Vegetable
Tomato
TomateTomàquetSolanum lycopersicum
An August tomato and a January one only share the colour. And a good tomato's worst enemy isn't winter: it's your fridge.
When
Around: Jun–Oct · At its best: Jul–Sept
Around: Jun–Oct · At its best: Jul–Sept
Around: Dec–Apr · At its best: Jan–Mar
Around here
In Catalonia there's a tomato for everything. Tomàquet de penjar, small and thick-skinned, is hung in bunches and keeps until winter: it's the one for pa amb tomàquet. The ribbed, almost hollow Montserrat tomato is for salads. And ripe ones go into sofregit, the base of half of Catalan cooking.
At the market
- Smell it at the stalk end: if it doesn't smell of tomato, it won't taste of it.
- It should feel heavy and give slightly when pressed, without being soft.
- Cracks at the top aren't a flaw in garden tomatoes, but they should be dry, with no mould.
- For salads, firm; for sauce or sofregit, very ripe and cheaper.
At home
- Never in the fridge: cold kills its flavour and texture.
- At room temperature, out of direct sun, stalk end down.
- Ripe, use it within two or three days; if it's green, let it ripen in the fruit bowl.
- Hanging tomatoes, in strings, somewhere cool and airy: they last for months.
If you have too much
- Bottled crushed tomato: in sterilised jars, processed in a water bath, for the whole year.
- Slow-cooked sofregit in bulk, frozen in ice-cube trays or small portions.
- Dried: halved, salted, in the sun or a very low oven, then kept in oil.
- Frozen whole, for sauce: once thawed, the skin slips right off.
In the kitchen
- Pa amb tomàquet, with hanging tomatoes, oil and salt.
- In a salad with just salt, oil and oregano: a good one needs nothing else.
- Gazpacho or salmorejo.
- Sofregit, the base for rice dishes, stews and fideuà.
- Stuffed and baked, with mince or rice.
- Fried tomatoes with rabbit, home cooking.
What it brings
Per 100 g, raw.
- Energy
- 18 kcal
- Water
- 95% water
- Carbs
- 3.9 g
- Sugars
- 2.6 g
- Fibre
- 1.2 g
- Protein
- 0.9 g
Stands out for
- Source of vitamin C13.7 mg · 17% of what you need in a day
Data from the USDA (FoodData Central). See the full table ↗ · How we decide what stands out
In the family recipes
- Gazpacho Mum's
- Pipirrana Grandma's
- Tomates fritos con conejo Grandma's
- Patatas con tomate Grandma's
The recipes are in Spanish.
Goes with
- CucumberJun–SeptBotanically it's a fruit, like its cousin the melon. What it tells you most is about cold: it likes being cool, but in a very cold fridge it goes soft and pitted.
- PepperJul–OctGreen and red are usually the same pepper at two stages: the red one was left to ripen on the plant. That's why it's sweeter and dearer.
- AubergineJun–OctIt's a sponge: it soaks up all the oil you give it. Charred whole over a flame it becomes something else, creamy and smoky, without a drop extra.
- CourgetteMay–SeptAnyone with a plant in the garden knows: one day it's a finger, three days later a baseball bat. The small ones are the good ones; the giants are water and seeds.