We put together a little collection of recipes that use tomatoes in a variety of ways if you want to get some ideas on what to make this season: www.cookwell.com/discover/collection/tomato-season Tomato season is almost coming to an end in Texas, I may need to travel to the east coast during August & September to prolong the season and get my fix 👀
You can cover your tomato plants with white shade cloth and give it phosphorous fertilizer. The reason they stop producing is because stress from the heat and the white shade cloth will help medigate that and the phosphorous fertilizer will help encourage production. You won't get a lot of tomoatoes but they will trickle in until October and in Texas, where I am also from, you get a second season because of our mild falls. Beginning in October you will have an explosion of fruit but most will not be ready when the first frost hits and you will be forced to pick a premature crop in the beginning of December or late November. These will be picked green and will have to ripen off the vine.
I don't have a green thumb by any means, but one year when I was growing tomatoes in flower pots on my porch (which I had grown from seedlings), I made a cool discovery that changed how I grew everything else thereafter. This was before composting was popularized. But I started burying my food scraps in one of my tomato pots (organic plant matter only), and left the other pots without. I didn't do anything fancy apart from chop the veg scraps up and bury them in the tomato growing soil. The one with scraps grew 3x the size and produced the most, and the best fruit. The other pots without the scraps were pretty shrimpy by comparison. From then on, that soil was my rich soil that I'd distribute to other plants, as well as add more plant material. Just make sure you bury it deep enough or it will smell and attract raccoons and flies.
have you ever tasted a spicy Melon 🍈 , well we sell them back home and we get spicy Melons by planting a spicy pepper beside each melon. try to use a pepper that isnt too spicy. the trick is finding the best pepper for the type of melon you want to grow. its delicious in the summer! i hope this comment get to you. i am a subscriber and long time fan. oh and im not a bot lol
I work at farmers markets in Germany and I love that you show flawed tomatoes in your video. It is so important for people to understand that flawed fruit and vegetables are perfectly fine.
We have those american style Farmers markets in Germany? Born and raised here, I only know the Turkish markets, which basically aell the same stuff as supermarkets
He shows flawed tomatoes, and shows cutting/slicing them in general, but doesn't actually show dealing with the flaws in any way. On the one hand he never shows actually eating any of the flawed bits, so not showing these are safe to eat. But on the other hand he also never shows cleaning/removing around the flaws, so not showing how exact or limiting or wasteful handling the flaws is. I'd have appreciated seeing something on that. Otherwise it really doesn't help "for people to understand that flaws fruit and vegetables are perfectly fine". That's a great expensive tomato, you just need to throw away about a half to third of it before using (so much more expensive than you think and also requires more work than if it wasn't flawed), may still be OK, but isn't "perfectly fine".
@MIKAEL212345 were they 'heirloom' type or the standard around my part of the country.. Celebrity variety, or big boys, or some such? Another thought...did you pick them ripened on the vine or pick at first blush(to avoid critters getting them) and .aybe not wait quite long enough for them to ripen. I find the bigger best difference when testing heirlooms ...only store-bought I can handle are cherry type tomatoes as they retain more flavor than slicing varieties do.
@@marthasundquist5761 I don't remember exactly since it was last year, but I remember picking them multiple times over the summer. The first ones were definitely worse than the latter ones. My mother liked them so she is growing them again this year so I will have another chance to try them. I think this time I will do one of those blind tests that I see Ethan do with the "pick 2 of each, mix them up, pull one out then try to guess which is which" method. Thank you for the help
For whoever need it: If you find a really nice tomato variety and want to save seed, don't just scrape the seeds on a paper towel. They will stick to the towel and the goo around the seeds inhibits germination later on, so you would need to sow more seed to guarantee success. Instead, scrape out the seeds with the goo, add a bit of water and put that in a jar covered with a bound cloth. Let that sit in a warm place and start to ferment for ~5-7 days and shake up every few days. If you pass that trough a strainer you'll get perfectly goo-less seeds that you can then dry without them sticking
Darn! I already did some on a paper towel, but I smushed/smeared them until the goo came off, so they look relatively clean. Do you think they might still be somewhat usable even though they didn't ferment like you described? Or should I try again? Theyre just for personal use so it's not a huge deal if they don't have the best germination rate, but if they won't germinate at all I'd better save a new batch of seeds! I'm growing 22 varieties this year and I definitely want to save se3d to grow some of the same ones next year!:)
Some people dislike tomatoes because they've never tasted a perfectly ripe one off the vine. It's like the humble banana. I didn't truly taste a banana until I picked one off a tree in Sri Lanka. Orange skinned and small, it was a revelation.
