Tomatoes don't taste red
Their colour is so misleading, because red food should be like really tangy and strong. Either sweet like a strawberry or cranberry, or savoury like ketchup. Tomatoes taste like they should be a pale green or yellow, but they're red. It's fucked up.
Homegrown tomatoes do taste "really tangy and strong". Grocery store tomatoes were selectively bred to not be green around the stem because customers wrongly interpreted the green ring as unripe. In the process of selective breeding, tomatoes lost their natural flavor.
In the Southern US, there is a traditional Tomato Sandwich ( no bacon, no lettuce, no cheese), only white bread, mayonnaise, salt and pepper, and a thick slice of tomato. The flavor of the tomato is very powerful.
I dont agree with this. Grocery store tomatoes are the way they are due to needing a tough skin to withstand mechanical picking processes, long storage times, exposure to ethylene gas, long transport times, etc. its not really because of a green ring around the stem of a tomato. Tomaotes dont ripen that way. Green shoulders have a well defined cause, like nutrient deficiency or wilt virus.
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2012/06/researchers-identify-gene-controls-tomato-ripening
This gene also influences how tomato fruit ripen, the reason commercial tomatoes develop into perfectly red, store-ready fruit.
However, this same trait reduces sugars and nutrients in the fruit.
Naturally, tomatoes unevenly ripen, showing darker green patches when unripe and variable redness when ripe -- traits that still show up in garden-variety and heirloom breeds.
However, in the late 1920s, commercial breeders stumbled across a natural mutation that caused tomatoes to ripen uniformly -- from an even shade of light green to an even shade of red.
The uniform redness makes it ideal for groceries, where customers expect evenly colored, red fruit.
Organic heirloom tomato sandwiches at the height of tomato season are divine
When I saw the pic on the Wikipedia page - I suddenly remembered by mom used to make tomato sandwiches for me very much like those. It wasn't very often and I had entirely forgotten. The last time I had one was when I was a teenager which was a million years ago.
I'm super lazy and I get my groceries delivered and the tomatoes are utter shit. Maybe I'll make my first trip to Trader Joe's this year and get some beefsteak tomatoes or heirlooms and make some sandwiches. But don't quote me. I am super lazy. Still - mom food.
tomatoes don't taste red
savoury like ketchup
Honestly, grocery store tomatoes are shit. A homegrown tomato is one of my favorite things on the planet. I grow them in my backyard so i can eat them right off the vine. Theres green ones, red ones, pink ones, purple ones, yeller ones, etc.
My first time eating homegrown grape tomatoes I was flabbergasted. It was in a salad at someone's house, and I must have eaten like twenty of them just by themselves after the salad.
Yeah a homegrown versus store bought is just an unfair competition.
Same, I hated tomatoes before that and now I get giddy thinking about tomato season! My mom happened to grow some grape tomatoes and it wad life changing, the sungold variety are my fave. I am very lucky to live in a place with a lot of local farms so I get the good goods. I suck at growing them lol
everyone should have a hydroponics bucket to grow tomatoes in. strongly recommend. the secret sauce is making your own hydroponics juice after you learn it all, it becomes insanely cheap and you dont have issues with bugs like bringing dirt in the house does. lets you tweak the flavor a bit
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I used to think vegetables sucked as a kid. it wasn't until I started having access to some that hadn't been on a shipping container for 3 weeks and selectively bred to still look appealing after being on a shipping container for 3 weeks that I understood what the deal was.
the difference between a tomato in a north american supermarket and a tomato from literally anywhere else is eye opening not only to the enjoyment of the food but also to the absolute state of modern agriculture
The makers of the Matrix couldn't find out how tomatoes tasted, the juice was too corrosive for their probes.
This is a counterrevolutionary view.
I will not elaborate.
Maybe that's why the best tomato sauce tends to be tangy and strong?
But yeah, as others have said, if you've ever grown your own tomatoes, you'd know how different they taste from store bought ones, because store bought ones are bred to look big and impressive (so people buy them) but not so much for flavour.
I think that mostly depends on the tomato species, the supermarket big ones circle shape normally lack flavor, but the little oval shape ones are normally strong in flavor to me (saladette)
Yep. Beef tomatoes are watery nothingness. Cherry or plum tomatoes are really tangy and strong, like red.
Tomatoes are yellow though. At least all the best ones I've had are.
What's your next take gonna be... that carrots don't taste orange?
The tomatoes I get around here are tangy in a strong way about 99% of the time
I thought that was the normAlong with everyone here, you gotta get a locally grown tomato in season, totally different experience. If you can't get them that way, or dont wanna wait, make some tomato jam. That might scratch your itch; you can make it slightly sweet or really savory and the flavor is super intense!