8 ms·

There's a similar problem with popcorn. Showing my age card here, but back in the 1970's popcorn actually tasted like corn, which seems to be a difficult concep

There's a similar problem with popcorn. Showing my age card here, but back in the 1970's popcorn actually tasted like corn, which seems to be a difficult concept to explain to anyone under 40. It all went south around the same time that microwave popcorn became popular. People always ask if I don't like tomatoes when I eat around them in salads or remove from burgers. Nope, I love tomatoes, that's why I don't eat flavorless, unseasonal ones. pro tip: Use canned tomatoes instead of fresh whenever out of season; canners use varieties that have not been ruined for shipping, and seal at the peak of freshness.

wyager 10y ago
> canners use varieties that have not been ruined for shipping This explains why I love canned/boxed tomatoes, but hate the slimy, bland sliced ones they put on sandwiches.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  If a sliced tomato is slimy on your sandwich, that's not a variety problem, it's a preparation problem (in that application, tomatoes, regardless of variety, should be seeded.) Bland may be a variety problem, though it can also be a poor handling problem.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    If there is no flavor, you are left only with texture.
- weaksauce 10y ago
  A home grown heirloom tomato is amazing. The stuff that they try to pass off in the stores as a tomato is awful.
debacle 10y ago
You can make popcorn in a saucepan, it's easy and fun. Gourmet popcorn (different kernels) also tastes far better even than the bulk kernels you can find in the store.
- ashark 10y ago
  I do this, and yeah, the results are pretty great, even with ordinary and easy-to-find Orville Redenbacher corn (off and store brands, not so much). Have you found any varieties that taste like the parent poster describes? I.E. with heavy corn flavor? I've tried a few "heirloom" varieties and they've usually been nuttier-tasting, with smaller pops and a much worse popped-to-unpopped ratio than the Redenbacher corn (though the flavor's usually interesting enough that I don't mind that too much). Definitely not cornier-tasting—farther from it, if anything.
  - nsxwolf 10y ago
    Yeah, I tried some Trader Joe's organic stuff, and the result was smaller kernels that were not very crisp. Redenbachers seems to do the job texture wise, but I'd love to hear about some really great lesser known stuff.
  - debacle 10y ago
    Yes, one of my wife's patients would bring in some of his from time to time, and it was the best popcorn I've ever tasted. Haven't had it in a while though.
- scruple 10y ago
  It's hilarious. I grew up in the rural midwest and I was taught to make "popped corn" on the stove in a pot with a little bit of oil by my grand mother. I love it this way, so does my wife, and I still prefer to make it this way to today. However, we had a very good friend over recently and I made popcorn for the 3 of us on the stove and she thought it was way beyond weird. She actually bought us one of those air popcorn makers for Christmas and was like, "Here, now you guys don't have to use the stove to make popcorn anymore!"
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    My parents had a pot with a top, and a crank in the handle that could be turned to stop the kernels from sticking. I suppose it's the more commercial version of what you grew up doing. It looks like they're still available for $20 or $30.
conistonwater 10y ago
There's a strange thing about canned tomatoes in North America: manufacturers seem to always put a firming agent (calcium chloride) which makes canned tomatoes supernaturally firm. But imported European canned tomatoes are fine.
dicroce 10y ago
There are 2 really good canned variety's available in the US (IMHO): 1) San Marzano (imported) 2) Muir Glen Organic
- Spellman 10y ago
  Odd. Either I have terrible tastebuds or it doesn't matter in this particular application, but last time I made sauce with San Marzano vs generic tomatoes no one could tell the difference. Someone more experienced want to pipe in and help my ignorance?
  - conistonwater 10y ago
    Not experienced, but (1) unless tomatoes feature prominently in a recipe, the details of their flavour won't have that much impact, (2) for any expensive protected-origin kind of stuff, there's a chance somebody just took the plain stuff and relabelled it.
  - xapata 10y ago
    Depending on how you cooked it, the difference might be subtle enough that only someone familiar with it would notice. Try eating the tomato raw, like an apple. A good tomato is wonderful with just a sprinkle of salt. I only started noticing the difference after I grew my own heirloom tomatoes. I was amazed when I ate my first harvest, fresh off the plant. I had never tasted a tomato before in my life! Basic supermarket tomatoes just taste like water.
- fovc 10y ago
  Worth noting that San Marzano is an Italian DOC, distinct from the US brand SMT, which has previously called their tomatoes San Marzano, despite not actually being that. They engage(d) in various shady practices so I personally avoid them and suggest others do too. For more info, see http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/68538/are-these-tomatoes-san-marzano-knockoffs http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/68538/are-these-t...
psadri 10y ago
I wish there was a brand dedicated to optimizing for taste of fruits and vegetables vs appearance. And by taste I don't mean sweetness. I'd actually optimize for less sweet fruits.
- foxhop 10y ago
  Shop local and "real" fresh, like picked that day.
  - imaginenore 10y ago
    "Local" is grown from the same exact seeds as the large farms most of the time. Because of market forces local farms actually have higher overheads due to the laws of scale. You might have to pay double-triple for the variety you like.
    - pif 10y ago
      > "Local" is grown from the same exact seeds ... Yes, but the process is different, as it optimizes the quality at the time of picking, rather than after several days spent in a container.
- contingencies 10y ago
