elfbabe and I were musing just the other day about how we enjoy virtually all products derived from the humble tomato, save for the fresh tomato itself.
Over the years we’ve tried very, very hard to enjoy fresh tomatoes. We’ve tried about every variety out there: The much-maligned store-bought ones, the fresh from the local garden ones, the premium designer-organic-greenhouse variety, the yellow ones, the green ones, etc. etc.
Each time we both conclude: I can eat it but it sure has that nasty fresh tomato taste. Then we wander off to enjoy sun-dried tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato soup, tomato sauces made from fresh tomatos, & even home-made salsa, as long as the tomato bits have steeped in the lime juice (or other acid) for long enough.
Is there some sort of genetic basis for not enjoying the taste of fresh tomatoes? Perhaps something similar to those folks whose genetic makeup leaves them tasting cilantro as nastily soapy?
Or is there another explanation for our not liking the fresh version of the wonderfully tasty tomato, even though we long to?
Could it be that the slimy mouth-feel of fresh tomatoes might be a part of this? The fact that you like tomato juice, which is uncooked and not otherwise denatured (with added acids, for example) raises this question.
How do you react to a slice of tomato that has been mildly cooked (say in the middle of a grilled-cheese sandwich)?
A quick thought: what kind of soil, and in particular what bedrock, do you have there on the shores of Lake Michigan? It was my experience that I never liked the taste of tomatoes, whether canned, fresh, local hothouse, garden, shipped in, or whatsoever. Then I moved to an area where the soils are clay-loam rather than loam-sand and the bedrock is not limestone, as it had been all through my childhood, youth, and young adulthood. And the fresh tomatoes here are sweeter, not as bitter-acid-y, and generally good eating.
Although I grant you the salt (although that does not seem relavent, unless Qad likes salted fresh tomatoes, which, if true, I assume he would have pointed out), pasteurization does not equal cooking.
Would you call pasteurized milk cooked milk?
Seeded, pureed fresh tomatoes results in a liquid that (when salted) tastes pretty much like canned tomato juice.
If you have a garden, you should try growing some paste tomatoes (scroll down). My neighbor grew, I think, San Marzano tomatoes this year and they have a totally unique taste. They’re meaty and nearly seedless. My whole family is addicted to them (I get to keep whatever ends up growing on my side of the fence!)
I agree with Random - it might be a mouth-feel thing. San Marzanos are all tomato, none of the extra crap.
What’s interesting is I’m generally known as someone who will eat just about anything, I grew up in a rural area with grandparents who pickled just about everything and served just about everything you could imagine; as an adult I’ve traveled extensively and have never feared trying exotic foods.
But something that millions of people eat, and love, every single day, I just can’t stand. The fresh tomato. I think I gave up on the fresh tomato sometime around the end of High School. Prior to that, there were still incidents of me “trying to force one down” just to see if I could somehow learn to enjoy them. It just never took. I wasn’t a picky kid who refused to try new things, I tried fresh tomatoes in various ways and eventually just plain gave up.
Since then, I think I’ve firmly established a general aversion to tomatoes. What’s weird is, liked QtM I can enjoy raw tomato if it’s in a salsa of some sort (where it has been heavily saturated by other things), I can enjoy tomatoes in a stew (where they still maintain a lot of their original texture.)
I’ve never gotten it checked into, but I have also wondered if it’s possible I have a very mild tomato allergy (I doubt mine is serious as I’ve heard people with serious tomato allergy have been hospitalized after a few seeds or juice from a fresh tomato are left on a sandwich when a food worker removes tomato from an order after forgetting said order was without tomato); this comes about because of some work I did in a kitchen many years ago. Anytime I had to slice a bunch of tomatoes, I noticed that a rash broke out on my hand. I’ve heard of people breaking into hives from eating tomato, if they’re allergic. But can simple skin-contact with tomato juice cause a reaction? This was definitely brought on by something to do with me cutting the tomatoes up, because I cut up a lot of different veggies in my day and only tomatoes will cause the characteristic rash on my hands.
My dad loved tomatoes, he would eat them with peanut butter, even.
My mom hates tomatoes. Interestingly she had two siblings, a brother and a sister. The sister also hated fresh tomatoes, the brother loved them and wouldn’t eat a sandwich without one.
Her father and mother both liked tomatoes (to the best of my knowledge) although I’ll have to ask my mom, I think it may be possible my grandfather didn’t like tomatoes–but he was a picky eater in general. I know that my grandmother on my mother’s side liked tomatoes because she used to grow them and put them on her salads and sandwiches frequently.
This is indeed interesting: I like fresh tomatoes, but my brother and sister absolutely hate them. Yet both will eat cooked and processed tomatoes happily.
Odd. I was talking to my parents about this a few days ago while we were eating salad. They both love any and all things tomato; I shun only fresh tomatoes and tomato juice.
I’m with the OP. I simply cannot bring myself to eat a tomato. Not on a sandwich or any other way. But almost all tomato derived foods I like very much (and as mentioned even salsa where it is finely diced…big slimy bits in salsa I avoid).
I don’t like fresh tomatoes, which my parents, sister, and wife al regard as blasphemy (the innate superiority of fresh Jersey tomatoes is taken by akll of them as a given). But it’s true.
Nevertheless,I LOVE cooked tomatoes – stewed, in an Italian Dinner, Pizza, Spaghetti. I like ketchup.
Part of it is, I’m sure, the different slimy feel of tomatoes and its gelid interior. Part, I suspect, comes from seeing a hornworm boring its way through a tomato when I was a kid, which freaked me out.
We need more clarification as to what the “nasty” part of fresh tomato taste is like.
There are people for whom the “acid”/tangy part is great (including me) and others who can’t stand it, and like pronounced sweetness or relatively unflavored (“mild/subacid”) varieties. The white or yellow ones are typically the most bland.
My problem has been finding really tasty varieties to grow in my garden. This year was pretty decent (mostly because I had a number of cherry types, often the most flavorful) but the vaunted “black” tomatoes were only moderately enjoyable (I had one called “Paul Robeson”). I think soil and weather influence tomato taste as much as their genetic component.
By the way, I like good fresh tomatoes, salsa, tomato sauce etc., but wouldn’t go near tomato juice. Brauuugh!
Wow, I’m almost the opposite. I love fresh tomatoes, but tomato sauce, juice, soup, etc. are kind of meh to me. Maybe, as Polycarp touched on, it’s because I grew up where the tomatoes are dang good eats (Arkansas), which might be a soil/climate thing.
