I have always been a tomato loather…until this summer. I have always found raw tomatoes as slimy and disgusting. But for some reason this summer we decided to grow some tomatoes, and I discovered that I do like them, I really like them!! But tomatoes in a restaurant are just horrendous. They are actually devoid of taste. Anyway, I still will not eat tomatoes on a sandwich or on any kind of bread, but set out a plate of them with some mozarella cheese and I will devour the whole plate!
Don’t get me started on the vile-ness that is mayonnaise or anything resembling it!!! Gaaaccckkk!!!
I’ve never been a big fan of fresh tomatoes, but not to the extent that some people here have. Of course I had to acquire a taste for what I do like them.
I like tomatoes in sauces, soups etc and can handle fresh tomatoes on sandwiches (sometimes), BLT’s, in salads. Mainly if the taste is kind of disguised.
I’m not a big ketchup fan (mainly because as Eonwe says it’s a red sugar product) but will eat it on occasion. For the most part I’ve found that ketchup drowns out all the other flavours and thus don’t use it often unless something is so bland it needs the ketchup to have some sort of taste. (Like McDonald’s fries) Not saying I won’t eat it on occasion but that’s the exception rather than the rule.
As to fresh tomato slices… I’ve never liked that. I lived with my Grandparents for 2 years and Grandma served slices of tomatoes with a good portion of the suppers she made. They’d put a little salt and pepper on them and eat them like that but even though I tried I had to choke them down.
If you genuinely gag eating them just forget it you will never like them. It’s like people who have been sick after eating something -a reflex buried deep in our minds causes us tio form as visceral association of revulsion that is almost impossible to overcome. It’s designed to stop us poisoning ourselves.
I know two great examples. My brother used to drink Earl Grey tea until one day he experienced a migraine while drinking a cup. Now the smell makes him sick. A woman I know became ill while waiting for her meal in a Thai restaurant. The smell of food cooking was enough to cause her never to eat Thai food again.
Tongues are like fingerprints…everybody’s tastebud pattern varies from person to person. As a result the same food tastes different to different people.
Could just be that your tastebuds aren’t programmed to like tomatoes…
My favorite is a ripe tomato right off the vine. Eat it with a little salt and it has the most savory flavor known. That is my opinion. I do not like store tomatoes. But, I like fried green tomatoes a lot. They are quite tasty with a little mustard.
A chef at a rather expensive English restaurant said that the best way to get someone to enjoy eating a food that they don’t like is to have them prepare the dish. He said that in his experience that after people spend long periods of time working with the food, they’d eventually overcome their distaste for the food. Haven’t tried this myself to see if it’s true or not, but I do know that I, also, do not like tomatoes in their raw, unprocessed form.
Different varieties of tomatoes have more or less acid, and other flavor variations. If you find yourself liking a farmer’s-market or homegrown one, get the name! ie, sweet 100’s, green zebra, Champion, Brandywine, etc etc. Reading a seed catalog gives you some clues.
Of course, home-grown is way better than supermarket variety, due to being ripened for one thing, and not being bred primarily for appearance and shelf life.
Why force yourself to eat something that makes you gag?
If you can manage to eat the sandwiches with the slight amount of tomato juice that might be on them, you could always pick off the tomato and then eat the sandwich (I do this with pickles), but otherwise you’ll just have to remember to say “no tomato” every time you order something that might conceivably have fresh tomato in it.
You could always tell food preparers that leave on the tomato that you’re violently deathly allergic to them, otherwise you might just be brushed off with a “you don’t know what’s good” attitude by many people, as if disliking a food item is somehow a moral flaw. I’ve never understood this attitude. If you don’t like my favorite food, that just means there’s more of it for me
Here, IMHO, is one of the best ways to enjoy fresh tomatoes (so if you don’t like them this way, it may be hopeless):
Homemade bread, sliced and well toasted
Spread with mayo (sorry, H.K.) – homemade, by preference
Cover with sliced homegrown tomatoes, ripe and very red
Sprinkle liberally with freshly gound pepper, and a touch of salt
In hot weather, serve with gin & tonic on the side
Tomatoes and mayo? Gaaaaag! You can have ALL you want, I’m not getting near it!
