My husband planted a new kind of tomato this year — green sausage tomatoes. The plants are productive — we have heaps of the things. But they just don’t have much taste, and what taste they do have isn’t very good.
They taste sort of unripe, no matter how ripe they actually are. I’ve used them to make pico de gallo, and when combined with other, better tasting tomatoes, they make a passable condiment. But they kind of suck when sliced up for salad or sandwiches.
Any ideas on what to do with substandard tomatoes? Aside from pawning them off on unsuspecting neighbors? (We can’t feed them to the chickens since tomatoes are bad for chickens.) We won’t plant this type again, obviously, but for now we’re stuck with scads of them.
Open thread.
beltane
Pickles of some kind? Too bad you’re not raising a couple of pigs, they’ll eat just about anything.
Josie
Fried green tomatoes? If they taste unripe, that might work. Maybe add some hot sauce or chipotle powder to the mix before frying.
ETA: or some sort of chow chow…
ruviana
Treat them like the green tomatoes they are? Fried green tomatoes? And if I remember my Laura Ingalls Wilder correctly, Ma made a pie out of green tomatoes that everyone thought tasted like apple pie. Of course, that would require some experimentation but hey, it’s an idea.
Anne Laurie
Fried green tomatoes? Can’t give you a recipe but one shouldn’t be hard to find.
The other thing you might try is slow-roasting them, because a lot of the standard red sausage-shaped tomatoes taste kinda bland fresh from the vine only to turn amazing after a few hours in a 350-degree oven with a little olive oil and some garlic.
The Spousal Unit & I have a jones for weird-hued tomatoes — ‘black’, brown, pink, orange, yellow — but after trying three or four different heirloom greens we agreed they’re just not suited to our palates. I’m looking forward to see if other commentors have better ideas to share!
c u n d gulag
@beltane beat me to it.
There’s nothing a little vinegar, pepper corns, a hot pepper, bay leaves, a lot of garlic, salt, and, maybe some sugar, and time, can’t fix.
Phylllis
Stand by the side of the road and toss them into open car windows as folks drive by. Oh wait, that’s zucchini you do that with.
Ash Can
I thought of pickling them too. Or at least marinating them. Then they might be good in various salady-type concoctions or salsas. Also, aren’t there some Hungarian and/or Hunan Chinese dishes that call for pickled vegetables?
mb
I grow these tomatoes as well. I find they stand up very well to marinating in rice vinegar and are very good that way. I’d have to agree, though, that they are not the best tasting tomato.
Ash Can
Also, if, as Anne Laurie says, cooking them enhances their flavor, they’d be fine for pasta sauces and stews (including Indian dishes).
Poopyman
Take them to Washington and spend a productive day in the House gallery. Especially with the overripe ones.
I’d say to simply chalk it up as a learning experience and compost them, but I know from experience that it’s hard to do that with something you’ve nurtured along for months. Still, it was an experiment that didn’t work out. Pull ’em, and prep the spot for a late-season crop of something.
raven
Try making salsa verde.
Betty Cracker
Fried green tomatoes — of course! As a Southern girl, I should have thought of that myself. Will try the roasting technique too — there’s little that can’t be improved by caramelization. We often take our (good tasting!) cherry tomatoes, split them, drizzle them with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast them for awhile in a hot oven to add to pasta.
jibeaux
Do they taste unripe in a sort of overly crisp way? Then I’d fry them as green tomatoes. If they’re juicier than that, they might make good sauce or roasting tomatoes. You could try mixing with tomatillos in a green salsa, or try making a weird-colored gazpacho in the food processor. If you get really tired of them and if it’s not mean to do so, is there a “plant a row for the hungry” type organization you can donate to?
max
@Phylllis: Stand by the side of the road and toss them into open car windows as folks drive by. Oh wait, that’s zucchini you do that with.
Slice the zuchinni, fry it in lots of olive olive and dump it over pasta and add parmesan and black pepper. Excellent stuff.
If it tastes unripe no matter what, then pick it unripened and use it as fried green tomatoes would be a good choice.
You could also pick them unripe and put them in a veggie stew (with lots of other veggies). I happen to like Caldo de res a lot. (I’d substitute them for… tah-dah! zuchinni and maybe some of the cabbage. BTW, if you did that, you don’t actually have to use oxtail or whatnot – regular stew meat and lots of beef stock works fine, although it’s not authentic. Or possibly ‘authentic’.)
