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Would fire roasted varieties of tomatoes be an option to avoid bitterness/sourness?

Ask Me Anything (Tomato edition)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Tomato edition)

Recorded

This event was on April 21, 2026

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to course-specific questions, to how to turn your cooking passion into profit or simply hearing the perspective of a professional chef, Chef Dan is ready to answer them all.

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Question

Roy L. Cox

Would fire roasted varieties of tomatoes be an option to avoid bitterness/sourness?

Answer

absolutely. Fire-roasted tomatoes varieties for your cans, I think that's the follow-up to what you were talking about before, are great, too. Just again, try to look for the non-BPA-lined can for those. I usually use fire-roasted versus other ones, just kind of depending on the usage. But for some reason, my kids are not as big a fan of the fire-roasted so for pizza sauces and stuff in the wintertime, I'm typically not going to use those. But yeah, great option to be able to use. Just look for the non-BPA-lined can if you can, Roy.

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

*Dan Marek* is a chef educator who has been teaching vegan and vegetarian cooking for over 15 years. At Rouxbe, he is our Director of Plant-Based Culinary and Development where he helps develop content, classes and builds courses for many of our partners. Dan is a board member of Slow Food Austin, the Institute of Child Nutrition, and Conscious Capitalism. He has earned his BA in Journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and holds certificates in Nutrition from Cornell University. Prior to his role with Rouxbe, Dan worked with Whole Kids Foundation training teachers and food service at schools across the country on nutrition and culinary best practices. He also worked as a Healthy Eating Educator at Whole Foods Market’s flagship store in Austin, TX, was a personal chef for some of Austin’s elite business people, taught classes in culinary techniques at Austin Community College, The Natural Epicurean, and Le Cordon Bleu. Dan also regularly volunteers cooking or speaking about nutrition for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Marathon Kids, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Austin and Central Texas.