Many recipes ask for peeled and seeded tomatoes, which I find both wasteful and too hard work.
What is the point of removing seeds and skin of tomatoes? Just texture and presentation?
Or can it actually change the food's taste?
Why remove the skin and seeds of a tomato
seedsskintomatoes
Related Solutions
Tomato puree is concentrated tomato. So where it is called for in conjunction with other tomato products, be they fresh or tinned, it is an attempt to increase the tomato flavour/presence in the dish without increasing the bulk or water inherent in less concentrated products.
Additionally the flavour of puree, having gone through a reduction process is somewhat different, more intense and rich than straight tomatoes.
Indeed, canned tomatoes tend to be surrounded with juice that is more reduced than would occur naturally. Which is part of why they are used against fresh tomatoes.
Fennel and caraway are relatives, but not the same plant. Fennel seeds have a flavor dominated by anise/licorice, where caraway is quite different, being dominated by other flavors. They also have subtle differences in appearance.
Cumin, anise, and dill are other look-alike seeds with very different flavors. Anise and fennel have very similar flavors, and can be substituted for each other. Caraway and dill are likewise similar in flavor. Cumin has a flavor different from any of the above. I am including pictures of fennel, caraway, anise, cumin, and dill seeds so you can see how similar they are, but also how there are subtle differences in shape.
Fennel Seed:
Caraway Seeds:
Anise Seed: It is hard to tell from the picture, but anise seeds are much smaller than fennel.
Cumin Seeds: note, these vary considerably in color
Dill Seeds: (note how much flatter theses are)
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Best Answer
Texture is the main reason, but if you're going to be blending the sauce, there can be off-flavors from cracking open the seeds. Even if you don't blend it, they can be these slippery little things that I never much liked growing up.
To reduce the amount of waste, you can :
cook the sauce, then put it through a food mill to strip out the seeds and skins, thus keeping you from wasting the gel around the seeds.
freeze the peeled skins, to save for when you're next going to be making vegetable stock.
collect the seeds and gel, then put it into a muslin bag and hang to let drip to extract 'tomato water'. (you typically use crushed tomatoes for this ... I don't know for sure if the gel will go through the muslin). Tomato water is strange as it gives good tomato flavor, without the red color.