They *might* make a good tomatillo substitute… but if they don’t so much taste ‘unripe’ as they taste ‘nasty’ (bad cultivar?) then there may not be much hope here. In which case ripping out the plants and putting something else down might be a good idea.
max
[‘In which case, you could try these. Or you could go for some actual tomatillos.’]
David Koch
BOMBSHELL!
Weiner sticks his head back into the ring.
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/22/18413244-i-hope-i-get-a-second-chance-anthony-weiner-launches-bid-to-become-nyc-mayor?lite
This is gonna be hilarious. it’s gonna be 4 “solid” months of wood jokes. Not to menton drama: will the clintons campaign for him/ will the progressive betters who loved him open their hearts again or have they moved on to the latest shiny object??!!?!
MattF
Web seems to think it’s a good paste tomato, so I’d try a long simmer with some Romas:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2012/08/paste_tomatoes_the_secret_to_amazing_homemade_tomato_sauce_.html
Schlemizel
I have a seed catalog that claims they are delicious & “really brighten up a salad!” Outside of politicians & used car sales types are there bigger liars in the world than seed catalogs?
Best ideas I had were fried or picked but those are already up here.
Betty Cracker
@jibeaux: Yes — unripe and crisper than I would prefer. They aren’t horrible; there’s just no sweetness at all to them, and they manage to be bland and too tart at the same time, which sounds impossible but isn’t.
@Schlemizel:
LMAO! I’ll have to pass that one along to hubby, who has been bitterly complaining about those lying liar seed catalogs ever since a couple of his experiments failed. However, the Ukrainian purple tomatoes are darn good. That description was accurate.
Aimai
Green tomato apple pie? Ma makes it in one of the little house books. You just use them in place of the apple.
Schlemizel
@Betty Cracker:
We split roma tomatoes, drizzle with olive oil some shredded basil and cheese (parm, asiago, pecerino or mozzarella) and roast – roasted tomatoes are fabulous
ruviana
@Betty Cracker: I roast grape tomatoes with as much garlic as I can stand to grate. They are to die for. These tomatoes might be good with lots of garlic and olive oil.
schrodinger's cat
Two words: Tomato chutney, you can make it hot, sweet and tart.
Schlemizel
@Betty Cracker:
Living in the frozen north we have to be very careful about growing season & have found several who lie quite freely about how long it takes to go from seed to fruit. I now view buying stuff from them as the same as buying lotto tickets; I do it for the dream of a reward not a reward and never with money I can’t afford to burn.
ruviana
@Aimai: Brain meld!
gogol's wife
@Betty Cracker:
They look to me as if they were engineered precisely for frying. Fannie Flagg still has legs!
daveNYC
@max: “Slice the zuchinni, fry it in lots of olive olive and dump it over pasta and add parmesan and black pepper. Excellent stuff.”
True, but to solve the average zucchini problem, that recipe will have to be made to serve 50 people. And it will still leave you the problem of what to do with the next day’s harvest.
dr. bloor
Just remember, if frying is good, deep frying is better.
Serve’em up with a side of deep fried Snickers.
jibeaux
There’s a joke I heard on Prairie Home Companion or someplace that midwesterners always lock their cars in the summer, to keep people from breaking in and leaving zucchini on the seats.
raven
Still in sewer easement limbo on our addition. I’ve gotten more conflicting information on this than my wife did on her back problem.
gogol's wife
@raven:
How is her back?
cbear
I dunno, how about keeping a supply on hand at all times to wing at the rapacious tree frogs that are the bane of your existence?
NCSteve
Everyone got my all my thoughts (salsa verde, fry them, pickle ’em) but one. When in doubt, compost. Also great for zucchini.
Emma
http://southernfood.about.com/od/picklesrelishes/r/bl90718c.htm
And with all the apples it sounds like it works as a pie too! :D
Joyce
This will take time, but we have made this recipe several times. http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/bobby-flay/fried-green-tomatoes-with-shrimp-remoulade.html
David in NY
@Poopyman: I would not compost them. Composting makes tomato seeds germinate really well (almost as well as when they’ve gone through a sewage treatment plant). If you do, you’ll find them all over the place.
raven
@gogol’s wife: It’s ok, not what she hoped for so far. She has been walking and doing therapy and we remain hopeful.
thx
mai naem
You could let them ripen out in the heat or whatever, then find out where your governor and one whackjob senator is and throw tomatoes at them. You might end up in jail though. But I’m sure the BJ community would pony up the legal expenses to get you out and maybe some minimal community service hrs sentence.
Seriously, stuffed tomatoes with hot sauce or/and mollases lining the inside to make it tastier. Also too, veggie soup or pickles.
