Finding each tomato's best use...??

[huntsman]

Tomatoes are used for many things, incl. canning, sauce, sliced for eating, purees and many more, as we all know.

How can one tell to what use a tom is best put? ie Is it a canner or an eater, etc?

Can this be determined by name, and if so, is there i a list or database somewhere for this specific use?

What makes a tom a slicer, for example? Skin thickness? Juice?

I'm getting ready to plant my crop and would really like to have a balance of canners, slicers, etc...

Thanks!

[RJ_Hythloday]

I think some are best for slicers, but they can still go into sauce when you can't keep up w/ eating them.

[Blueaussi]

Some already list that in the description. I don't know of a data base specifically for that, but you might find catalogs that allow you to search for paste, beefsteaks, etc. Personally, I like browsing catalogs and web sites enough that I don't worry about all the information being divided that way. I like the serendipitous approach to my tomato pr0n.

[huntsman]

Heh heh!

I know what you mean, Blue...!

[TZ-OH6]

My understanding is that it is a size issue...cherries> salad> slicer. Salad tomatoes area little too big to pop into your mouth whole without stuff shooting out of your mouth when you bite down, and are generally cut in half or into wedges for salads. Slicers are big enough to slice for putting onto burgers/sandwiches.

Paste tomatoes have a dry flesh and less seed gell so that you do not have to cook them own as long for thick sauces. Just because it is a paste tomato does not mean it tastes better as a sauce than a juicier "fresh eating" tomato.


There may be a distinction between slicer and beefsteak, but I don't think it is a firm rule. Beefsteaks have small seed chambers scattered throughout the tomato and may be round or oblong, medium to extra large size. Slicers can refer to either any tomato of the proper size, round tomatoes of the proper size, or round tomatoes having just a few large seed chambers around the periphery like spokes in a wheel. I generally think of slicers [sensu stricto] as the latter because that is the general form of round grocery store tomatoes, and the slices found on MacDonald's burgers.


Canners should have low juices/high meat (but not be paste tomatoes) and a fairly bold flavor [assuming they were developed for the canning industry]. You can get whole, chopped or pureed canned tomatoes in the store so you really can't guess size for canners, although I've found that when website venders say "Great for canning", it often means a smallish plum shaped tomato that fits into canning jars whole.

Plum [shaped] tomatoes can be juicy, but are more often dry-paste types, and are popular for making sauce.


If you want a tomato for a specific job, then the best thing to do is to ask others what they like best raher than try to figure it out from virietal descriptions. If you ask someone like an agricultural agent they will tell you which variety is most profitable to grow for that function, not which one tastes best. Seed packet descriptions often fall along that line as well

[ContainerTed]

This year, I made both sauce and salsa. I used whatever was on the counter at the time. What I found was that the Green When Ripe varieties seem to add a citrus taste that you could control by adding only a small amount. But the main thing I discovered was that good tasting sauce came from any good tasting tomatoes. Several batches of sauce had saladettes, beefsteaks, slicers, cherries, and anything else that was at the peak of ripeness.

Slicers are any tomato that I decide to put on a sandwich. Smaller tomatoes just need a few more slices to cover. Salad tomatoes are the ones I just dropped or cut up into the lettuce and ......

Bottom line is taste. That wonderful tasting Golden Cherokee and that smoky tasting Huge Black or Spudakee will make a sauce that I will also find wonderful and smoky. The only thing left is quantity.

One of my best tasting sauces (I got raves from the family) that I made this past year contained the following: Kimberley, Golden Cherokee, Sibirskiy Skorospelyi, Rozalinda, Spudakee, Indian Stripe, Mountain Fresh, Golden Dwarf Champion, Azoychka, Black & Red Boar, Goose Creek, and an assortment of cherries from Black Cherry, Dr. Carolyn Pink, and Baby Beefsteak. All of them tasted good individually, and came together to make a wonderful sauce that had many facets to its wonderfully complex flavor.

So, I concentrate on the taste thing. Complexity seems to be the thing for me and my family right now. You can always slow simmer down to a nice thick sauce.

Ted

[RJ_Hythloday]

For my chili I like to roast the tomatoes(large variety) to remove skins, and then puree. All the juice that has cooked out during roasting is easy to cook down in a sauce pan and add the concentrated drippings that are left.

[huntsman]

Sorry I missed these replies, but thank you!

[FILMNET]

I froze some Romas, and take 1-2 out for tomato sauce lovely sweet romas which help tomaot sauce i buy, i mix them .

[mjc]

To me the distinction between slicers and beefsteaks has been one of uniformity. To me slicers are large, mostly smooth round tomatoes. Beefsteaks are not smooth or very round...they can be odd shaped.

[huntsman]

Thanks, guys -

So much to learn