I figure I’m 27 and can like or not like food without people commenting on it. Yet EVERYBODY comments on it anyway, and it’s not like I’m pushy or annoying about it. (There WAS the recent Lunch From Hell that my mom’s hubby’s mother served me a few weeks ago…chicken salad, ham salad, some sort of fruit salad, and one other kind, ALL made with mayo! I HAD to say something; there was already bread and butter on the table, so I mentioned my mayo problem as gently as I could; she brought out some turkey and I had a lovely sandwich. I was so afraid she’d be offended, until I remembered that mom’s hubby doesn’t eat mayo either!)
I’ve tried tomatoes on enough occasions to have come to the conclusion that I just don’t like them and never will. I don’t feel like questioning my taste buds on this; faced with new food, I try to be a little adventurous, but when faced with food I KNOW I have never liked, I don’t see why I should try.
remember to say “no tomato” every time you order something that might conceivably have fresh tomato in it
Had me remembering the time I was at a restaurant that must have a few shares in the tomato industry or something, it seemed like everything on the menu had tomato on it. I was about to start preparing my order with “no tomato” in it, and trying to plan ahead the possible “they come with tomato on it already”, “no tomato? Everyone likes tomato” and other variant conversations that pop up at such a request when I spotted PHILLY CHEESESTEAK on the menu.
I’ll often order an item just because it doesn’t have default tomato (thus avoiding those annoying conversations) so I went with that. When it arrived, the thing was HALF TOMATO. I was thinking, “What kind of IDIOT puts tomato on a Philly Cheesesteak?” but what I said was “Gee, never seen one of these with tomato before.” because I prefer to have the staff not spit in my food. Now whenever I order a Philly I specify “no tomato” and the server looks at me like I’m from some other planet.
Ummmm. I was re-thinking my comment on the different varieties of tomatoes. Rather than you working at trying any number of different varieties, potentially one gag after another, you might want to have a friend pick two or three varieties at most that have the most different flavors, it most-acid, least-acid, blandest, richest.
Alternatively, wait ten years between eating the things. I used to gag over eggplant as a kid. Once I was grown and could choose my food, I ate none for a long time, and now it’s fine in a casserole. (Still haven’t tested the fried rubber version, or the slimy version, that were pushed on me as a kid.)
Signed, Loves good tomatoes
PS, BLT sandwich? that’s bacon-lettuce-tomato on toast, ideally sourdough toast, normally with mayo. Try your first one with lots of bacon.
It’s possible that you’re just very sensitive to acidic flavors, petre, and the tanginess of tomatoes is too much for you. Do you have an aversion to any other sour foods, like pickles or any of the vinegar-based condiments?
If you really want to try to get used to them, I recommend trying them in conjunction with fresh basil (often described as the "tomato’s best friend). The sweet pungency of the herb cuts the sharpness of the tomato flavor. If you add something salty to the combination, like ham or Cajun roast beef, so much the better.
Regardless, if you don’t like them, there’s no reason why you should have to put up with them. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever actually develop a taste for them if your aversion is as strong as you describe.
Ditto, ditto, and ditto. I would recommend trying the really fresh homegrown ones before you give up completely, but if you don’t like 'em, you don’t like 'em. I mean you could try self-administered anti-aversion therapy or something, but why? People are gonna bug you about something anyway; seems to be inevitable.
If there’s a food I really don’t like, I make it a point to try it again every few years. Sometimes I find my tastes have changed and I now can enjoy a food (e.g., anchovies) that I couldn’t STAND a few years ago.
Or I might find a new way of eating something (e.g., brussels sprouts cooked with nutmeg) that makes all the difference.
Chalk up another person who won’t eat raw tomato. I just can’t stand the slimyness…I’m not a tomato fan anyway, though…and lettuce makes me gag. Oh, how I hate it…shudder I suppose it’s obvious then that I absolutely refuse to eat salad, and I really have no reason to, so…
I disliked raw tomatoes for the longest time, then, one day during college, I got a hankerin’ for a tuna fish sandwich with lettuce and a slice of tomato. Wasn’t too bad. Why don’t you give that a try, a thin slice in a heavy sandwich like that. The texture will be buried, and you get just a hint of the taste.
I still don’t do raw tomatoes in green salad, but I will do italian Tomato and Mozzarella salad, and that’s a tomato heavy dish. How about fresh salsas? Those are pretty much raw tomato chunks. Bruscetta is like that, too.
