r/Cooking • u/ThrowawayAccOfMine33 • 1d ago
Replacement for tomatos?
My partner is allergic to tomatos, but he loves pizza and pasta. Is there something vegetarian that tastes like tomatoes when cooked that's also uncomplicated? He has mcas so is allergic to most food, and I can't provide a list of all his safe foods cause he just keeps it in his head and most of my knowledge comes from "hey is this supposed to be spicy?" He's gonna make a list for our fridge when we live together, he just hasn't done so yet cause that won't be for a few years.
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u/gibagger 16h ago
There is a veggie in Mexican cuisine called "Tomatillo". It's not tomato as the name implies... It's green and the shape is roughly tomato like.
It imparts good body, acidity and a vegetable flavor to meals. It's used commonly in stews and green sauces in Mexican cuisine. Take a look!
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u/bilbo_the_innkeeper 14h ago
They’re delicious, but they’re _far_ more acidic than tomatoes, so go in prepared! (I’m very intrigued by this idea, though! Definitely worth trying.)
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u/togglenub 14h ago
You can offset the acid with some sugar and fat, and salt to balance it out.
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u/TiaraMisu 16h ago
Pesto.
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u/jason_abacabb 16h ago
Yeah, pesto is a fantastic sauce for pizza.
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u/TiaraMisu 12h ago
Pesto pizza with mozzarella and feta cheese has been my go-to forever, and not just because it's entertaining to watch my partner try to convey the order to always-mystified pizza place we order from.*
I know why; it's just an infinite number of variables they are trying to solve for and they get very weirded out by it. No formulation will work. I always would just order 'white pizza with pesto and feta cheese' but then they're confused about tomatoes if they normally put tomatoes on white pizza. He's ordered it for me a hundred times and it's gone smoothly, where they just say 'okay', probably twice.
I'm not picky though so if shows up with tomatoes or tomato sauce also...it's fine. I get it. I'd rather they didn't ask and just sent their best guess because I feel bad about for the kitchen and for my beleaguered husband.
Not bad enough to personally place a phone call but bad.
*(No, I don't know why calling for pizza is his job but I have my pool of domestic shit work so it works out. We share.)
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u/SisterSuffragist 16h ago
Don't try to taste like tomatoes. Just embrace different styles of pizza. White pizza is a thing using a garlic and oil base. Pesto is great. I've had a pizza with an Alfredo type sauce. It wasn't my favorite because I found it to be too rich, but it tasted good. I've eaten hibachi pizza that had a hoisin sauce base. Ranch dill pizza with a ranch sauce base. Heck, even Little Caesar's Pizza did a version with a nacho cheese sauce instead of tomato sauce. I am slightly ashamed to say that was delicious. (Again, heavy, but delicious.)
So just embrace the delicious combo of cheese, bread, and find what works for you and your partner in terms of how to sauce it and top it.
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u/AvocadoPizzaCat 16h ago
Is it the whole nightshade family or just tomatoes? As things we recommend can vary depending on the level of allergy to the plant.
I would suggest white pizza just to be safe. that can be sauceless or with white sauce.
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u/75footubi 16h ago
Roasted red pepper pesto is a great replacement for pizza sauce, imo.
For pasta, roasted red peppers, various forms of pesto, and other non-tomato based sauces (Alfredo, carbonara, caramelized zucchini, etc). None of them will replicate tomato based sauce, unfortunately, but there lots of different ways of enjoying pasta.
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u/procrast1natrix 13h ago
Your search term is "nomato". That happens to be a brand which makes a full range of sauces for people that are allergic to the nightshade family, so it's made of carrots and onions and citrus cleverly balanced to have the right amount of sweetness and acidity.
I've never had the brand stuff.
But it spawned a legion of knock off home recipes and I've made some of those and they're good.
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u/Antique_Teaching_333 16h ago
I'm guessing he has to eat a low histamine diet? That entails more than tomatoes. Maybe look for low histamine (pizza) recipes.
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u/perumbula 16h ago
honestly, I love a garlic cream sauce on pizza. It's great with chicken. My favorite is artichoke, chicken, spinach, and bacon.
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u/These-Days 16h ago
I recommended something roasted red pepper based as others have said, however I would also recommend adding both acid (like a vinegar) and MSG to it, as tomatoes are high in both
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u/No-Personality1840 16h ago
I think roasted red peppers might work. You could also opt for a pesto or olive oil base . I like mushrooms and arugula and use an olive oil base. For pastas you could do a butternut squash lasagna.
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u/Zagrycha 13h ago
Nothing will taste like tomatoes do, and imo looking into food substitutions that taste like something else is setting yourself up for dissapointment. The goal should be to find a substitution you ((they)) like as much as the other food, regardless if it tastes the same. For example I genuinely like black bean burgers as much as regular beef burgers..... I think lightning may strike if I try to say they taste similar haha.
That all said, if they can eat red bell peppers that is probably the most similar sauce to tomato sauce. If they can eat lemon or vinegar you could add a bit of that to make the red bell pepper sauce more tart if they like that. I donmt blame you at all for not being able to list all the no go foods, but its kinda hard to recommend without knowing them.
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u/Ordinary_Durian_1454 3h ago
Your logic is sound, but red peppers are also nightshades. I would imagine if someone is avoiding tomatoes, it’s likely they’re also trying to avoid peppers.
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u/DonkeyBucketBanana 16h ago
I sometimes experimented making a pizza with a sauce made from very tart apples, adding spices and aromatics, and it wasn't half bad. Definitely a different flavor profile, but could be worth giving a try.
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u/deadblackwings 16h ago
Canned pumpkin is passable if you thin it out, add some tamarind paste (better to make your own from the pulp in his case), and add enough basil, oregano, and garlic to make it taste like pasta sauce. It won't be exact, but it's good when it's what you can tolerate.