@Imbatmn57 I believe you are talking about the Gros Michel variety, which is not extinct. It is still grown all over the world but in small batches as large plantations are susceptible to the Panama disease. You could still have it if you travel.
The Sri Lankan bananas you're referring to are likely the kolikuttu type, or possibly the mysore, which are a different variety from the ones predominant in the US (the Cavendish). I prefer the US version because it has a cleaner taste, but the Sri Lankan variety is sweeter.
Quick note about vine ripening: you don't have to fully ripen tomatoes on the vine to get maximum flavour. When they're about halfway ripe, they've got all they need from the plant to completely develop their flavour. You can pick them then and let them fully ripen on your kitchen counter.
That's really good to know. When my homegrown tomatoes ripen on the vine, its a constant race between me and the mockingbirds to see who gets them first. Usually its the nefarious mockingbird!
@@MissGimpsAlotit's because they ripen from the bottom up, so if the bottom of the tomato is sitting on your counter, it can bruise by the time the tomato is fully ripe
Love hearing this. Respect to you for sharing that you’re still learning! Too many cooks “already know it all” ;) I’m excited for the remainder of this video. In the summertime a GREAT strawberry, or tomato can make my whole day.
@donscott6431: As a restaurant cook, talk to the farmers, there's a lot that was not included in this video. Sorry Ethan, but you missed the #1 answer to your question. I give talks on this. The main difference is a better focus on the explanation of the distinction between heirlooms vs F1 hybrids. Conventional tomatoes were hybridized for production: uniform size, shape, color, disease and pest resistance, yield, and to ripen at the same time for easier harvest. With every “feature” mentioned, what do you lose? *FLAVOR.* This is the *number one reason* for lack of flavor. *Heirlooms will always win out over hybrids for flavor.* This is the number one answer to the title of this video. Even over “how” they are grown or where they are grown (farm vs home). Heirloom cultivars, particularly when home grown are the tomato of choice for true tomato connoisseurs. What you ate was an F1 hybridized tomato that likely also received too much water before harvest. Both contributing factors to lack of flavor. And if they used synthetic inputs for fertilizer, and failing to stop irrigation before harvest also take away from flavor. You said you tried them multiple times throughout the summer. Plants (like humans and all animals) have a peak of optimum health in an average life. A young tomato plant or young fruit true does not come into maturity even though it can get pregnant. The plant and human have to be mature enough to reproduce healthy offspring. The phenomena is consistent for most fruit bearing vegetables, annuals and fruit trees. A fruit tree may not come into full maturity until it's 7-13 years old for the best tasting fruit. And even then, each season the early fruit will never taste as good as a couple of weeks or so later. My advice to you: grow "Cherokee Purple" and grow darker colored heirloom cultivars. You can harvest all tomatoes no matter what color they are- blindfolded. Give them a gentle squeeze and if they give like a ripe avocado or peach, and release *easily* from the vine when you tilt it up, then it's ready to eat.
Another reason why people were scared of tomatoes during and before the early 1800's was because not only did they _think_ they were poisonous, they also appeared to be poisonous as well. Tomatoes are quite acidic, and when eaten on pewter plates like many wealthy people did during and before the 1800's, it leached lead (and possibly antimony) from the pewter plates, causing many cases of lead poisoning. This lead people to believe that the tomatoes themselves were poisonous, rather than the plates they ate off of.
I thought it was because of the use of copper pans, which the tomato acid would form copper salts, which causes copper poisoning. If it was lead from the plates, that should have been a lot slower and harder to pinpoint, where as the side effects of copper salts would be noticeable after ingestion. It's still a risk today if you use copper pots/pans and they're damaged.