  One of the interesting areas our startup http://8-food.com/ http://8-food.com/ hopes to explore is allowing for the effective distribution of short-run/seasonal/non-standard produce which would normally be unavailable due to conventional distribution chains / market forces. We are able to look at this seriously because of our emphasis on consumer choice, custom products, and dynamic pricing... whereas established chain restaurants seek reliable perennial large volume suppliers and supply-chains first (usually to support a year-round stable, unchanging, generic product), and optimizations for marketing (color, taste, etc.) a distant second.
- jbpetersen 10y ago
  Give the MJ industry a few years to spearhead experimentation with highly controlled farming techniques, then watch the tech scope out to custom strains of all sorts of different consumable plants as it comes down in price and people with related expertise gradually spread out as well.
tornadoboy55 10y ago
Pro tip: never eat canned goods. The coating inside of them is loaded with endocrine disruptors. Edit: nice to see downvotes without any discourse. Keep it up HN! https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/ https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726844/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726844/
- ada1981 10y ago
  I love the edit.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- abrookewood 10y ago
  Do you have anything showing that these are used in canned foods?
  - tornadoboy55 10y ago
    ... are you seriously too lazy to do ctrl+t->'canned food endocrine disruptors'->enter ? And don't use the argument that the onus is on me for giving more links. If googling it is too much effort for you, how can you expect me to do it for you..?
    - abrookewood 10y ago
      I only asked because you listed research listing the problems with endocrine disruptors, but nothing showing they were used in cans.
  - Baeocystin 10y ago
    Sure. Here you go. http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/29/health/canned-foods-bpa-risk/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/29/health/canned-foods-bpa-risk/
- Baeocystin 10y ago
ooqr 10y ago
I thought I disliked tomatoes as a kid, eating around them as you describe. Only when I discovered garden-grown cherry tomatoes did I flip the other way. So far the other way I'm surprised I didn't get sick eating so many of them. They're incredible.
- Eric_WVGG 10y ago
  When people say I'm full of it or delusional, I ask them to try one of the tomatoes and tell me if it tastes anything like spaghetti or pizza sauce, or simple, un-seasoned tomato sauce, or even goddamned ketchup. I could totally be delusional about the popcorn, though — I'm not that old. But one could do a taste test: 5600 year old kernels were shown to still pop.
- radicality 10y ago
  My family has a countryside house with a small greenhouse. Whenever I visit over the summer when the tomatoes are getting ripe, I go to see it. On a sunny day, opening the doors hits me with such an incredible fragrant tomato aroma followed by a eating a fresh off-the-vine tomato, that buying any tomato in a supermarket now just ends in big disappointment with how flavourless it is.
- jcoffland 10y ago
  Have you tried sungolds? They are a little smaller than cherry tomatoes, yellow-orange and even better, IMO. They are sweet but still retain a ton of tomato flavor. They also grow like crazy. If you give them something to climb on, plenty of sun and water the plants get huge. Here in CA I had them fruiting this year from May all the way into December. Finally the frost got them.
  - ooqr 10y ago
    Oh man! Those are actually what I was thinking of. I used to live in CA and my folks had a plant. The thing got out of control huge.
roel_v 10y ago
I don't have the reference at hand, but I read a paper a few months ago that explained this. You prefer flavors you grew up with. Flavors change, so as you get older, you think flavors get worse. Except they don't, the double blind testing showed age cohort related preference clustering, but no proof for 'everything was better in the old days'. This study was for strawberries but I don't see why it would be different.
- Retric 10y ago
  Alternatively, younger people don't know what they are missing. As the article points out it's not a sudden drop it's a low change over time where A is almost as good as B and B is almost as good as C ... until it's cardboard. I have done this experiment with Apples and Oranges kids really prefer the full flavor options and they are not just preferring their childhood tastes as they are still kids.
  - hexane360 10y ago
    Time to break open a seed vault and see who's right. We give young'uns the old stuff and see how they react. And then make a fortune if you're right, and make nothing if your parent comment is right.
    - pluma 10y ago
      I think you're missing the point: it's not that the flavour of the breeds has gotten words, it's that the breeds with the more distinct flavours have largely gone away. When there are less than a handful varieties widely available anymore and the breeds that made it were picked based on practical concerns rather than taste, it's pretty obvious why someone who experienced the full range of flavours might consider today's offerings quite bland. Case in point: there is a wide range of apple breeds with very different flavours that was used for various dishes traditionally. Trying to use the same one or two breeds that are still widely available for the same dishes leads to naturally very different (and arguably inferior as the recipes were specifically created with those breeds in minds) results regardless of whether the apple by itself would have been any tastier.
brokenmasonjars 10y ago
I'm under 40, but I know what you mean. My parents always grew some corn in the garden and we'd get popcorn after we got the seeds. I don't know shit about gardening so I haven't figured this out yet.
evgen 10y ago
For popcorn the best I have found is an heirloom variety called "Tiny But Mighty" (http://tinybutmightyfoods.com http://tinybutmightyfoods.com) that pops up as tiny hull-less popcorn. It looks a bit strange the first time you make it, as the popped kernels are much smaller than standard popcorn, but the taste is worth it. And you should be using a whirly-pop to do the popping :)
namlem 10y ago
Canned tomatoes are still less flavorful breeds, they're just fully ripened.

