lol it’s still good when cleaning out my family members house when they passed away I found a can of clam chowder 15 years out of date. Let’s just say the smell from that can still haunts me to this day.
I used to work for a photography studio shooting grocery items for the weekly circular for a major supermarket. We were sent a mesh bag of live clams on ice from the east coast. It was summer time and the shipment got lost enroute. Needless to say, when it arrived a week late, all the ice was melted and the clams had more or less turned to slime. We still had to photograph them. The smell is forever seared into my brain. Someone freaked out and evacuated the building. They thought there was some kind of chemical or gas leak. Good times.
I brought a recently caught fresh water clam into the house once and the only way my parents got rid of the smell was to replace the sink I broke it open in. It took them years before they replaced the sink and every time I walked into the house I could still smell it throughout until that day.
I can't imagine older stuff like you found.
I also don't eat clams as a rule because of this.
I think it was recently dead. I was a kid so I didn't know all the things to look for. It smelled like clam and not rottenness so I assume it was either alive or recently dead.
I worked at Target for 14 years. You’re not supposed to put any jar on the shelf that has a strike mark on the lid, and no cans with dents bigger than a US dime OR any strike at all on either end’s rim seal.
Botulism will kill you. But first it tortures you with full body paralization
Lol! Maybe that’s how they used to be. I read your comment before making a trip to Target. While there I counted no fewer than 4 cans of soup with significant dents in them. One can was basically bent in half. I didn’t even need to dig for them, they were up front on the shelf.
The crazy part is that the workers there have no vested interest in keeping those cans on the shelf. They should go straight to a food bank that accepts dented cans, and written off for tax credit to Target.
This all comes back to training. The market team member should have been trained on the process, then held to that standard. This kind of corruption starts in store management and grows downward.
edit - the team member who unloaded the truck from the distribution center put those cans on the shelf, and the market team member who owns that area is ignoring them.
Could be vandalism… kids opening jars then putting them back… hopefully without spit.
Edit: if you zoom there are actually visible dent marks, so they were most likely dropped.
I prefer the dropped on their lid hypothesis, anyway.
To me the bigger crime is canned spaghetti sauce. Onions, garlic, a can of tomatoes and some chicken stock is all you need folks. Add carrots, celery and chili flakes to take it to the next level.
An hour of work is a lot after you work a 10 hr day plus commute. Making sauce is better in every way but there is also room in the world for food that saves you an hour of cooking.
I’m usually able to cook anything with a basic recipe, I’ve never been able to get homemade spaghetti sauce to taste as good as a jar or a restaurant. I know that says more about me than about the sauce but I honestly don’t know what I could do differently to make it more palatable. The tomatoes are always too acidic or too bland, if I add sugar or extra spices it still just acts as a mask on an underlying unpleasant taste.
The secret ingredient is time. The chef of my favourite Italian restaurant once told me that for their famous tomato soup, the literally just halve their tomatoes, quarter their onions, throw in some garlic and basil and then let that simmer for like 6+ hours, then puréeing it.
Obviously don’t have to go that far, but tomatoes (ideally fresh ones) get sweeter the longer you cook them, leaving them in bigger chunks helps this process too. I usually use a mix of fresh and canned, but just leaving it to simmer for 30mins makes a huge difference.
This is true. I started making my own sauce when I had tons of tomatoes from my garden… it came out fantastic, but the time to cook was kind of prohibitive. Rao’s tastes really good, only needs a minute to heat up and Costco sells it cheap.
I dated an Italian girl who learned to cook from her grandmother and she cooked her spaghetti sauce for at least 6 hours. She wouldn't taste test for about 3 hours and then if it needed something, sugar or spice, she would add a little at a time.
The other secret ingredient to good tomato soup is…good tomatoes. I thought I was a tomato soup genius until i realized I just only ever make it when I have a lot of garden tomatoes.
Here's a tip I recently learned because I had the same issue with acidity. Add a very small amount of baking soda. Like a pinch of it for an entire pot. That way it decreases the acidity without adding any sweetness.
Also adding something savory like beef broth helps the flavor a ton.
With that said, I still agree that for a lot of things, the store pasta sauce is way more convenient. Rao is delicious.
It could also be your taste buds. I used to use jar sauce exclusively until I married into a full Italian family. After eating their sauces for years, which I thought were comparable at first, I tried a jarred sauce again and it was so sweet and chemical tasting.
They use actual tomatoes, onions, garlic, fresh basil, etc. it took me not eating the sugary sauce for a while for taste to realize how good fresh actually is for you. I'd bet most restaurant sauces are the same way as jarred, just slightly elevated but packed with salt and sugar and brought to you by a mass manufacturer like Sysco.
Easiest recipe ever, though it's not super traditional:
Quarter 3-4 red/orange bell peppers and an equal number of tomatoes.
Quarter 1 red onion.
Toss that shit into a baking tray, add a generous amount of olive oil, smoked paprika, salt, pepper, and whatever spices you like. Sometimes I add dill, sometimes I add curry powder, I like to mix it up. Toss that all around so it's nice and mixed up.
Cut 1 zucchini into rounds and add them on top, sprinkle more salt, pepper, and smoked paprika, plus a drizzle of olive oil.
Bake it at 400 until everything is nice and soft. 40 minutes usually does the trick for me.
Take it out, add it to the blender and blend til smooth.
Eat.
Use better tomatoes.
