I think for me, it’s because they’re fairly intensely flavored and for whatever reason tend to overwhelm whatever else I’m eating them with. And I don’t really much like the raw ones to begin with.
So a hamburger with a big slice of tomato just ends up tasting like a tomato burger. (same thing if the onions are too large).
I love things like salsa, pasta sauce, etc… and even sun-dried tomatoes. But not fresh ones.
Oddly enough, I’m fairly proficient at growing them in our garden. I just don’t like them fresh, that’s all. My wife sure does though.
Crazy for 'em all, but mostly the ones from my garden. I grow only heirlooms from true seed. I can at least 50 quarts for just me, because I’ll use them in sauces and chili. I never, ever freeze or refrigerate them.
There are few things more ambrosial than a Caprese salad made from fresh tomatoes and basil warm from the garden, a local artisan Buffalo mozzarella, homemade French bread and a drizzle of excellent olive oil.
I love tomatoes, but mostly fresh, really ripe ones I grow in my own garden. Of the supermarket tomatoes, only the small ones (cherry, grape, Campari etc) are acceptable. Even at the farmer’s market, I have been scammed with lousy tasting tomatoes!
One thing that almost always improves a good fresh tomato is peeling it. I peel mine by impaling the tomato on a fork and briefly dipping it in boiling water ( 5 seconds or less) then stripping the peel.
Canned tomatoes are generally of acceptable quality, at least the major brands I have tried.
I must be in the minority… I will gladly eat one fresh off of the vine in 85 degree temperatures, but I’m also fine with one from the fridge. Frozen… probably not.
i actually like the skin from several varieties, but if you want to peel them cut a small X in the bottom before you dip them in the boiling water. You will peel them in no time flat.
Oh man, y’all, I do freeze grape and cherry tomatoes. keep em frozen in my insulated lunch box and on a hot summer afternoon working my ass off, take a little break, have a delicious frozen tomato, yummy and refreshing at the same time.
As tight as my food budget is, Campari tomatoes must be purchased every week because they’re they only kind I can find that taste nearly as good as homegrown. I grew up growing tomatoes (usually those big juicy beefsteak varieties) every year but there’s something about where I live now that kills the fruit on the vine.
My favorite combination on sandwiches is a slice of tomato with a few leaves of basil. For a snack or a side, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers together with a sprinkling of black pepper and maybe a dash of salt. Tomato soup, pizza sauce, pasta sauce…tomatoes everywhere. Works for me.
Love tomatoes - my wife plants a huge garden every year and we use/eat them all summer.
We’ll make sauce and freeze it so that we have fresh sauce in the winter.
Use on sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, fresh salsas and with fresh cucumbers too.
My favorite is to pick one fresh, slice it open into 4-5 thick “disc” shaped pieces, then coat with a little salt, Mrs Dash Garlic & Herb, and then a light dust of chili powder.
I don’t know what supermarket(s) you patronize, but my local ones carry (in addition to good-tasting cherry and grape tomatoes) a number of small to large-fruited ones including “heirloom” types and imports (including so-called black tomatoes) that are considerably better than the classic picked-green-and-gassed tough-skinned tomatoes whose main virtue is that they can be transported long distances without bruising.
In olden times when I was growing up, a big thing in summer was the availability of Jersey tomatoes (large beefsteak types) that were a major cut above out-of-season tomatoes.
Me, too. I’d like to enjoy fresh tomatoes, but I can’t.
My hypothesis is there’s a gene some people have for a taste receptor that interacts with a specific compound in fresh tomatoes that cooking or other processing mitigates. Not unlike cilantro effect some people have.
In 9th grade, our Natural Sciences class included studying species classification, the origins of different species and stuff like that. It being 9th grade, there was always a general background of noise: those desks which didn’t quite sit right, books opening, books closing, pencils being moved around…
The teacher was telling us plants which came from America and listed the tomato. And suddenly her voice was the only sound in the room, she was so surprised that she stopped. One of my classmates asked “but, but, but… how did people here cook, before?”
We couldn’t conceive not liking tomato any more than we could conceive cooking without it. I mean, yeah, you can do it, but try doing it for a whole week. No tomato sauce, no tomato in your salad? Yeah right. In Spain it’s treated as a sort of miracle ingredient, there are some things a dash of tomato or its sauce can’t solve but they’re rare.
My coworker has discovered pamtomaca con jamón, aka pà amb tomàquet amb pernil, aka a slice of serrano over a piece of bread on which over-ripe tomato has been squished. He was telling us about it and we were joking that it was a good thing we were indoors, because he was about to go into ecstatic levitation.
Even though I hated tomatoes as a kid and wouldn’t even eat marinara sauce, I eventually saw the error of my ways and now I love the little (or big) globes of goodness. Fresh off the vine is best, rinsed off with the hose and eaten like an apple. Oh yum!
I’m pretty neutral on the taste. But they do make sandwiches look pretty, so I generally will ask for them when the person at the counter asks what toppings I would like. And I really wasn’t much of a fan when I was younger, so I feel a certain pride when I eat a tomato because it reminds me of all the effort I’ve put into expanding my palate over the years.
Homegrown tomatoes homegrown tomatoes
What’d life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can’t buy
That’s true love & homegrown tomatoes
One of my grocery stores here in Austin has a tomato section roughly four by ten feet. Heaven.