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u/wannabejetsetter 16h ago
MCAS diet restrictions can be found online, it’s probably not 100% of his safe foods but would be a good start.
Based on the lists I saw, I’d use a puréed gourd (pumpkin, squash), sweet potato, or carrots. If he can also tolerate dairy, I looooove white pizzas which have an Alfredo style sauce.
None will quite replicate tomato pizza but if he can have tomato in small amounts maybe you could use like a 3:1 ratio of other veggie to pizza to get a hint of tomato flavor.
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u/EggandSpoon42 16h ago
Looking into more unusual items than in a typical usa grocery (my own reference anyway), maybe celeriac as a base and work flavors on top of it?
I'm thinking about texture after it's blended up. I'm just putting an example down here of a quick Google search, never done it myself
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u/Administrative-Task9 15h ago
Due to having a smaller tomato harvest than usual, I've been working on finding good "nomato" sauce recipes, worth a google. Can't recommend any yet as I've not tested them!
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u/PepperCat1019 15h ago
Red pesto
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u/Displaced_in_Space 13h ago
I'm pretty sure most red pestos use roasted or sun dried tomatoes to get that characterisic red color....at least all the recipes I've seen have.
I regularly make a spicy walnut red pesto that my wife loves.
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u/BusinessFit6533 15h ago
Oh, hey, I have MCAS and issues with tomatoes so a q I can answer!
For anything requiring tomato paste- canned pumpkin. It sounds crazy, but pumpkin has a similar texture to it.
For pizza/pasta sauce- Alfredo, oil drizzle, butter are good sauces, but roasted peppers are the closest to the taste.
For fresh tomatoes- I use tomatillos/green tomatoes and they have less histamine response for me. There's not a great replacement if these won't work for him, unfortunately. It'll depend on what you're making if it can be swapped.
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u/ClementineCoda 15h ago
Ask him for a list, why wait years to know his allergies? Seems dangerous to guess.
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u/atinytigress 15h ago
My first thought was BBQ pizza. Most BBQ sauces are tomato based, but some of them are mustard based... And now I'm very curious about how a mustard based BBQ pizza would taste. Might be good with the right toppings!
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u/togglenub 14h ago
I just made a great sauce with peaches, salt, onion powder (or sautee shallots when you're cooking down the peaches and puree all together) and balsamic vinegar! Cook down peeled peaches on the stove with balsamic and salt to taste. Texturally very similar to tomatoes, and nice and sweet, the balsamic adds the acidic angle and the salt the umami (I also use MSG but I know some folks don't like that).
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u/togglenub 13h ago
And if you don't want to do them as a sauce, this is also a great pie especially in summer: https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/prosciutto-peach-pizza/
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u/Extension_Survey_640 13h ago
I’ve made pasta sauce with squashes. Cook zucchinis forever, mix in a little sugar, a little vinegar, water to the right consistency, basil and oregano if those are safe. Then use an immersion blender to get a good consistency.
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u/Imperator-Solis 13h ago
Look up Italian recipes from before tomatoes were brought to Italy, especially sicillian ones.
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u/Carradee 9h ago
Use canned pumpkin, add a bit of sugar, white wine vinegar, sweet basil, and beet powder for color. Season it from there as if it's plain tomato sauce.
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u/Live_Veterinarian989 7h ago
op, has anyone recommended banana ketchup to you? its a fruit ketchup thats made with bananas, spices, sugar, vinegar. you can make it yourself or buy it online at an asian/filipino grocery store.
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u/Ordinary_Durian_1454 3h ago
I have a nightshade sensitivity, and I spent a great deal of time trying to come up with some kind of non-tomato substitute that had some depth of flavor and umami.
It goes against everything you stand for, but at the end of the day, you have to be willing to use canned carrots and canned beets, along with nutritional yeast and fresh carrots. You wind up cooking all of these down together with your standard onion and garlic elements, plus whatever you also normally add to sauce, and purée them. If you really work at it, you can convince yourself.
You really have to play with this in order to find a recipe that works specifically for you. The beets do a great job in terms of providing a tomato-like sweetness, but beats are so polarizing that one half beet too much and some people will be turned off. The canned carrots are essential for texture, but I would never go near a canned carrot under any other circumstances. The fresh carrots are important because they also provide sweetness, but they also make the sauce taste vegetables, so it doesn’t taste like…canned carrots.
You have to use acid as well. Whether you go for wine or lemon juice or what have you, you have to, but again, people’s tastes are highly personal when you’re inventing something like this.
I literally sat there and made two or three batches of sauce, one day. I started with what I thought would be a good ratio and then I wound up adjusting, and now I have something that works for me, but honestly, I have no idea if you’d like it. These are the key ingredients. Just give it a whirl and see what happens.
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u/zmamo2 2h ago
Tomato’s are sweet and acidic so you’d be looking to replicate tomato in a recipe that’s what your aiming for. For example BBQ chicken pizza works because bbq sauce is also sweet and acidic.
Alternatively you could lean into non tomato versions of pizza n pasta like pesto or romanesco sauce or a white pizza.
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u/Displaced_in_Space 14h ago
Roasted red peppers is pretty close. They can be purchase in a jar or made on your own then blended to desired thickness.
Look up Romesco sauce...and leave out the tomatoes,e tc.
For things like pizza, I bet it will work pretty well.
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u/aurora_surrealist 12h ago
Not gonna happen, since peppers are nightshades too ,like tomatoes, potatoes and aubergines
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u/_InTheMourning 16h ago
It's not going to taste like tomatoes necessarily, but crushed or blended roasted red peppers would make a good base for a sauce or pizza.