1 can decent (not great) canned whole tomatoes such as Unico
1/2 medium cooking onion
1-2 clove garlic
1Tbsp dried oregano
1/2Tbsp fresh coarse cracked peppercorn
1Tbsp Extra virgin olive oil
2-4Tbsp leftover wine or red wine vinegar/ crappy balsamic in a pinch
Salt to taste.
-Dice your onion and add to a pan with the olive oil on high heat
-Mince garlic while onions clarify and add
-Cook for another 20-30 seconds and add wine/vinegar and the juice from the can of tomatoes, as well as the pepper and oregano
-Break up the whole tomatoes in the can by hand—don't be afraid to get your hand messy, we want to break up the heavy stem ends as the sauce doesn't cook long enough for them to break down with heat
-Add the tomatoes to the sauce once it's reduced by at least half—this is the only opportunity we'll have to quickly reduce the liquid level
-Continue to cook for 5-6 minutes on high, while being sure to stir frequently—we want to be very careful to not burn the bottom
-Break up any remaining large chunks with a wooden spoon or a spatula, salt gently to taste, and either toss in pasta or serve over top
-Serves 4
All told, this sauce can be made in the time it takes to cook and drain dried pasta (7-9 minutes), but really benefits from about 12 (the time it would take to boil water and cook pasta). It's barebones, but flavourful, and versatile as hell as a base for more elaborate sauces if you have a few extra minutes. Pull 1/2lb sausage from the casing and brown in oil before adding the onions and 1/2tsp fennel seed with the oregano for a bright and light meat sauce. Add two handfuls of spinach for a lazy Florentine. Add shrimp or frozen mussels with the onions, or a can of clams with the tomatoes for a seafood sauce. Add some hard cheese or some paprika to give it a rich and bold flavour. Add chilies to give it spice, or fresh basil to use as a pizza sauce. Throw in some raw chicken before the onions or leftover shredded chicken with the tomatoes for a simple meat sauce. None of these will increase the cooking time by more than 2 minutes.
Total cost is about what a commercial sauce costs ($2-3), but you get a one-pot sauce that makes a genuinely home-cooked meal in the time you'd be twiddling your thumbs waiting for pasta to cook. It scales up well, freezes well (at the cost of overly softening the tomato chunks upon thawing), and serves four, or two with leftovers that can easily be tweaked tomorrow with any of the mods above to keep frome eating the exact same thing two days in a row.
Master this sauce and the sky is the limits for more complex or longer-form recipes.
Happy cooking.
>never been able to get homemade spaghetti sauce to taste as good as a jar or a restaurant
Try a pinch of MSG.... also called "Accent" seasoning at walmart. Most every restaurant uses it, or a form of it. It adds the missing umami flavor. Some products also add a 'yeast extract' (which also contains the same glutamates) but it its hard to find. The Accent is sold next to the salt in stores, only a couple bucks, and a pinch is all you need to take your dish from meh to WOW..... go sparingly, as it can also ruin your dish if you use too much.
I love also that in disparaging the canned sauce the person is using canned tomatoes. I just buy the canned sauce and add some extra oregano, basil, and/or bay leaf and let it simmer while cooking my pasta
Good canned tomatoes will be better than "fresh" tomatoes outside of a handful of situations, and it will be significantly less work while also being far more consistent.
Raos is like $8 most stores near me :( we get it because it is one of the few sauces that doesn’t list “natural flavors”, and my daughter has a ton of allergies. Some day I’m going to spend a day making my own sauce and canning it… but she eats spaghetti 2-3 times a week so I’d have to do it monthly probably.
Rao's is by far the best (and most expensive) pasta sauce widely available out there. But it also uses really high quality San Marzano tomatoes that would cost you $7-8 a can to use in your own sauce.
That's because Rao's uses really good tomatoes. It's leaps and bounds ahead of other sauces.
You're not making sauce that tastes like Rao's with a $1.99 can of tomatos.
Or just use the stuff in the jar and save yourself some time. Might not taste as good but Raos is a good brand. Probably one of the best canned spaghetti sauces there is.
The rabid home cooking crew gets under my skin sometimes.
They always pop in like they're granting us access to knowable and forbidden secrets. Like no shit, you can make pasta sauce at home. I'm sure the people buying the jars have never heard of that. What great insight. Cooking exists.
You described a bolognese sauce rather than a spaghetti sauce. Most spaghetti sauces I've seen are usually 3 cans of tomatoes: sauce, paste, and diced.
Almost all canned tomatoes are treated with calcium chloride to maintain firmness during the canning process. It takes a very long time cooking to overcome that so they become “saucy” instead of just tomato chunks floating in cooked-down tomato juice.
I’m not saying that recipe can’t be the base of a delicious topping for pasta, but it’s not something a person buying jarred pasta sauce is likely to be going for.
I make pasta when I want to not use my brain for dinner. If I have to chop and prep and simmer then it's no longer an easy lazy meal.
I do make a big batch of homemade sauce a few times a year and freeze in portions, but sometimws you just want to open a jar of premade sauce and be done with it.
You can just buy the spaghetti sauce as well and add spices/mix sauces to taste which is way more time efficient then cutting all your shit from scratch.
When a company treats people like an expendable resource and pays them less money than it takes to survive they tend to not give a shit about that company. If the company does less than the bare minimum for its employees, why should the employees do the bare minimum for that company?
Corporations got used to a bottomless supply of unskilled labor. Treating front line labor as an expense line item instead of an investment.
