— Roy L. Cox

So that is a very common thing. I'm here in Madison, Wisconsin, and tomatoes in the wintertime don't really taste like tomatoes when you get them from a grocery store. Looking for fresh tomatoes, I'm typically going to be looking for some sort of hydroponic variety to be able to get more of a flavor like a tomato that I would find in September. But canned options are definitely a great way to be able to kind of circumvent that, specifically for sauces and stuff like that. And sometimes you can find that tomatoes are a little bitter or sour in those. Now, there are a couple things that I would tell you to be able to look at. One of them is try switching the brand of tomato that you're using, because sometimes different brands have different types of varieties in them. And also look for the different varieties. But if you're looking for just a diced tomato, you might want to be able to look for a different brand to see if you're getting the same flavor profile out of it. Another thing I would actually look for is to make sure that the can is non-BPA lining. To be able to look for that because the acid of a tomato can start breaking down the interior of the can from the BPA lining, so that can definitely offset the flavor for them. The longer it's in the can, the more that's going to happen. So those are my top two recommendations. One is definitely looking for a non-BPA lined can. The other one is switching the brands a little bit to be able to see which ones, and taste them side by side if you can, to be able to see what's a better variety on those. Adding more sugar to a sauce or something like that, probably not something I would recommend right away because it's going to offset the entire dish and add a sweetness that you might not want into a sauce as well, too. So when it really comes down to it, go right to the source. Look to see what kind of variety you have in the tomato can, and then also look to see how it's been processed. So do a little bit of research on which tomatoes you're using in the can, and it's going to go a long way. Hope that helps a little bit for you, Roy. I'm ready to start putting tomatoes in the ground up here, so tomato season will come sooner than later, hopefully. I typically like to can my own tomatoes as well, too. If I have enough left over from the garden, I'll put them in jars to make sure that I'm getting them as fresh as possible and still getting that September flavor out of them as well.