@@Jack-vk5ko I did some googling to double-check, and it confirms that when tomatoes were eaten off of pewter plates, the acidity of the tomatoes caused significant amounts of lead to leach from the plates, leading to lead poisoning, which contributed to the belief that tomatoes were poisonous. When it comes to copper cookware, copper toxicity usually occurs from chronic exposure to small amounts of copper rather than acute poisoning, which is rare and would require ingesting several grams of copper salts at once. Chronic copper poisoning occurs over time, often from using unlined copper cookware, but it typically takes several months to years to become apparent. So, while both lead from pewter plates and copper from cookware can cause poisoning, when it comes to the early 1800's, the main problem back then was the lead from pewter plates, since they were so widely used by wealthy people, who were also the types of people to be able to afford to import these fancy new berry things from the New World being grown in Southern Europe.
@@Jack-vk5ko Moreover, copper oxidize to becoming blue-green, and you'd basically bring the original colour back, so it's something easily noticeable on the spot you'll remember after feeling sick and link those events (even if you got food poisoning from something else).
So you're telling me nobody ate dishes seasoned with citrus juices or vinegar? Or are you saying anyone that did became sick from heavy metal poisoning and people didn't notice the reason why?
@@OptionallySavage it wasn't as likely to be the main part of a dish, or at least enough to affect the total pH this much, being seasonings they were kinda everywhere so no way to track it back to them and yes, lead exposure due to their dishes and chalices (because it was a luxury alloy, not as much as silverware but still not for "commoners"), as wine is also acidic, was a serious social issue, even though something chronic and widespread is easily brushed off as "normal" (like cancer could be nowadays, we know risk factors, but many are things everyone do so most of us wouldn't be surprised to end up in the wrong side of the statistic)
To be clear "Tomatl" in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, referred to Tomatillos! What we call "Tomatoes" today would have been "Xitomatl": See David Bowles's Medium post for more on the etymology. Also, while in this case culinary history is a tiny part of the video in general, I do wish that with New World crops, people spoke more about their Pre-Columbian use, not just them originating in the Americas and then solely talking about their use in Eurasia: Ancient Americas for example has a 40 min video on Chocolate's culinary, economic, and ritual use by Mesoamerican civilizations like the Aztec and Maya (I helped write that video!). In general, there's a lot more info out there then you might expect on botany and horticulture by Mesoamerican civilizations, the Aztec especially, because the Columbian exchange was NOT just Spain etc exporting New World crops, but also seeking their botanical and medical knowledge, the Aztec especially having really developed sciences for those areas, with botanical gardens acting as sites of study and for experimentation and to stock medical herbs, hydroponics, etc. The rest of this comment will be a bigger explanation of that, if anybody is curious! ------- Mesoamerican city planning in general had a big emphasis on incorporating open and naturalistic or green spaces into urban areas, with city centers organizing temples, palaces, etc around plazas, and palaces in turn having open-air courtyards rooms were arranged around, with gardens often being built into communal spaces or inside or around palaces. Around the main urban core of cities, you then radial suburbs of commoner residences extending out, interspersed with agricultural land or managed natural reserves and agroforestry. But the Aztec sort of took this to another level. Most of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital (which was located in the middle of a lake, now drained) was built out of artificial islands known as chinampas, which involved staking out the shallow lakebed, filling it with layers of soil and vegetative matter, and then anchoring it to the lakebed via planting Willow trees; with canals left between the plots. This used both to make extra urban/residential land and as hydroponic farms, all while his used local soils, preserving the existing ecology with fish and amphibians, the trees acting as wind breakers and the canals/plots as flood management. So a huge amount of the city was criss-crossed with Venice like canals that ran through suburbs with tons of greenery and flowers, and then you also had massive, richly painted palace and temple complexes, giant markets, aqueducts, royal zoos, aquariums, aviaries, etc. It was REALLY common for Aztec rulers to have giant botanical gardens built into palaces or royal retreats: At Huaxtepec, Moctezuma II had a royal botanical garden that covered 10 square kilometers with over 2000 kinds of plants, some of which were intentionally brought in from different climates to see if they would grow there. At Texcotzinco, a site of a royal palace retreat, baths, and gardens for Nezahualcoyotl, the most famous king of the second most powerful Aztec city, Texcoco; the bathes and gardens were fed water via a 5 mile long series of aqauaducts, which at some points rose 150 feet off the ground and had a series of pools