§ 01 — 1101 Missouri Ave, Killeen TX · Est. 2014
We cook
the ugly
ones.
Split, scarred, catfaced, the wrong shade of red — the tomatoes supermarkets send back. We buy them at full price from thirty-four farms across New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont, and cook them down in Brooklyn until nobody can tell the difference. Because there isn't one.
§ 02 — Moves the fastest
The shelf
§ 03 — A note on the word
“Ugly” is a
grading term.
Not a flavor.
USDA No. 1 is about shoulders, shape and skin. It has never had anything to say about sugar, acid or what happens after four hours in a kettle. Roughly one in five tomatoes grown in the Northeast fails the look test and gets tilled back into the field.
We pay the same price for those as anyone pays for the pretty ones — which is the entire point. A farm that can sell its seconds is a farm that plants again next spring.
Fig. 03 — Alderbrook Farm, Ulster County, second week of August.
§ 04 — Departments
The index
§ 05 — Off the line this month
New batches
§ 06 — What we actually do all day
Six kettles,
one room,
no shortcuts.
Everything is cooked in open 40-gallon kettles on Nassau Avenue. No steam-injected purée, no concentrate reconstituted with water, no “natural flavor” line on the label to cover a thin batch.
The consequence is that our sauce moves with the season. June jars are bright and acidic. Late-September jars are darker and sweeter and thicker, because that is what a September tomato is. We print the batch number on every lid so you can tell.
Recipes from the kitchen →
“Tastes like it was made by someone who was annoyed about something.”
“The vodka sauce has no dairy in it and I refuse to accept this.”
“I bought one jar in 2019. I now have a shelf.”
§ 07 — From the kitchen
Put it on something
§ 08 — The mailing list
One email
a month.
Maybe.
What came off the line, which farm had a strange week, and the occasional recipe that works. We do not do countdown timers.
Currently in the kettle
Late-season golden heirlooms from Sparrow Lane. Low acid, high sugar, and honestly a bit of a nuisance to peel.
Batch No. 617 · pouring Thursday