Curated picks

Best Tomatoes for Sauce and Canning

Sauce wants flesh, not water. These paste and plum types are built like little bricks, dense low-juice walls and hardly any seeds, so they cook down thick instead of watering down the pot. Several are determinate, ripening in one concentrated rush, which is exactly what you want when the canning jars are already out on the counter.

1. 1San Marzanopaste · open-pollinated · 85 days · lateThe benchmark Italian sauce plum: meaty, low-acid, and thick-walled with few seeds.
2. 2Amish Pastepaste · heirloom · 85 days · lateA larger, sweeter heirloom paste with coreless flesh, good for sauce or fresh.
3. 3Romapaste · open-pollinated · 75 days · midThe reliable, compact determinate workhorse with firm, low-moisture flesh and VF resistance.
4. 4Speckled Romanpaste · open-pollinated · 81 days · lateA meaty striped paste with flavor good enough to eat fresh as well as cook.
5. 5Opalkapaste · heirloom · 82 days · lateA long Polish bull's-horn paste, nearly seedless, that performs in hot, dry spells.
6. 6Principe Borghesepaste · heirloom · 75 days · midThe traditional Italian sun-drying tomato, tiny and meaty, borne in huge clusters.
7. 7Goldman's Italian Americanpaste · open-pollinated · 80 days · midA large ribbed sauce oxheart with meaty, low-seed flesh, showy and productive.

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