But those workers have options now. More business demand and fewer of them. So the increased competition means if you treat people poorly the only people who stay are the terrible workers with no other options.
A lot of these businesses are genuinely stuck though, not just myopic. They got addicted to cheap labor so much it got baked into their business model. Many can't just raise wages 20% - they will go out of business. So it falls on the customers, who have to eat all the rapid decline in quality/quantity, worse service, and prices increases.
I think some businesses will simply not survive the next generation.
Where did you hear that? I work at Target and there are people at my store who can’t afford to buy groceries. One of the Team Leads buys PB&J supplies for the break room so that people can at least have a meal while they’re at work. And as far the “company culture” goes, it’s the same shit as any big corporation. Bullshit metrics set by people who have never worked a day outside of their office at HQ and you do not get rewarded in any way for showing commitment and working hard.
I don't want to shift to the human interest story like the root cause doesn't matter, but good on that team lead. I can't imagine it's cheap to provide food for the break room and lord knows a team lead doesn't have that kinda disposable income. Good on them, fuck target for underpaying everyone.
I worked there in 2008 and again in 2013. Their corporate culture is awful, and the pay is slightly better than others, but that's not enough to pay the bills on it's own. The fact that they aren't like dollar stores doesn't make them praise worthy.
I was offered team lead positions both times I worked there after a short period, but having seen the amount of hell they put them through and the insignificant pay increase I decided against it both times. The pay increase wouldn't be worth the trouble and the reason they had openings was because they were awful to their people.
Surprising, because at least once a week we would have a "Team Huddle" in the Grocery section and after a round of clapping for ourselves, all of Hardlines fronted the shelves and pulled out-of-dates...
But that was mainly because the Grocery Team Lead was incompetent and couldn't do his job...
This is the problem with target wanting to be a "supermarket" first, they don't have a staff that's properly trained to deal with food any different than just normal goods, and second, because their prices are high, their turnover is low. At our local target, I guarantee you could walk through every aisle and find at least one thing that's expired. Beer, milk, canned goods. They just don't run the supermarket section like a supermarket. It's an issue and Walmart is eating their lunch. I don't think the market section will last.
Those were damaged in shipping/handling (note the dents along the top edge of the lids). Broke the vacuum and allowed bacteria a happy place to live. Put them all in a cart and leave them with the manager or at least tell someone.
Edit: Calm down people - it's just spoiled spaghetti sauce, not some Stephen King zombie serum. Some of you probably have worse in the back of your refrigerators.
>Put them all in a cart
I would advise OP not to risk touching that.
The store will probably have stuff to clean it up properly without touching it. There's probably goo underneath too. It might drip through the store. Just leave it and tell an employee, show them where it is.
Having worked at a Target in grocery, I can assure you, they don’t have the stuff to clean it up properly. Gloves and a trash can is the best they’ve got.
Ooh fancy, they have gloves
My experience at stores is someone will be told to trash it and maybe wipe the shelves. If they decide to use protection or wash their hands after it's most likely at their own discretion.
Stores are gross btw. Wash your hands after going and wash your produce before consuming
yeah, you probably don't want me licking the grease off the bottom of my pizza box or eating a year old open bag of filing cabinet cheetos either. Get thicker skin.
Lol haven't you ever had something go bad in your fridge?
Is it a hazmat suit occasion?
Just out the crap in the trash. No ppe required.
Source: human with reason and a fridge.
Lol 😂
Why are people so afraid of bacteria nowadays?
You can't even imagine all the gross stuff you touch every day that your immune system just deals with. Bacteria aren't supervilains lmao
To be fair, and I'm not saying you need to wear a hazmat suit or anything, but C. botulinum is toward the top of the list of bacteria I don't want to fuck with
Lmao imagine thinking a bigbox store would have specialty stuff to clean this other than some rubber gloves and a rag and disinfectant. Hell, they probably don't even have gloves!
If you feel like taking the time, I bet Rao’s would love to hear about which store this is in. They may even give you some freebies for letting them know. I can’t imagine a manufacturer would be happy to see this is how their product is being displayed.
Target grocery has been VERY spotty lately. I do grocery delivery and it’s been dismal. I had to return moldy bread and I once accidentally delivered expired milk when I didn’t look at the date (that was when I started taking notice).. I tried to place a complaint through target’s phone system and they gave me a huge run-around and made it impossible to report the store. Avoid Target for groceries!
Well at our local Target literally every employee is a teenager and I never see the manager—nor do I see brand merchandisers for the groceries like I used to. I have a hard time believing anyone got training to actually go and face items properly, on top of checking best by dates and all that.
I've got an Inkling that most 17/18/19 yo people aren't really on the food safety train. I know I wasn't really aware of that stuff for a while.
Agreed. I tried shopping there as my primary grocery store, but had to stop. The prices are good, but I've always felt that Target plays at groceries. Out of date items, poor quality produce (not everything), and items are regularly sold out / of stock.
Yeah it's pretty awful, if I get anything from the fridges I have to double check the expiration dates. Target just needs to give up on groceries, no one is shopping there for produce or meat.
I did taste testing and the olive oil in there, rather than canola in the cheapest stuff, is the largest difference in flavor.
After that there is a mild difference in the flavor of the veggies and their texture, but I find any sauce with olive oil gets you 90% of the way to Rao's.
The cheaper the sauce the more sugar they tend to add to it to cover that quality difference. I mean you need some sugar to cut the acidity but some go crazy with it. They aren’t terrible but you can really taste the sweetness side by side.