and channels to regulate the flow rate. This aqueduct then formed a circuit around the hilltop the palace and baths were at, where the water flowed into fountains and shrines with painted frescos and sculptures, and then finally formed artificial waterfalls that watered the terraced gardens at the hills base, which had different sections to emulate different Mexican biomes and ecosystems. As the playing around with ecology and growing conditions implies, a lot of these royal gardens weren't just recreational elite pleasures, but were actually a precursor to modern academic botanical gardens (indeed, it's been suggested the first European examples of that, which show up in Europe within the next century or so, were inspired by Aztec examples, since there's some other academic borrowing of botanical science, which I'll get back to): You had them stocking plants used for medical purposes, experimenting with growing conditions and properties, sorting them into taxonomic systems (not phylogentically, because no theory of natural selection, but still a formal taxonomic system, even with a binominal naming scheme!) etc! I don't know if we have sources discussing the management of them, but we know that Moctezuma's zoo and aviary had full time staff to care for animals and (take this with a grain of salt as I can't relocate the source, I may be thinking of Jaguar remains at the Templo Mayor or at Teotihuacan) there's even been Jaguar remains found that had healed surgical wounds, so there surely would have been career botanists caring for and overseeing things. Sadly, of course, almost all Prehispanic Mesoamerican books and documents were burned by the Spanish, but we do have some surviving botanical documentation, mostly from sources with joint Aztec-Spanish authorship made during the early colonial period, such as the Badianus Manuscript and books 10 and 11 in the Florentine Codex. Both of these sources also describe a ton of pharmaceutical and medical applications for plants and herbs, with the Aztec also having really developed medical and sanitation practices for the time (there was an entire fleet of civil servants that washed buildings and streets and collected waste from public toilets to reuse for fertilizers and dyes, to name one example), with tons of toothpastes, mouthwashes, soaps, colognes, perfumes, laxatives, and ointments made from plants; recorded surgeries for skin grafts, eye surgeries, the first recorded use of intramedullary nails to set broken bones, better understanding of the circulatory system then Europe at the time (perhaps not surprising given sacrifices...), etc. Francico Hernandez, the personal naturalist and physician to Philip II, actually traveled to Mexico and documented Aztec medicine, botany, and zoology (sadly only some of his records on this survive) and begrudgingly admitted Aztec sciences here were better then Spain's, something Cortes and Motolinía also claimed. And then there's all the ways flowers and plants played into art and poetry and such. People love to talk about sacrifice and skulls and such with the Aztec, but ANY sort of context you could possible imagine they'd find a way to slap flowers or birds/feathers or jade into things artistically, and those 3 things were seen as the prime symbols of luxury and elegance, in the same way we talk about Gold or Diamonds. Newborn children were talked about by their parents in nursery songs as bundles of jade or flowers or precious feathers, The word for "poetry" in Nahuatl/the Aztec language literally meant "flowery song", soldiers who died in combat were reborn as hummingbirds or butterflies to suckle on nectar in a floral solar afterlife; while another afterlife, Tlalocan, was a tropical mountain paradise with lakes, streams, and springs, which many royal botanical gardens were an emulation of. For people who wanna read more on this, I recommend "An Aztec Herbal: The Classic Codex of 1552" (an annotated translation of the Badianus manuscript) and "Flora of the Codex Cruz-Badianus" (there's also some high res color scans of the original Badianus manuscript online on the INAH's mediateca site); Book 10/11 of the Florentine Codex, "Public Health in Aztec Society", "Aztec Medicine by Francisco Guerra" (though it repeats outdated, disproven info re: inflated sacrifice totals), "Empirical Aztec Medicine by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano", and "Precious Beauty: The Aesthetic and Economic Value of Aztec Gardens" (and a lot of papers/books by Susan Toby Evans, who is an expert on mesoamerican gardens and palaces), and Kelly McDonough and Enrique Rodriguez-Alegria's research on testing Aztec medical treatments. A lot of this stuff is published online for free as open access research, too. I also have extended writeups about this I've made myself (I do essays and help history/archeology channels with stuff on Mesoamerica), if people want that messag me on twitte, I'm Majora__Z
Thank you for sharing all this information!! Learned a lot from it. It’s such a shame so much of Mesoamerican history and knowledge has been lost due to colonialism, and on top of that, what we do know is not widely shared so we can learn from it. As someone from Chile and has lived and traveled around the globe, it aggravates me how much of what is taught is primarily or almost exclusively through a European/Western lens. People across the world have so much to offer, we as humans should learn to embrace our collective past and learnings!!
