54% Say This Is Their Favorite Brand Of Canned Tomatoes
Canned foods, particularly canned vegetables, don't necessarily have the best reputation. In some cases, they do deserve it — canned peas are nowhere near as good as the frozen kind, for example, while canned asparagus is an abomination. Canned tomatoes, however, are actually better for cooking than the fresh kind, something even Bon Appétit acknowledges. OK, so that's settled: no need to feel bad about buying canned tomatoes.
If you still want to feel judged and found wanting, however, you could always read up on what canned tomato brands you really should be buying. Food writers and chefs alike sometimes tend to recommend pricier, and in some cases fairly obscure, brands, rather than the kinds of canned tomatoes that can be found on humbler supermarket shelves. Mashed, however, decided to poll a more representative selection of the general populace, 596 U.S. respondents in all, and found that the people's pick wasn't really in line with that of kitchen pros (who may be writing their groceries off as a business expense).
Readily-available Hunt's was the overwhelming favorite
We gave our poll respondents a choice of six different brands: Bianco DiNapoli, Cento, Good & Gather, Hunt's, San Merican, and Whole Foods 365. The overwhelming winner, scooping up over half the votes at 54.5%, was Hunt's, a brand purchased by some 93 million Americans in 2018 — making the brand that year's top seller by a fairly wide margin. New York Times critics, however, ranked it as "just okay," saying Hunt's tomatoes yield a so-so sauce with a poor consistency.
All of the other brands of tomatoes in our poll were clustered at the bottom of the charts. In a very distant second place was Cento, polling a bit over 10%, while San Merican (third place) and Whole Foods 365 (fourth) didn't quite hit that 10% mark. Target house brand Good & Gather fell just short of 8%, while Bianco DiNapoli, the NYT critics' darling, came in dead last with just 7.5% of the vote. So there you have it. While our poll didn't ask for the respondents' rationale or reviews, our guess is that the favorite brand of canned tomatoes (or anything) is going to be the one you can a) find and b) afford.