Poopyman
@NCSteve: Nope! Got that one too.
@Schlemizel: Name names! It would probably have been a good thread back in January when we were all browsing catalogs so we could have forewarned others.
MomSense
I was going to say the same thing as others–pickle them or fried green tomatoes. Or you could pickle them and then deep fry them.
gogol's wife
@raven:
Back things are the worst. I hope it gets better. Self-hypnosis helped me 30 years ago, but I find I can’t do it as well now. At any rate, it’s a supplement to other treatments, not a cure.
Svensker
@ruviana:
I made that pie and it tasted like baked green tomatoes with sugar. Blech.
With the green sausage tomato, I’d go for pickles or chow chow or some such.
Butch
I guess slightly OT, but tomatoes are bad for chickens? I give them to our chickens all the time.
Betty Cracker
@Butch: I’ve read that they are from a number of sources. Apparently, tomatoes are from the nightshade family and can be toxic to chickens. I’m sure it depends on the amount, though. Our chickens have gone rogue and raided the garden a time or two, and it hasn’t hurt them.
ETA: According to the link below, it’s just the vines that are bad for chickens, not the tomatoes themselves. I’ll have to look into this more: This could be the solution to my tomato dilemma!
http://birds.about.com/od/feeding/tp/poisonousfoods.htm
tBoy
Try slicing a few thin, put on a cooling rack with a pan underneath. Sun dry them on the dashboard with the windows rolled up.
rikyrah
they aren’t good fried?
rikyrah
can you put them in sucatash, with onions, okra and zucchini?
HelloRochester
Tomato jelly. It’s super-yummo on meat.
Just Some Fuckhead
Bread those suckers in corn meal and fry them up. Salt and pepper, yum!
Plan B: Send them to me.
Hugely
g@schrodinger’s cat: listen to this cat…
making me hungry… though I just planted green zebra tomatoes hoping they dont taste bland
cleek
are you sure they’re not tomaccoes ?
gogol's wife
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Yeah, that’s what I’d advise. Anything tomato-like would taste great done that way.
Benno
Your tale makes me sad, Betty, because I’ve grown these — or something like them — for several years now. Are these the same variety as the “green zebra,” ‘cuz they sure look like it, except they’re more oblate. In any event, they became one of my favorites for their rich flavor. I will say this though: last year they weren’t very good. They were pretty flavorless. But the two years before that they were stellar. Maybe it’s this particular growing season in your area? For us, last year was too much rain at precisely the wrong time.
J.W. Hamner
Roasting was what I was going to say, but unsurprisingly have been beaten to the punch by many. Alton Brown has a recipe to slow roast them at 170-200 (lowest your oven will go) overnight that always turns out great for me. They come out sort of like sun dried tomatoes but juicier (and better IMHO). We’ll often then take them and make a tomato soup from them.
BlueNC
1. Green pasta sauce!
2. Green minestrone soup!
3. Green..ketchup??
BethanyAnne
I ate my first tomato of the season yesterday :) I hope I’ll get enough to make a batch of slow roasted tomatoes. If not, it’s about time to buy a bunch from the store and make them thataway.
maya
Are there no food kitchens in your area you can donate them to?
I experimented with a few off-color toms last year – Cherokee Purple and two others not worth remembering. Never again. Sticking with red tomatoes as dog intended. Just planted 8 Valley Girl (Org) in garden from last year’s seeds. They were the sweetest, tastiest toms eva. Hope the offspring repeat – in a good way.
Electricgrendel
Mulch ’em.
Mark C
Is that a sausage tomato in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?
catclub
@Schlemizel: “are there bigger liars in the world than seed catalogs?”
Didn’t somebody say something about the triumph of hope over experience?
Maybe Garrison Keillor? Or George Bernard Shaw?
p.a.
Second pickling. Roast stuffed? Gazpacho? Try in bitter melon soup recipes?
catclub
@BlueNC: When I was five ( or younger) my older sister made asparagus soup. It was not green enough, so she added food coloring. Plenty. Almost fifty years later it is still family lore.
MattF
Do not adopt a chimpanzee:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10072790/Our-pet-chimpanzee-ruined-my-life-claims-stepdaughter-of-French-singer.html
kindness
Pull ’em up and replant. You have time for a new choice.
Otherwise, fried green tomatoes for the whole summer.
demz taters
@ruviana: It was made from green pumpkin.
Yatsuno
@Betty Cracker: I’ve given chickens many a mater without any ill effects. Plus they loves them, they does! I’m amazed you can even keep them out of the patch as it is.