wyager 10y ago

> canners use varieties that have not been ruined for shipping This explains why I love canned/boxed tomatoes, but hate the slimy, bland sliced ones they put on sandwiches.

dragonwriter 10y ago
If a sliced tomato is slimy on your sandwich, that's not a variety problem, it's a preparation problem (in that application, tomatoes, regardless of variety, should be seeded.) Bland may be a variety problem, though it can also be a poor handling problem.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  If there is no flavor, you are left only with texture.
weaksauce 10y ago
A home grown heirloom tomato is amazing. The stuff that they try to pass off in the stores as a tomato is awful.

debacle 10y ago

You can make popcorn in a saucepan, it's easy and fun. Gourmet popcorn (different kernels) also tastes far better even than the bulk kernels you can find in the store.

ashark 10y ago
I do this, and yeah, the results are pretty great, even with ordinary and easy-to-find Orville Redenbacher corn (off and store brands, not so much). Have you found any varieties that taste like the parent poster describes? I.E. with heavy corn flavor? I've tried a few "heirloom" varieties and they've usually been nuttier-tasting, with smaller pops and a much worse popped-to-unpopped ratio than the Redenbacher corn (though the flavor's usually interesting enough that I don't mind that too much). Definitely not cornier-tasting—farther from it, if anything.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  Yeah, I tried some Trader Joe's organic stuff, and the result was smaller kernels that were not very crisp. Redenbachers seems to do the job texture wise, but I'd love to hear about some really great lesser known stuff.
- debacle 10y ago
  Yes, one of my wife's patients would bring in some of his from time to time, and it was the best popcorn I've ever tasted. Haven't had it in a while though.
scruple 10y ago
It's hilarious. I grew up in the rural midwest and I was taught to make "popped corn" on the stove in a pot with a little bit of oil by my grand mother. I love it this way, so does my wife, and I still prefer to make it this way to today. However, we had a very good friend over recently and I made popcorn for the 3 of us on the stove and she thought it was way beyond weird. She actually bought us one of those air popcorn makers for Christmas and was like, "Here, now you guys don't have to use the stove to make popcorn anymore!"
- khedoros1 10y ago
  My parents had a pot with a top, and a crank in the handle that could be turned to stop the kernels from sticking. I suppose it's the more commercial version of what you grew up doing. It looks like they're still available for $20 or $30.