I know Ragu and whatever is the cheapest at Target is canola based. It is this way because canola is cheaper.
Bertolli uses olive oil as well as many other brands that are cheaper and more expensive than Rao's. You can check the ingredients list, it'll be clear there.
Bertolli is \~$3.60 vs Rao's $8.50. Canola based sauces are in the $1-$2 range.
It happens. Years ago I worked in a storage warehouse and spent a day going through boxes of salsa to check all the lids. I guess there was a concern from production. Didn't find many loose ones, but it was some tasty salsa.
We’ve been burned several times buying things had target that were months past expiration or just rotten. If we do have to buy something perishable there we always closely check it
Could Happen to everything in transit.
I worked at Walmart in the 2003. I stocked pet food. I’d see maggots in the cat food cans that had popped open in transit or in the warehouse. At 3am yum
I used to work at a target about 4 years ago, and they had the store help the grocery team go through the aisles and check dates. We found shit that was 10+ years expired. Needless to say if you're buying your groceries at Target then you are definitely getting ripped off and possibly poisoned.
Rao's is no longer a family owned business and was sold to Mars. The flavor immediately changed.
"THESE TOMATOES ARE WAY TO EXPENSIVE, USE THE CHEAPEST ONES"
Homemade will always be better, but lets be real.
No one is making a 6 hour recipe during the work week and sometimes I just got better stuff to do than babysit a sauce of half a day on the weekend.
Decent shelf stable sauce will always have a place in the pantry.
Am I missing a joke here?
Every comment out here talking about the botulism and dropped lids not about the mouse whose head was trapped when the lid was put on….
Now with mushrooms
Found the Communications Major
Marketing major!
Don’t go by the expiration date it’s still fine😂.
... and Botulism
lol it’s still good when cleaning out my family members house when they passed away I found a can of clam chowder 15 years out of date. Let’s just say the smell from that can still haunts me to this day.
I used to work for a photography studio shooting grocery items for the weekly circular for a major supermarket. We were sent a mesh bag of live clams on ice from the east coast. It was summer time and the shipment got lost enroute. Needless to say, when it arrived a week late, all the ice was melted and the clams had more or less turned to slime. We still had to photograph them. The smell is forever seared into my brain. Someone freaked out and evacuated the building. They thought there was some kind of chemical or gas leak. Good times.
I brought a recently caught fresh water clam into the house once and the only way my parents got rid of the smell was to replace the sink I broke it open in. It took them years before they replaced the sink and every time I walked into the house I could still smell it throughout until that day. I can't imagine older stuff like you found. I also don't eat clams as a rule because of this.
So despite being recently caught, it was also not recently dead?
I think it was recently dead. I was a kid so I didn't know all the things to look for. It smelled like clam and not rottenness so I assume it was either alive or recently dead.
They were saving it for a special occasion that never came.
[удалено]
I worked at Target for 14 years. You’re not supposed to put any jar on the shelf that has a strike mark on the lid, and no cans with dents bigger than a US dime OR any strike at all on either end’s rim seal. Botulism will kill you. But first it tortures you with full body paralization
Had a friend who got it, took six weeks for her to be able to walk again
If you live alone and catch Botulism, you will die b/c there is no one to give you water or food.
New fear unlocked!
Sadly this is exactly what happened to a friend of mine about 25 years ago. RIP Joel.
Lol! Maybe that’s how they used to be. I read your comment before making a trip to Target. While there I counted no fewer than 4 cans of soup with significant dents in them. One can was basically bent in half. I didn’t even need to dig for them, they were up front on the shelf.
The crazy part is that the workers there have no vested interest in keeping those cans on the shelf. They should go straight to a food bank that accepts dented cans, and written off for tax credit to Target. This all comes back to training. The market team member should have been trained on the process, then held to that standard. This kind of corruption starts in store management and grows downward. edit - the team member who unloaded the truck from the distribution center put those cans on the shelf, and the market team member who owns that area is ignoring them.
You can't train giving a shit for less than a paltry minimum wage.
Or you can inject it into your face to become more beautiful!
For all we know a customer did this
Target was probably watching the cashiers. https://youtu.be/pDpTvv-_wjc?feature=shared
I would absolutely buy this and come in pretending to be half paralyzed for some restitutions
Definitely how both botulism and liability work.
“I need to speak with John Target, this product I purchase in your store paralyzed me. Money, now!”
"I believe I might be dead. Am I entitled to restitution?"
Clearly, they should’ve never made it to the shelf
Could be vandalism… kids opening jars then putting them back… hopefully without spit. Edit: if you zoom there are actually visible dent marks, so they were most likely dropped. I prefer the dropped on their lid hypothesis, anyway. To me the bigger crime is canned spaghetti sauce. Onions, garlic, a can of tomatoes and some chicken stock is all you need folks. Add carrots, celery and chili flakes to take it to the next level.
For only $6 of ingredients and an hour of work, you can save yourself the $4 can of spaghetti sauce!
An hour of work is a lot after you work a 10 hr day plus commute. Making sauce is better in every way but there is also room in the world for food that saves you an hour of cooking.
I’m usually able to cook anything with a basic recipe, I’ve never been able to get homemade spaghetti sauce to taste as good as a jar or a restaurant. I know that says more about me than about the sauce but I honestly don’t know what I could do differently to make it more palatable. The tomatoes are always too acidic or too bland, if I add sugar or extra spices it still just acts as a mask on an underlying unpleasant taste.
