A few weeks before Christmas, I came back to London and, as usual, went straight from the airport to my friend’s office to pick up the keys to her flat. On this occasion I was also collecting a large cardboard box, too. The box wasn’t a surprise, but that didn’t stop me feeling quite excited as I rummaged through the scrunched-up brown paper and pulled out tin after tin of chopped tomatoes. I was reminded of how on Christmas morning my grandma would open the functional hamper she received each year, pulling out items one by one and announcing them like debutantes – Shortbread! Tea! Potted shrimps! Tinned peaches! As she did so, we would all respond with Oooh! Very nice! Fancy! Useful!

Before arriving in London, and anticipating my taste test of tinned chopped tomatoes for a new series for Feast magazine and the Guardian’s new product review section the Filter, I’d asked a colleague who tastes for a living for advice. This is what she said: make sure the tins are at room temperature; sniff deeply before tasting; don’t focus or fixate on colour as an indicator of quality, because an appealing red or paler tint may cloud your judgment; assess chunks and sauce separately, both their consistency and their balance of five tastes – sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. And taste with someone else, because our wildly different mouth flora give us wildly different taste perceptions.

It turns out that tasting tinned chopped tomatoes is wild full stop, with the differences between brands extreme and therefore fascinating. I have also learned it is particularly useful and worthwhile tasting chopped tomatoes, which, unlike whole ones, can be an excuse for a lesser product and more preservatives. The best had a rich, round flavour with a balance of sweet, savoury and acidity, while others were weedy, muggy and metallic.

Tasting also made me think about how different tins could be put to best use. The top three – best bargain, all-rounder and splurge – were all so nice that they were virtually sauce already, so were ideal in recipes where there is nowhere to hide – Felicity Cloake’s perfect tomato sauce, for example, and her perfect pasta al pomodoro (I know Felicity says to use whole plum tomatoes, but these tins will work for both) or Stanley Tucci’s egg poached in tomato sauce.

Meanwhile, tomatoes that are good but that you perceive as requiring help are suitable for recipes with strong additions, such as my spaghetti with anchovy, or Meera Sodha’s fantastic kimchi and tomato spaghetti, Thomasina Miers’ slow-cooked tomato and green bean spaghetti or Marcella Hazan’s bolognese sauce.

If you open a tin and think, “Oh dear, this needs lots of help”, use it in dishes where there is a lot going on – minestrone, for example – or that require only half a tin (freeze the other half, in a ziplock bag or as ice cubes, for when you need just a touch of tomato). The other thing I discovered is that if you have 10 tins of different varieties, each one with a spoonful or three missing, you can tip them all into your biggest pan, and – thank you, Marcella – add two whole onions and half a pat of butter and simmer into, maybe, the best tomato sauce you have ever made.

PS: There were actually two boxes, the other containing 10 bottles of olive oil. The results of that extremely interesting tasting are coming soon.

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When in Rome | Sally Grainger is a food historian and experimental archaeologist whose work brings ancient Roman recipes to life. Her most recent book is the most approachable and an utter delight: Roman Recipes for Modern Cooks offers 34 contemporary interpretations of recipes taken from Latin texts, with historically inspired line drawings by illustrator Joana Avillez.

What I’ve been listening to | Grace Dent talking to Sadiq Khan for her podcast, Comfort Eating, about how doughnuts fuel him during elections, the art of a tuna pasta bake, and where he’d like to take Donald Trump for dinner next time the US president-elect is in town.

My cup of tea | I measure my days in Yorkshire tea, especially as I try to finish a new book. This dependence means it is vital that I bring large boxes back from every trip home, and that every visitor coming from the UK brings at least one packet. It has been a good few weeks and my cupboards are so full that I even gave a whole packet to a friend and have been making Nigel Slater’s afternoon fruit cake every week, including – and this is Nigel’s suggestion – first soaking the dried fruit in 200ml of freshly brewed Yorkshire tea.