The Tastiest Way To Fix The Metallic Taste From Canned Tomatoes

Have you ever opened a can of tomatoes hoping to make a delicious, spicy shakshuka or the perfect penne arrabbiata, only to be met with a metallic taste so strong you thought you might instantly turn into Iron Man? While you might instinctively reach for the pantry and think about using baking soda to make your canned tomatoes taste better, you may want to consider leaving that trick for another time since it predominantly helps neutralize acidity.

There's an even better solution that not only completely covers the lingering metallic kick but also gives your canned tomatoes a whole new depth of flavor. It's right there, hiding in your fridge and hoping to save the day – Worcestershire sauce. 

Your canned tomatoes are metallic because of two things, the first one being how they were processed. The reason why you should never cook tomatoes in aluminum pots is simply because they can react with the metal and absorb some of it into their taste, which also happens when they're stored in a can.

The other thing is that they were most likely treated with calcium chloride, with calcium acting as a metal. While safe to use and a highly necessary firming agent that helps keep tomatoes' original shape intact, calcium chloride doesn't completely dissolve, which explains the metallic aftertaste. Worcestershire sauce changes the game by bringing the perfect balance of bitter, sweet, and umami. Just a splash will instantly send the metallic notes away.

Worcestershire sauce is a beautifully sour, sweet, and spicy condiment that brings out the best of many soups, stews, marinades, dressings, and pies, and it started off as a mistake. Its original creators, John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins, initially disliked the first batch and left it forgotten in their cellar, only to come back to it more than a year later and realize it had become a liquid masterpiece that had the power to add an extra umami kick to many recipes. 

This intense umami flavor comes from its high glutamate content, a type of amino acid. Glutamates find their way into the sauce thanks to anchovies, one of the sauce's main ingredients. Anchovies are small, savory fish, and they pack approximately 630 milligrams of glutamates per 100 grams. This is enough to mask the canned tomatoes' metallic taste and make it feel like it was never there. 

The next time you find yourself trying to rescue your canned tomatoes because they taste more like the tin itself rather than actual tomatoes, don't hesitate to throw in some Worcestershire sauce. The key is not to overdo it, though, unless you want to end up wondering where all of the tomatoes went.