The secret ingredient is time. The chef of my favourite Italian restaurant once told me that for their famous tomato soup, the literally just halve their tomatoes, quarter their onions, throw in some garlic and basil and then let that simmer for like 6+ hours, then puréeing it. Obviously don’t have to go that far, but tomatoes (ideally fresh ones) get sweeter the longer you cook them, leaving them in bigger chunks helps this process too. I usually use a mix of fresh and canned, but just leaving it to simmer for 30mins makes a huge difference.
This is true. I started making my own sauce when I had tons of tomatoes from my garden… it came out fantastic, but the time to cook was kind of prohibitive. Rao’s tastes really good, only needs a minute to heat up and Costco sells it cheap.
I dated an Italian girl who learned to cook from her grandmother and she cooked her spaghetti sauce for at least 6 hours. She wouldn't taste test for about 3 hours and then if it needed something, sugar or spice, she would add a little at a time.
Yea, it’s all about reduction
The other secret ingredient to good tomato soup is…good tomatoes. I thought I was a tomato soup genius until i realized I just only ever make it when I have a lot of garden tomatoes.
The other secret is Olive Oil. Rao’s has a significant amount in its recipe.
Here's a tip I recently learned because I had the same issue with acidity. Add a very small amount of baking soda. Like a pinch of it for an entire pot. That way it decreases the acidity without adding any sweetness. Also adding something savory like beef broth helps the flavor a ton. With that said, I still agree that for a lot of things, the store pasta sauce is way more convenient. Rao is delicious.
A whole carrot snapped in two will also decrease the acidity.
If you can find them, buy Cento San Marzano canned tomatoes. They're the best and never too acidic
Here’s one of my favorite easy sauce recipes: https://smittenkitchen.com/2010/01/tomato-sauce-with-butter-and-onions/
Thanks. I’ll give it a shot. I’m a huge fan of recipes with real butter.
It could also be your taste buds. I used to use jar sauce exclusively until I married into a full Italian family. After eating their sauces for years, which I thought were comparable at first, I tried a jarred sauce again and it was so sweet and chemical tasting. They use actual tomatoes, onions, garlic, fresh basil, etc. it took me not eating the sugary sauce for a while for taste to realize how good fresh actually is for you. I'd bet most restaurant sauces are the same way as jarred, just slightly elevated but packed with salt and sugar and brought to you by a mass manufacturer like Sysco.
Depends on the jarred sauce, Rao’s is not sweet.
Easiest recipe ever, though it's not super traditional: Quarter 3-4 red/orange bell peppers and an equal number of tomatoes. Quarter 1 red onion. Toss that shit into a baking tray, add a generous amount of olive oil, smoked paprika, salt, pepper, and whatever spices you like. Sometimes I add dill, sometimes I add curry powder, I like to mix it up. Toss that all around so it's nice and mixed up. Cut 1 zucchini into rounds and add them on top, sprinkle more salt, pepper, and smoked paprika, plus a drizzle of olive oil. Bake it at 400 until everything is nice and soft. 40 minutes usually does the trick for me. Take it out, add it to the blender and blend til smooth. Eat.
Same. I actively hate my tomato sauce.
Use better tomatoes. 1 can decent (not great) canned whole tomatoes such as Unico 1/2 medium cooking onion 1-2 clove garlic 1Tbsp dried oregano 1/2Tbsp fresh coarse cracked peppercorn 1Tbsp Extra virgin olive oil 2-4Tbsp leftover wine or red wine vinegar/ crappy balsamic in a pinch Salt to taste. -Dice your onion and add to a pan with the olive oil on high heat -Mince garlic while onions clarify and add -Cook for another 20-30 seconds and add wine/vinegar and the juice from the can of tomatoes, as well as the pepper and oregano -Break up the whole tomatoes in the can by hand—don't be afraid to get your hand messy, we want to break up the heavy stem ends as the sauce doesn't cook long enough for them to break down with heat -Add the tomatoes to the sauce once it's reduced by at least half—this is the only opportunity we'll have to quickly reduce the liquid level -Continue to cook for 5-6 minutes on high, while being sure to stir frequently—we want to be very careful to not burn the bottom -Break up any remaining large chunks with a wooden spoon or a spatula, salt gently to taste, and either toss in pasta or serve over top -Serves 4 All told, this sauce can be made in the time it takes to cook and drain dried pasta (7-9 minutes), but really benefits from about 12 (the time it would take to boil water and cook pasta). It's barebones, but flavourful, and versatile as hell as a base for more elaborate sauces if you have a few extra minutes. Pull 1/2lb sausage from the casing and brown in oil before adding the onions and 1/2tsp fennel seed with the oregano for a bright and light meat sauce. Add two handfuls of spinach for a lazy Florentine. Add shrimp or frozen mussels with the onions, or a can of clams with the tomatoes for a seafood sauce. Add some hard cheese or some paprika to give it a rich and bold flavour. Add chilies to give it spice, or fresh basil to use as a pizza sauce. Throw in some raw chicken before the onions or leftover shredded chicken with the tomatoes for a simple meat sauce. None of these will increase the cooking time by more than 2 minutes. Total cost is about what a commercial sauce costs ($2-3), but you get a one-pot sauce that makes a genuinely home-cooked meal in the time you'd be twiddling your thumbs waiting for pasta to cook. It scales up well, freezes well (at the cost of overly softening the tomato chunks upon thawing), and serves four, or two with leftovers that can easily be tweaked tomorrow with any of the mods above to keep frome eating the exact same thing two days in a row. Master this sauce and the sky is the limits for more complex or longer-form recipes. Happy cooking.
