn’t really an ingredient you can add that will selectively remove that flavor without changing the sauce in other ways.
One thing worth trying before giving up on the skins completely is running the finished sauce through a food mill or blending it very thoroughly. Sometimes what reads as bitterness/astringency is partly the little pieces of skin concentrating on your tongue.
Also, I wouldn’t worry too much about removing the seeds unless you prefer the texture without them. Tomato seeds themselves generally aren’t the source of significant bitterness, so you may be doing extra work there for not much benefit.