Start getting excited – homegrown tomatoes offer an exquisite treat! Unlike their supermarket counterparts, homegrown varieties come in all kinds of shapes and flavors that far outshone any store-bought options. Let’s discover more by diving right in!
Ripeness & Storage:
While fried green tomatoes can be delicious, for optimal taste it’s best to harvest tomatoes when they have fully ripened. Tomatoes may change color after picking but their flavor won’t improve after being picked off the plant, so for optimal taste leave your tomatoes on their vines until harvest time arrives.
When should you harvest tomatoes? Once your plants begin showing a hint of their final color, you should begin harvesting them as soon as they start showing an inkling of it. As tomatoes ripen from within outward, when their exterior begins looking soft and ready it’s time to harvest and enjoy promptly!
Your tomatoes might have begun splitting on the vine. Don’t worry; these juicy, flavorful fruit are still perfectly fine to eat! To prevent further splitting, decrease watering; excess moisture leads to increased juice accumulation in fruit which in turn intensifies flavor concentration in tomatoes.
If you need to harvest tomatoes before they’re fully ripe, you can certainly do so; but please remember this important rule:
Refrigerating tomatoes ruins their flavor and texture, as well as warming temperatures after harvesting can have similar adverse impacts. For best results, store your tomatoes between 55o-70oF away from direct sunlight with stems up and stems covered to avoid bruising.
If your harvest can’t be consumed quickly enough, don’t despair – here are a few alternatives for you:
Spread a bit of Christmas joy this holiday season – be it with friends, acquaintances, or those you hope to reconcile with – by using one of our delicious sauce recipes and making a batch to share. Once made, simply freeze or dry them to preserve their quality and enjoyment!
Can them.
Now it is all clear. Leave the fruit on the vine as long as possible before picking when nearly ripe and soft; firm tomatoes should be avoided. And never refrigerate your tomatoes to fully experience their flavors!
Flavor Basics:
Acidity levels define the characteristic flavor of tomatoes. A true tomato strikes a delicate balance between acids and the sweet sugary sweetness we associate with these fruits, creating their iconic taste. Too sweet of a tomato lacks these defining acids and can taste bland. Lighter-colored varieties such as Great White or White Beauty embody this sweeter but milder taste without having the distinctive tanginess often associated with real tomatoes.
Pink and red varieties like Brandywine Pink and Stupice provide the ideal balance of sweet and acidic flavors, making them popular choices. Dark black tomatoes such as Cherokee Purple and Paul Robeson excel in acidity; with less sugar being needed to mask their earthy flavors inherent within their fruit, many consider these dark varieties to offer superior flavors.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that taste preferences differ among individuals – what one perceives as acidic might taste sickly sweet to another person. The only surefire way to discover which flavours work for you is to give them a try yourself and you won’t be left disappointed!
*To clarify, we don’t hold any animus against grocery stores; in fact, they do an impressive job of picking, transporting and stocking tomatoes across the country with machines before being stored on store shelves for days on end. In order for tomatoes to endure such treatment they need to be hardy – something which store-bought tomatoes certainly are.
**Reference stores – they harvest tomatoes when they are green and use ethylene gas to turn them red.
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