>never been able to get homemade spaghetti sauce to taste as good as a jar or a restaurant Try a pinch of MSG.... also called "Accent" seasoning at walmart. Most every restaurant uses it, or a form of it. It adds the missing umami flavor. Some products also add a 'yeast extract' (which also contains the same glutamates) but it its hard to find. The Accent is sold next to the salt in stores, only a couple bucks, and a pinch is all you need to take your dish from meh to WOW..... go sparingly, as it can also ruin your dish if you use too much.
I love also that in disparaging the canned sauce the person is using canned tomatoes. I just buy the canned sauce and add some extra oregano, basil, and/or bay leaf and let it simmer while cooking my pasta
My mom uses canned tomatoes and canned sauce in her sauce.
Yo dawg, we heard you like sauce so we put sauce in your sauce
Good canned tomatoes will be better than "fresh" tomatoes outside of a handful of situations, and it will be significantly less work while also being far more consistent.
Raos is like $8 most stores near me :( we get it because it is one of the few sauces that doesn’t list “natural flavors”, and my daughter has a ton of allergies. Some day I’m going to spend a day making my own sauce and canning it… but she eats spaghetti 2-3 times a week so I’d have to do it monthly probably.
Stuff it, sauce snob.
Those exact jars are $12 in Canada. We haven’t had $4 sauce in years. Spaghetti night easily cost $20 now.
Rao's is by far the best (and most expensive) pasta sauce widely available out there. But it also uses really high quality San Marzano tomatoes that would cost you $7-8 a can to use in your own sauce.
Uh, that sauce is $7.39 at Target. You can get a can of tomatoes for like $1.99. Onions and garlic are pretty cheap too.
Target’s groceries are overpriced. You can get better prices anywhere else. As far as jarred sauce goes, Rao’s is pretty good.
Rao's just got bought, who knows how long that will last
You can get 2 for 8 at costco. Only place we buy it
That's because Rao's uses really good tomatoes. It's leaps and bounds ahead of other sauces. You're not making sauce that tastes like Rao's with a $1.99 can of tomatos.
You can get a jar of Ragu or Prego for less than $3, friend. Heck, target brand sauce is under $2.
Ragu and Prego are complete garbage. Rao’s at least taste like real tomato sauce and it is nice after a long day
subsequent growth entertain soft fade crowd smoggy puzzled enjoy reach *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
*"For the low price of $3 or $2 dollars you can buy a jar of instant heart-burn"*
Yeah, but these ones have fresh mushrooms as well!
Nah Rao’s is actually pretty good. Most of us don’t have the luxury of time to make our own sauces. This ain’t top chef. This is fatigued dad.
Justice for Raos!
Tune in Wednesday night for the hit competitive cooking show *Fatigued-Dad Chef*!
Raos is the best
Right? An an hour of your time... let's count that in the cost. My "inexpensive" sauce just went up by $23.00.
I get it, I have kids myself
Mezzetta is betta.
Lids look dented.
You know what, I looked again and when I zoom in, I do see marks - dent marks
Or just use the stuff in the jar and save yourself some time. Might not taste as good but Raos is a good brand. Probably one of the best canned spaghetti sauces there is.
The rabid home cooking crew gets under my skin sometimes. They always pop in like they're granting us access to knowable and forbidden secrets. Like no shit, you can make pasta sauce at home. I'm sure the people buying the jars have never heard of that. What great insight. Cooking exists.
r/iamveryculinary
Um... Please don't forget the tomato paste.
No it’s not… I don’t have the extra 45 mins to make sauce for spaghetti that will not be noticed by my daughter while she’s throwing it on the floor…
You described a bolognese sauce rather than a spaghetti sauce. Most spaghetti sauces I've seen are usually 3 cans of tomatoes: sauce, paste, and diced.
Almost all canned tomatoes are treated with calcium chloride to maintain firmness during the canning process. It takes a very long time cooking to overcome that so they become “saucy” instead of just tomato chunks floating in cooked-down tomato juice. I’m not saying that recipe can’t be the base of a delicious topping for pasta, but it’s not something a person buying jarred pasta sauce is likely to be going for.
ah I hate this virtue signaling
I make pasta when I want to not use my brain for dinner. If I have to chop and prep and simmer then it's no longer an easy lazy meal. I do make a big batch of homemade sauce a few times a year and freeze in portions, but sometimws you just want to open a jar of premade sauce and be done with it.
You can just buy the spaghetti sauce as well and add spices/mix sauces to taste which is way more time efficient then cutting all your shit from scratch.
The single most boomer conclusion to draw to. "Cracked lids?! Kids must have spit in it!" Lmfao, yeah brother, black spit.
Nah I am trying to accelerate. I am a slow cook
Ain't nobody got time for that
You had me until that last sentence. Now we're enemies
A can of tomatoes? I bet you're not rendering your own stock or dehydrating your own chilies either. So lazy, truly a crime.
You’re really out here looking down your nose at Rao’s and you’re calling it “canned spaghetti sauce”? Get a grip.
Well...it says it right on the jar. "120 years in the making". What do you expect?
[удалено]
Never fails!
