There are not many chosen products that have the honor, through time, of having achieved that its commercial brand has ended up identifying an entire category. To give several examples, few people ask for soluble cocoa but ask for Cola Cao; ask for sliced bread and don’t say Pan Bimbo, or look for a soft drink and don’t ask for La Casera. In extreme cases, no one reaches for a cola when asking for Coca Cola.
The fried tomato, although the competition is brutal, the same thing happens: few people look for tomato sauce without thinking of Orlando. It is not easy to achieve it, but it is the sign that a brand manages to remain in a collective ideology that for generations has nourished the kitchens and pantries of Spanish homes with a 100% local product.
And that despite the fact that iconic hammering of ‘Cuáte, here’s a tomato’ It made us think of a beautiful and beloved Mexico, or the name of Orlando, which does not sound particularly castizo and that irremediably transports us to Italy.
However, in 2022 in which the brand celebrates its centenary, Orlando radiates Spanish, kilometer zero and sustainability in a message that began 100 years ago with an adventure in canned fish, but which at the end of the 1960s discovered its philosopher’s stone: the fried tomato.
From canned fish to tomato king
It was the family of Salvatore Orlando, an Italian living in San Sebastian, who gave the starting signal to an incipient emporium that began in the capital of Gipuzkoa dedicated to canned fish. In fact, At present there is still a branch of the Orlando that is dedicated to this businessmainly canned anchovy, under the Olasagasti brand.
However, it took more than 40 years in the middle of the 20th century for, almost like a tip-off, someone suggested to Salvatore to make fried tomato. Why not, the patriarch must have thought, when he discovered Alfaro, in the heart of the Rioja orchard, and which today is Orlando’s national standard. Although the Riojan debut began in 1961, making other canned vegetables such as asparagus or artichokes, until they hit the key of fried tomato.
In the aftermath of Francoism, with the increasingly incipient presence of women outside the home, and with the boom in developmentalism, Spain got on a boat of modernity that a brand like the already packaged fried tomato represented perfectly.
Like at home, but without the effort of doing it; This is how Orlando has boasted about its fried tomato since 1968 and continues to do so, something insisted on by Enrique Sanz, plant manager of the Alfaro factory, where 55,000 tons of fried tomato are processed per year: “the recipe is the same than in the beginning. Processes have been modernized, but the essence of sofrito is exactly the same“.
100% Spanish tomato
It is not surprising, obviously, that Orlando was a candy. Present in almost all Spanish homes, an indispensable condiment for rice with tomato and pasta, that tomato boom was an inalienable siren’s song for the foreign market. So much so that the American multinational Kraft Heinz acquired Orlando in 1988.
Since then little has changed, beyond renovating the Alfaro factory, technological spearhead of the company in Europeand the professionalization of certain processes that, however, do not modify the solid foundations of the fried tomato.
“We have long-standing relationships with tomato growers, which are distributed along the entire bank of the Ebrofrom La Rioja to Navarra and Zaragoza”, indicates Enrique Sanz.
A reality that dyes the fields red at the end of summer and beginning of autumn when the tomato harvests, as it responds German Soldevillahead of Campo de Orlando, who is the guardian that everything that happens in the riverside orchards is up to what is expected of the fried tomato.
He manages relations with producers, advises them, advises them and acts almost like a tutor to guarantee the quality and quantity of productions that transform in total terms more than 75,000 tons of fresh tomato in various productsalthough fried tomato is king.
The industry at the service of the field
Without hot cloths and with a clear conscience, in Orlando they are aware of producing what is known as an industrial tomato, pear format, which comes from different natural hybrids whose patent is owned by Kraft Heinz. “There are no transgenics here,” endorses Enrique Sanz: “everything that is planted for Orlando is the fruit of nature.”
More than 400 hectares of field thus become the orchard that will explode in red and green at the end of August, but the task begins much earlier. In the nurseries where the plants germinate, already in the month of Marchthe tomato plants that best adapt to each soil and each farmer are selected.
From there, to May and June, when they are planted. A key period that is increasingly controlled and that even goes through the use of biodegradable plastics to guarantee the quality of the soil and drip irrigation systems. The latter, on everyone’s lips in a thirsty Spain in 2022, worries in Orlando, where they are committed to sustainability and rationality to continue working.
Already at the end of summer the harvesters come into action. On the one hand, they collect the tomato. On the other, they discard the plant, which will serve as natural fertilizer for the following campaign. Gleaming, hard-skinned and uniform, these tomatoes are already screened in the field so that they green specimens or small stones never enter the production system.
From the bush to the table
Once the tomatoes are harvested, they wait in the Orlando facilities until they enter the production chain. In just three hours, the tomatoes will go from their natural state to become fried tomatothrough the charm of an oil flavored with garlic and onion that is the basis of the recipe.
Then, as a sofrito, in huge heat tubes, the crushed tomato is mixed with the oil itself to give that touch of home cooking that the company boasts about. A turbinado and crushed emulsion, filtered so that there are no impurities, is what will happen to the different formats of Orlando.
From there then arises the creativity that has been adapting to new homes and new tastes, including options without sugar and without salt; versions with olive oil; more traditional recipes with a tomato in thicker pieces and, finally, the new crown jewel with which to blow out the candles of 2021: Orlando Creations.
The best recipes from Direct to the palate (Kitchen)
Three new tomatoes with different options: sweet, soft and intense, that distribute caramelized onion, pepper or aromatic herbs in their formulation to plant face in the field of tomatoes ready to serve and that they can dress any dish in a matter of minutes.
Finally, for the nostalgic, from Orlando they warn that when we see a Heinz fried tomato anywhere in the world we can be sure that it is the authentic Orlando fried tomato, a real gift for expatriates who do not miss the usual flavor like this.
Pictures | Orlando
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