Going with Miss Scrödinger’s idea, curry!
Butch
@catclub: I noticed the thing about the seed catalogs late. I live about a 3-hour drive north of Green Bay, Wisconsin, so way, way “up nort,” as you’d say here. Last year our live plants from a seed catalog arrived on April 1 (ground is frozen and snow covered) and then in a second shipment on October 5 (ground is frozen and snow covered). I gave up.
Betty Cracker
@Benno: I don’t know about the variety. My husband does all the gardening. I just cook it.
@Yatsuno: We finally had to fence off that portion of the yard to keep them out. Hubby has a container garden, and he made tables out of pallets (which have the advantage being free and allowing drainage). He thought the tables would be high enough to keep the chickens away, but no dice!
It was hilarious to watch them leap up to snatch bits of plants before the fence went up. Well, hilarious to me anyway; I’m not the gardener. Hubby was not amused. I’ve been meaning to get video of the chickens jumping up to rip the lower leaves off the bamboo and banana plants (also favorites which we allow them to access since it doesn’t destroy the trees), but I’m usually laughing too hard to record it. Watching chickens jump…it never gets old.
Yatsuno
@Betty Cracker: Never ever underestimate a hungry chicken. I’ve seen them get to spots hunting for food that just astound me. The roof, in the house, under cars, you name it. But yeah, watching those little fat balls of feather jump is hilarious. Chickens are really entertaining birds.
lectriclady
My chix go to extreme lengths to get at tomatoes. No ill effects that i can see. Avocados are very bad from what i hear.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@catclub: “Didn’t somebody say something about the triumph of hope over experience?”
Dr. Samuel Johnson hisself, speaking of second marriages IIRC
schrodinger's cat
@Yatsuno: That would work too.
For the chutney
Heat oil in a thick bottomed dutch oven, add mustard seeds and a red dried chilli pepper when the mustard seeds begin to pop add the tomatoes, I think it would be a good idea to blanch the tomatoes before this step. Mush them with the back of the wooden spoon, add kosher salt, brown sugar or honey, when everything is homogenized in the pan add water till all the tomatoes are covered, bring to a boil, then lower the heat to simmer and cook till the mixture has thickened. If you have mint you can add it along with the honey, if you want the chutney to be hot add a tsp of cayenne and some turmeric when you add the honey. You can make this chutney with mangoes, cranberries or pineapple, anything that is tart and sweet. I will post a detailed recipe on my blog later.
dagh (fka tesslibrarian)
@Hugely: Green zebras are smaller, definitely spherical, and are two definite shades of green with the stripes. We’ve grown them in the past, and find them a nice addition to tomato salads with other varieties because they have a decent tomato flavor but are lower in acid. There is nothing as beautiful as a salad of yellow, orange, red, pink, and green tomatoes topped with tufts of goat cheese and a drizzle of good balsamic vinegar.
Our tomato season hasn’t really started yet. I’m anxious enough for it that I wonder if I have a vitamin deficiency.
NCSteve
@Poopyman: Curses!
But I’ve been surprised how liberating starting a compose heap has been. There are no mistakes, only head starts on preparing next year’s garden.
dagh (fka tesslibrarian)
@kindness: I think that’s probably the best option, unless it gets too hot there for much of a mid-summer harvest.
We had a merciless June in Georgia last year, and it actually burned the leaves off most of my tomatoes, and I only managed to get a handful of them later that September.
kindness
@dagh (fka tesslibrarian): I live in the Central Valley in N Cal. It routinely gets into the 100’s for a few weeks (sometimes a month or more) during the day in the summer. That is when our tomatoes go gangbusters. I hate that weather. My wife loves it. We will not discuss the AC debates that occur.
JR in WV
We had a big tom cat who learned how to open the kitchen slider door by getting his front claws into the rubber gasket and pulling really hard. I wouldn’t have minded if he had bothered to close the door, but no…
One evening we got home and Ralph had left the kitchen door open, and most of the chicken flock had come in to the kitchen. We herded them out, cleaned up the floor, had dinner and went to bed. The next morning I discovered we had missed two yardbirds who had roosted on a bookcase over night.
They were easy to catch, being still roosted, I just grabbed one leg each and tossed them out the front door. Still a laugh these 30 years later!
I second the chow-chow suggestion, pickled anything is good. At least you didn’t get a bumper crop of okra!
dagh (fka tesslibrarian)
@kindness: I’ve started planting my tomatoes in a bed that doesn’t get the harshest afternoon sun, otherwise they just don’t produce as much. Do you have decent night temps during the 100-degree periods of summer? Last year, we’d wake up at 6am to hear it was already ~80 degrees. Miserable.