conistonwater 10y ago

There's a strange thing about canned tomatoes in North America: manufacturers seem to always put a firming agent (calcium chloride) which makes canned tomatoes supernaturally firm. But imported European canned tomatoes are fine.

dicroce 10y ago

There are 2 really good canned variety's available in the US (IMHO): 1) San Marzano (imported) 2) Muir Glen Organic

Spellman 10y ago
Odd. Either I have terrible tastebuds or it doesn't matter in this particular application, but last time I made sauce with San Marzano vs generic tomatoes no one could tell the difference. Someone more experienced want to pipe in and help my ignorance?
- conistonwater 10y ago
  Not experienced, but (1) unless tomatoes feature prominently in a recipe, the details of their flavour won't have that much impact, (2) for any expensive protected-origin kind of stuff, there's a chance somebody just took the plain stuff and relabelled it.
- xapata 10y ago
  Depending on how you cooked it, the difference might be subtle enough that only someone familiar with it would notice. Try eating the tomato raw, like an apple. A good tomato is wonderful with just a sprinkle of salt. I only started noticing the difference after I grew my own heirloom tomatoes. I was amazed when I ate my first harvest, fresh off the plant. I had never tasted a tomato before in my life! Basic supermarket tomatoes just taste like water.
fovc 10y ago
Worth noting that San Marzano is an Italian DOC, distinct from the US brand SMT, which has previously called their tomatoes San Marzano, despite not actually being that. They engage(d) in various shady practices so I personally avoid them and suggest others do too. For more info, see http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/68538/are-these-tomatoes-san-marzano-knockoffs http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/68538/are-these-t...

psadri 10y ago

I wish there was a brand dedicated to optimizing for taste of fruits and vegetables vs appearance. And by taste I don't mean sweetness. I'd actually optimize for less sweet fruits.

foxhop 10y ago
Shop local and "real" fresh, like picked that day.
- imaginenore 10y ago
  "Local" is grown from the same exact seeds as the large farms most of the time. Because of market forces local farms actually have higher overheads due to the laws of scale. You might have to pay double-triple for the variety you like.
  - pif 10y ago
    > "Local" is grown from the same exact seeds ... Yes, but the process is different, as it optimizes the quality at the time of picking, rather than after several days spent in a container.
contingencies 10y ago
One of the interesting areas our startup http://8-food.com/ http://8-food.com/ hopes to explore is allowing for the effective distribution of short-run/seasonal/non-standard produce which would normally be unavailable due to conventional distribution chains / market forces. We are able to look at this seriously because of our emphasis on consumer choice, custom products, and dynamic pricing... whereas established chain restaurants seek reliable perennial large volume suppliers and supply-chains first (usually to support a year-round stable, unchanging, generic product), and optimizations for marketing (color, taste, etc.) a distant second.
jbpetersen 10y ago
Give the MJ industry a few years to spearhead experimentation with highly controlled farming techniques, then watch the tech scope out to custom strains of all sorts of different consumable plants as it comes down in price and people with related expertise gradually spread out as well.