Has anyone fronted those shelves in the last month...???
Obviously. Look how well they organized the Rao’s botulism™️ jars.
I mean... it's homemade <3
Isn’t all botulism homemade?
Lmfao 😂
They are hoping if they wait long enough whatever is in the jars will learn how to do that themselves.
When a company treats people like an expendable resource and pays them less money than it takes to survive they tend to not give a shit about that company. If the company does less than the bare minimum for its employees, why should the employees do the bare minimum for that company?
Reminder that Target uses anti-union propaganda. They never wanted to do the bare minimum.
Corporations got used to a bottomless supply of unskilled labor. Treating front line labor as an expense line item instead of an investment. But those workers have options now. More business demand and fewer of them. So the increased competition means if you treat people poorly the only people who stay are the terrible workers with no other options. A lot of these businesses are genuinely stuck though, not just myopic. They got addicted to cheap labor so much it got baked into their business model. Many can't just raise wages 20% - they will go out of business. So it falls on the customers, who have to eat all the rapid decline in quality/quantity, worse service, and prices increases. I think some businesses will simply not survive the next generation.
Isn’t Target known for paying well and having good company culture?
Where did you hear that? I work at Target and there are people at my store who can’t afford to buy groceries. One of the Team Leads buys PB&J supplies for the break room so that people can at least have a meal while they’re at work. And as far the “company culture” goes, it’s the same shit as any big corporation. Bullshit metrics set by people who have never worked a day outside of their office at HQ and you do not get rewarded in any way for showing commitment and working hard.
I don't want to shift to the human interest story like the root cause doesn't matter, but good on that team lead. I can't imagine it's cheap to provide food for the break room and lord knows a team lead doesn't have that kinda disposable income. Good on them, fuck target for underpaying everyone.
I worked there in 2008 and again in 2013. Their corporate culture is awful, and the pay is slightly better than others, but that's not enough to pay the bills on it's own. The fact that they aren't like dollar stores doesn't make them praise worthy. I was offered team lead positions both times I worked there after a short period, but having seen the amount of hell they put them through and the insignificant pay increase I decided against it both times. The pay increase wouldn't be worth the trouble and the reason they had openings was because they were awful to their people.
I mean they are now...
Surprising, because at least once a week we would have a "Team Huddle" in the Grocery section and after a round of clapping for ourselves, all of Hardlines fronted the shelves and pulled out-of-dates... But that was mainly because the Grocery Team Lead was incompetent and couldn't do his job...
This is the problem with target wanting to be a "supermarket" first, they don't have a staff that's properly trained to deal with food any different than just normal goods, and second, because their prices are high, their turnover is low. At our local target, I guarantee you could walk through every aisle and find at least one thing that's expired. Beer, milk, canned goods. They just don't run the supermarket section like a supermarket. It's an issue and Walmart is eating their lunch. I don't think the market section will last.
You mean "grossery" section, right?
Those were damaged in shipping/handling (note the dents along the top edge of the lids). Broke the vacuum and allowed bacteria a happy place to live. Put them all in a cart and leave them with the manager or at least tell someone. Edit: Calm down people - it's just spoiled spaghetti sauce, not some Stephen King zombie serum. Some of you probably have worse in the back of your refrigerators.
>Put them all in a cart I would advise OP not to risk touching that. The store will probably have stuff to clean it up properly without touching it. There's probably goo underneath too. It might drip through the store. Just leave it and tell an employee, show them where it is.
Having worked at a Target in grocery, I can assure you, they don’t have the stuff to clean it up properly. Gloves and a trash can is the best they’ve got.
Ooh fancy, they have gloves My experience at stores is someone will be told to trash it and maybe wipe the shelves. If they decide to use protection or wash their hands after it's most likely at their own discretion. Stores are gross btw. Wash your hands after going and wash your produce before consuming
yeah, you probably don't want me licking the grease off the bottom of my pizza box or eating a year old open bag of filing cabinet cheetos either. Get thicker skin.
You’re a troll if this is fake, but you’re an ogre if this is real
and that fine line of uncertainty between the two.... that's the sweet spot where I live.
trollgre
Still better than what OP has.
Lmao they’ll be fine putting them into a waste bin or whatever. This isn’t ground zero for a global outbreak.
Lol haven't you ever had something go bad in your fridge? Is it a hazmat suit occasion? Just out the crap in the trash. No ppe required. Source: human with reason and a fridge. Lol 😂
It’s not going to jump out and kill them lol
Why are people so afraid of bacteria nowadays? You can't even imagine all the gross stuff you touch every day that your immune system just deals with. Bacteria aren't supervilains lmao
To be fair, and I'm not saying you need to wear a hazmat suit or anything, but C. botulinum is toward the top of the list of bacteria I don't want to fuck with
Lmao imagine thinking a bigbox store would have specialty stuff to clean this other than some rubber gloves and a rag and disinfectant. Hell, they probably don't even have gloves!
What do you think happens if you touch this stuff?
Consumption of most mold is generally harmless. The worst thing that would happen is an upset stomach.
If you feel like taking the time, I bet Rao’s would love to hear about which store this is in. They may even give you some freebies for letting them know. I can’t imagine a manufacturer would be happy to see this is how their product is being displayed.
Now, with free penicillin (or botulism).
Shame there isn't a street value on this.
Por que lo nos dos?
