RecipeTin Eats Nagi’s BRUTAL X-rated blast at an Aussie supermarket staple – as industry insiders admit the sad reason why she’s absolutely right

RecipeTinEats cookbook sensation Nagi Maehashi has launched a savage attack on Australia’s locally-grown tomatoes, branding them tasteless, sour and ‘so s***’.

Now even a veteran tomato farmer has admitted the beloved kitchen icon is right – and the blame lies with the stringent demands of the supermarket giants.

‘They ARE s***,’ said industry veteran Austie Breiner. 

‘They are hard, tasteless, tough and you can see these white bits in them.

‘They’re grown to survive mechanical harvesting and being transported 1000km to the big supermarkets.’ 

Nagi unloaded on local tomatoes in an interview with Nine Newspapers last weekend, revealing there was simply ‘no contest’ with the Italian tinned variety.

‘Australian tomatoes are so s***,’ she told Good Weekend magazine. ‘Even fresh tomatoes in Australia are hopeless.’

She confessed she always bought the Italian variety when making spaghetti bolognese – and her recipe recommends adding sugar if forced to use the Aussie version.

‘Supermarket canned tomatoes here in Australia are notoriously sour,’ she added. 

‘Especially the Australian ones – it pains me so much to say that, but it’s true.’ 

Mr Breiner said Nagi’s assessment of Australian tomatoes was accurate because growers here had been ‘forced to choose tomatoes that will survive long distance travel’.

‘Little growers, of tasty more delicate varieties like Italian San Marzano or others, can’t make a living and have gone out of business,’ he said.

‘We’ve gone the wrong route because with the giants Coles and Woolworths you can’t compete and the result is tasteless tomatoes.’

Nagi, whose runaway success with minimal effort ‘one-pot/one-pan’ recipes created a booming empire, said she was aware budgeting families might opt for the Australian version because of the price.

However, a quick scan of the canned tomatoes at Woolworths reveals that Italian tomatoes can actually be cheaper, or at least comparable in price.

A 400g tin of Annalisa Italian Diced Tomatoes costs $1.35 compared with Ardmona 100% Australian Whole Peeled Tomatoes at $2.10 for the same size can.

Woolworths brand Diced Italian Tomatoes cost $2 for 800g and $1.10 for 400g, while the 400g Leggo’s Australian Grown Diced Tomatoes are $1.80.

Macro 400g Organic Diced Italian Tomatoes – labelled ‘made in Italy’ and ‘packed for’ Macro Australia and New Zealand – are just $1.60 for the ‘No Salt’ version. 

Mutti Whole Peeled 100% Italian Tomatoes cost $1.80 for 400g, as does the same-sized can of Mutti Polpa Finely Chopped Tomatoes.

However, the 400g Mutti Pomodoro San Marzano Tomatoes are much pricier, at $4.80, because the Italian company, started in 1850, is so serious about the quality of their tomatoes that they have the golden tomato awards.

The Pomodorino D’Oro is a kind of Oscars for the multiple individual growers in Italy who vie annually for three gold statuettes – awarded for round, long and cherry tomatoes. 

Mr Breiner said the Italian tomato industry concentrates on multiple small growers producing for local markets and keeping quality and flavour high.

Now aged 87, Mr Breiner still grows tomatoes at his acreage in the NSW Hunter Valley, but no longer commercially.

He said tomato growers in Far North Queensland where, like Italy, the long, warm summers allow the tomatoes to fully ripen, have vanished because they cannot earn a decent living. 

‘It’s the same with the tomatoes grown for canning, bred to all mature at the same time for cheaper harvesting, instead of progressive flowering and fruiting up the plants and picked when they’re ripe and flavoursome,’ he said. 

‘Australia has gone in the wrong direction, not just with tomatoes but with other vegetables,’ said Mr Breiner, whose father Richard was the first in the country to grow a European variety, Grosse Lisse, back in 1938.

‘It was from a matchbox of seeds sent to my dad by a man escaping Germany at the outbreak of World War II,’ he said.

‘I still have plants descended from that first crop, they are beautiful and passed the taste test with Diggers Seeds, but if you harvested them mechanically and transported them for a long distance they’d arrive as liquid.’

In RecipeTinEats, Nagi recommends cooks add two teaspoons of white sugar to sauces made from Australian tomatoes to counteract their sourness.

Mr Breiner said Australia had followed the ‘mechanised and mass-produced’ trend of the US and ‘it was the wrong path to follow’.

‘We have the most beautiful soil in the Lower Hunter and there are Australian-developed varieties with reasonable flavour and texture, such as the Cherry Fox tomato,’ he said.

‘But they are still inferior to the best Italian varieties.’

SPC, the principal grower and canner of Australian tinned tomatoes, marketed under the Ardmona brand, said in 2019 that it ‘works alongside seed producers and farmers to improve the flavour and utility of the 40,000 tonnes of tomatoes it processes each year’.

The Daily Mail has approached SPC for comment.