tornadoboy55 10y ago

Pro tip: never eat canned goods. The coating inside of them is loaded with endocrine disruptors. Edit: nice to see downvotes without any discourse. Keep it up HN! https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/ https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726844/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726844/

ada1981 10y ago
I love the edit.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
abrookewood 10y ago
Do you have anything showing that these are used in canned foods?
- tornadoboy55 10y ago
  ... are you seriously too lazy to do ctrl+t->'canned food endocrine disruptors'->enter ? And don't use the argument that the onus is on me for giving more links. If googling it is too much effort for you, how can you expect me to do it for you..?
  - abrookewood 10y ago
    I only asked because you listed research listing the problems with endocrine disruptors, but nothing showing they were used in cans.
- Baeocystin 10y ago
  Sure. Here you go. http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/29/health/canned-foods-bpa-risk/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/29/health/canned-foods-bpa-risk/
Baeocystin 10y ago

ooqr 10y ago

I thought I disliked tomatoes as a kid, eating around them as you describe. Only when I discovered garden-grown cherry tomatoes did I flip the other way. So far the other way I'm surprised I didn't get sick eating so many of them. They're incredible.

Eric_WVGG 10y ago
When people say I'm full of it or delusional, I ask them to try one of the tomatoes and tell me if it tastes anything like spaghetti or pizza sauce, or simple, un-seasoned tomato sauce, or even goddamned ketchup. I could totally be delusional about the popcorn, though — I'm not that old. But one could do a taste test: 5600 year old kernels were shown to still pop.
radicality 10y ago
My family has a countryside house with a small greenhouse. Whenever I visit over the summer when the tomatoes are getting ripe, I go to see it. On a sunny day, opening the doors hits me with such an incredible fragrant tomato aroma followed by a eating a fresh off-the-vine tomato, that buying any tomato in a supermarket now just ends in big disappointment with how flavourless it is.
jcoffland 10y ago
Have you tried sungolds? They are a little smaller than cherry tomatoes, yellow-orange and even better, IMO. They are sweet but still retain a ton of tomato flavor. They also grow like crazy. If you give them something to climb on, plenty of sun and water the plants get huge. Here in CA I had them fruiting this year from May all the way into December. Finally the frost got them.
- ooqr 10y ago
  Oh man! Those are actually what I was thinking of. I used to live in CA and my folks had a plant. The thing got out of control huge.

roel_v 10y ago

I don't have the reference at hand, but I read a paper a few months ago that explained this. You prefer flavors you grew up with. Flavors change, so as you get older, you think flavors get worse. Except they don't, the double blind testing showed age cohort related preference clustering, but no proof for 'everything was better in the old days'. This study was for strawberries but I don't see why it would be different.

Retric 10y ago
Alternatively, younger people don't know what they are missing. As the article points out it's not a sudden drop it's a low change over time where A is almost as good as B and B is almost as good as C ... until it's cardboard. I have done this experiment with Apples and Oranges kids really prefer the full flavor options and they are not just preferring their childhood tastes as they are still kids.
- hexane360 10y ago
  Time to break open a seed vault and see who's right. We give young'uns the old stuff and see how they react. And then make a fortune if you're right, and make nothing if your parent comment is right.
  - pluma 10y ago
    I think you're missing the point: it's not that the flavour of the breeds has gotten words, it's that the breeds with the more distinct flavours have largely gone away. When there are less than a handful varieties widely available anymore and the breeds that made it were picked based on practical concerns rather than taste, it's pretty obvious why someone who experienced the full range of flavours might consider today's offerings quite bland. Case in point: there is a wide range of apple breeds with very different flavours that was used for various dishes traditionally. Trying to use the same one or two breeds that are still widely available for the same dishes leads to naturally very different (and arguably inferior as the recipes were specifically created with those breeds in minds) results regardless of whether the apple by itself would have been any tastier.

brokenmasonjars 10y ago

I'm under 40, but I know what you mean. My parents always grew some corn in the garden and we'd get popcorn after we got the seeds. I don't know shit about gardening so I haven't figured this out yet.

evgen 10y ago

For popcorn the best I have found is an heirloom variety called "Tiny But Mighty" (http://tinybutmightyfoods.com http://tinybutmightyfoods.com) that pops up as tiny hull-less popcorn. It looks a bit strange the first time you make it, as the popped kernels are much smaller than standard popcorn, but the taste is worth it. And you should be using a whirly-pop to do the popping :)

namlem 10y ago

Canned tomatoes are still less flavorful breeds, they're just fully ripened.