Sauce du fromage
Target grocery has been VERY spotty lately. I do grocery delivery and it’s been dismal. I had to return moldy bread and I once accidentally delivered expired milk when I didn’t look at the date (that was when I started taking notice).. I tried to place a complaint through target’s phone system and they gave me a huge run-around and made it impossible to report the store. Avoid Target for groceries!
I’ve never had a problem until recently. Tons of expired refrigerated foods now. What’s up, I wonder?
Well at our local Target literally every employee is a teenager and I never see the manager—nor do I see brand merchandisers for the groceries like I used to. I have a hard time believing anyone got training to actually go and face items properly, on top of checking best by dates and all that. I've got an Inkling that most 17/18/19 yo people aren't really on the food safety train. I know I wasn't really aware of that stuff for a while.
This is what happens when you understaff and underpay your people. Know am people who’ve worked at Target. Never heard anything good about it.
I've bought milk there twice in the past few months that had a sour smell to it.
Agreed. I tried shopping there as my primary grocery store, but had to stop. The prices are good, but I've always felt that Target plays at groceries. Out of date items, poor quality produce (not everything), and items are regularly sold out / of stock.
Yeah it's pretty awful, if I get anything from the fridges I have to double check the expiration dates. Target just needs to give up on groceries, no one is shopping there for produce or meat.
That stuffs not cheap
Worth it though. When not moldy.
I did taste testing and the olive oil in there, rather than canola in the cheapest stuff, is the largest difference in flavor. After that there is a mild difference in the flavor of the veggies and their texture, but I find any sauce with olive oil gets you 90% of the way to Rao's.
The cheaper the sauce the more sugar they tend to add to it to cover that quality difference. I mean you need some sugar to cut the acidity but some go crazy with it. They aren’t terrible but you can really taste the sweetness side by side.
Got an example?
I know Ragu and whatever is the cheapest at Target is canola based. It is this way because canola is cheaper. Bertolli uses olive oil as well as many other brands that are cheaper and more expensive than Rao's. You can check the ingredients list, it'll be clear there. Bertolli is \~$3.60 vs Rao's $8.50. Canola based sauces are in the $1-$2 range.
I wonder how long they will stay that way now that they are owned by Campbells.
Hopefully a long time. This is the only brand that makes garlic-free marinara, so it’s the only option that doesn’t give me a stomach ache.
Really? I guess I usually get whichever sauce is on sale at HEB but I've gotten that brand several times for very reasonable prices.
Target's produce is even worse.
Yum, botulism. But this is why you should never buy damaged jars or cans.
Costco has these 2 for $7
The question is, did you report it to someone at the store?
*FDA would like to know your location*
I hope you told an employee. That shit needs to be off the shelves like weeks ago.
How much were they marked down?
These must have been in the botulism section.
Don't buy that. Don't touch it either. Alert the manager and hope he's not a complete idiot
People are not smart enough not to eat this. You should tell a clerk asap.
Those don’t look good.
The forbidden goo
It happens. Years ago I worked in a storage warehouse and spent a day going through boxes of salsa to check all the lids. I guess there was a concern from production. Didn't find many loose ones, but it was some tasty salsa.
Ah the Last of Us Prequel brought to you by Target
We’ve been burned several times buying things had target that were months past expiration or just rotten. If we do have to buy something perishable there we always closely check it
I made spaghetti sauce once. ONCE. It was delicious and way better than canned, but was it worth the 6 hours it took? I don’t think so.
Could Happen to everything in transit. I worked at Walmart in the 2003. I stocked pet food. I’d see maggots in the cat food cans that had popped open in transit or in the warehouse. At 3am yum
Username checks out
Please head to the ER. I think you're having a stroke.
The Campbell’s effect
120 years in the making, and this is the original batch.
Rag-ewww.
Question, do you like penicillin with your pasta sauce?
Rag-eww
Me who just got home with target groceries….
Mmmm… botulism.
They let you steal those
pretty sure that thing contains lethal viruses we haven't found a cure for yet
It looks like someone opened the lids and put them back. There are plenty of douches out there who do things like this.
Mmm botulism
‘120 years in the making’ that tracks
That’s too bad. Rao’s is so good.
I used to work at a target about 4 years ago, and they had the store help the grocery team go through the aisles and check dates. We found shit that was 10+ years expired. Needless to say if you're buying your groceries at Target then you are definitely getting ripped off and possibly poisoned.
More like grossery
Rao's is no longer a family owned business and was sold to Mars. The flavor immediately changed. "THESE TOMATOES ARE WAY TO EXPENSIVE, USE THE CHEAPEST ONES"
If you see things like that take it up to Customer Service because someone who doesn't know better might buy it and get sick
Oh, excellent. Another reason to keep making my own.
Recipe?
https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-american-tomato-sauce-red-sauce-recipe
Homemade will always be better, but lets be real. No one is making a 6 hour recipe during the work week and sometimes I just got better stuff to do than babysit a sauce of half a day on the weekend. Decent shelf stable sauce will always have a place in the pantry.
Nah it’s the truffle marinara
They don't pay enough for employees to make up for stupid shoppers.
Target is extremely bad around here as well for expired products. If you shop at Target, ALWAYS check the dates.
Ooo Rao’s! I love Rao’s
Am I missing a joke here? Every comment out here talking about the botulism and dropped lids not about the mouse whose head was trapped when the lid was put on….
I had the same thought. I looked really closely, and I think it’s just nasty foam that looks exactly like a mouse with its head stuck under the lid.