I hate the heat. I have lived in the south most of my life, and never have been able to handle it. My inclination to keep the AC off as long as possible each spring led to some fights in our house, too. We finally realized AC makes our marriage better, or at least less irritable and cranky.
VinnieG
Green Sausage tomatoes are an aesthetic variety that is a hybrid of a Roma tomato. Therefore, like Roma tomatoes, they don’t have much flavor. Their features: firm flesh, are best utilized in making sauces (Green Pizza Sauce !!) which you spice up accordingly. Just as you wouldn’t want to use beefsteak slicers to make sauce, you don’t want to use Roma varieties as slicers.
For flavor, try Paul Robeson black tomato.
BethanyAnne
@dagh (fka tesslibrarian): “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell”
― Philip Henry Sheridan
kindness
@dagh (fka tesslibrarian): Most of the time it cools down so we can open up the house at night. The house is really well insulated so that if we close it up and put the ceiling fans on during the day we don’t need the AC till we get home after work. So I’m not going to complain other than my other half always says when the AC is on is ‘the house is stuffy’ and then she goes & opens the windows to make it less stuffy. In her world we should run the heater all autumn & winter most the spring and never run the AC. In mine I run the heater in the coldest part of the winter and the AC as weather needs it. Being born up north has stayed with me I guess.
Karla
A few years ago I grew green sausage tomatoes and got very few of them, but I liked them. I concur with the people above who note that tomato yield and quality within the same variety can vary greatly from year to year and with different soil conditions.
Betty Cracker
@JR in WV: Hahaha! Great story!
gogol's wife
@VinnieG:
Whoa! I am a Paul Robeson freak! I’m going to have to learn to grow tomatoes just for this!
Betty Cracker
@VinnieG: Good to know! Even as I type this, I have a spiced-up tray of them on a slow roast, which I’ve done with Romas successfully. We’ll see how they turn out. I have so many (and more coming in daily), I reckon I’ll have a chance to try every suggestion in this thread at some point…
EthylEster
I did only a cursory scan of the comments but…
I have hens and they love tomatoes so I googled. It seems that the plants are not good for them. But the fruit is ok.
Also I get mushy tomatoes from my local food bank. They are destined for the compost pile but I bring some home for the girls. Last year in August I used about a 2 gallon bucket of “soil” from their run area to fill out a raised bed. Tomato plant immediately started to grow and by the end of Sept, they were blossoming and setting fruit. All from the seeds they had consumed!
artem1s
@Hugely:
I love green zebras. this is my third year planting them. good producers and tasty. I cut them up for salads mostly. haven’t tried frying them yet but didn’t see a need too.
John Weiss
@Betty Cracker: If you think that jumping chickens are funny, you should see jumping ducks!
KS in MA
@daveNYC: True. But you can freeze as many zucchini cakes as you can fit into your freezer (and then give those away)– basically, same recipe as carrot cake; shred the zukes and drain them really well.
dagh (fka tesslibrarian)
@BethanyAnne: Ha! I’d never heard that one! The obvious solution, really.
Duhkaman
I feed my chickens (125+) tomatoes all the time. Never had a problem and they seem to crave them actually. Am I killing my birds slowly or something?
Betty Cracker
@Duhkaman: After further research, it looks like it’s only the plant part that can harm the chickens — the fruit part appears to be okay. Sorry for the false alarm!
kathleen
We used to pickle the green tomatoes that were still on the vine at the first frost. Could you pickle these? Maybe make some kind of relish, or a mix with cauliflower, carrots and onions? I think you would have to pick them while they’re still unripe, o’wise they’d be too juicy.
vicki
Make vinegar out of them, then use it for household cleaning chores. Also, the tomatoes themselves are a good cleaner for pots and pans, even glass.
Becki
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-goldwyn/pickled-green-tomatoes-recipe_b_754850.html
Use/add habanero peppers for fiery snack pickles. Pregnant sister ate the quarts given to her for her in-laws, all 4! People will hope for an early frost after having a few of these.
JoyousMN
I’ve started using tomatillo and eggplant as tomato substitutes in many recipes. So I’d recommend using them in a salsa verde (you can simmer them until they are pretty tender, about 6-7 minutes and puree them if they seem very “green” tasting).
I’d also mix the puree with some Mole sauce and make chili or some sort of mex-style enchilada sauce. The puree freezes well too.