Fresh Tomatoes

The Sweetheart of Summer Gardens

Fresh Picked Is Best
While fresh picked tomatoes are the juiciest and best tasting, not everyone has the luxury of picking them out of their own garden. If you don't have a garden, another good alternative is to search for a farmers market that sells tomatoes from the farmers in your area.

Most fresh tomatoes go to grocery stores firm, but not yet ripe. Any commercial grower will tell you that it is not practical to harvest red-ripe tomatoes; the fruit is too tender to pack and ship. Store-bought tomatoes are harvested at the barely pink stage and coaxed into turning red; so theres a difference in color, flavor, texture, nutrients, and juiciness in these tomatoes.

Selecting and Storing Tomatoes
Choose the reddest, heaviest, most fragrant tomatoes you can find for immediate consumption. If you need to wait a few days before eating them or using them in recipes, you can buy tomatoes that have not quite ripened yet. Allow less ripe tomatoes to mature on the kitchen counter, stem sides down, in a cool spot out of the sunlight. Tomatoes should be free of bruises and blemishes. If they are soft, they are probably fully ripe and need to be used immediately.

Refrigerating whole tomatoes will render them less sweet and make them mushy, so only refrigerate very ripe tomatoes for a day or two until you can eat or cook with them. For best flavor, bring them to room temperature before you eat them.

How to Prepare and Use Tomatoes in Recipes
If you are going to sauté diced tomatoes in a recipe or use them in a stew or soup, it is often better to peel them before cooking. The easiest way to peel a tomato is to drop it into boiling water for 30 seconds to a minute, depending on the amount of tomatoes you are peeling. Plunge them into a bowl of ice water, and let them cool. Then, slip off the skin.

Many recipes call for tomatoes, seeded and chopped. To remove the seeds, cut the tomato in half and gently squeeze out the seeds into a strainer set over a bowl. However, only remove the seeds if you absolutely have to because they contain a lot of the nutrients found in a tomato.

If you are using tomatoes in a green lettuce salad, make sure to add them last, just before tossing. The natural acidity of the juices will cause the lettuce to wilt and the salad will be soggy. If you are cooking with tomatoes and they are not very sweet, add a pinch of sugar to the dish. Roasting is an excellent method of intensifying the tomatoes flavor while imparting a subtle smokiness. Just as oven- or sun-drying concentrates the sweet taste, roasting allows the tomatoes to retain their shape and become meatier in texture. Water from the tomatoes evaporates, and the juices that sneak out during cooking are collected to bathe the roasted tomatoes. Make sure to take advantage of what nature has to offer and use tomatoes next time you are thinking about making a refreshing, summer dish.