That is a business thing. Most grocery stores world wide source from producers that have tomatoes that are grown for shelf life and consistency. Personally I grow various tomatoes to see which grows and taste better in my area and which are less a drag on fertilization and soil types. More stores that source locally are able to have more varieties that are friendly with local ecology. Some varieties grow better in different soil types. The US is so big with many different climate and agricultural zones so different varieties.
@@jujube2407 Sort of depends on the store but yeah. Big store chains tend to source cheapest and from large producers. Local grocery stores and farmers markets try to source closer and from local "within the area" producers. On producers or farms it is up to how their tomato market supports the farm. With my small garden having tomatoes that rot fast is not fun because I cant eat them fast enough and my neighbors get tired of me leaving veggies on their doorsteps, haha. Ethan basically described why grocery store tomatoes lack a flavor contrast. It is because they have to be stored.
@rnkelly36 nost grocery stores thst carry local farmers mean within 150 miles... those are still picked green... and most of them( not allllll) are hybrids... some hybrids are good... but most of them are not nearly as good as heirlooms taste wise... he's got tiki tomatos that are a trade marked commercially grown tomato... either his farmer lied to him and they aren't tiki... or they are tiki and he's a conventional grocery farmer and these are his "waste" that is still good enough to sell...but by far is not going to beat home grown heirlooms in quality and taste... that lemon boy ahould.not have the word acid anywhere near its description in flavor either... I question the ethics of the farmers at his market...
The purple tomato he likes so much is called Cherokee Purple in NJ. I have 4 of those, but I'm still waiting for them to ripen. Unfortunately, if I fully ripen on the vine, the mockingbirds come and ruin the fruit. I lost a lot 2 years ago.
@@bbrainstormer2036 I live in Brazil, they got plenty of heat. Unless they were not getting enough sun since the pitanga tree I have in my backyard steals most of the sunlight
@danilooliveira6580 oh yeah, they definitely need sun. Especially to ripen. But also too much heat (I think between 85-90 degrees F) can stunt growth. We get temps over 100 here so I plant mine early when it's in the 70s so they are strong by the time the hot heat kicks in. They still grow but it's slower than in the spring.
1:48 minor correction. Gooseberries are NOT related to nightshades. Physalis Peruviana common called the misnomer “Cape Gooseberry” is a relative of ground cherries which is a tomatillo like plant in the nightshade family. True Gooseberries are in the currant family and do not have a papery husk as is common with nightshade fruits.
Always appreciate fellow plant people who understand the value of Scientific names for plants. And in this case, plants that yield fruit. @ludwigiapilosa508 is correct, it is _Physalis peruviana_ - not Physalis Peruviana.
This is the collab I did not expect and I LOVE it! I learned a lot from Kevin @ Epic Gardening and am growing my own tomatoes for the purpose of farm-to-table gardening/cooking. Great episode, Ethan!
These ingredient deep dives are so far the only thing on TH-cam that has gotten me interested in actually cooking. It would be interesting to see you make a series about how to build your own rubs, seasonings, and sauces.
I've seen so many of these videos now. But I'm still in complete awe at how much food he can shove into his mouth in a single bite. He should go competitive eater. Dude can literally shove an entire sandwich into his mouth in one bite. Incredible.
My boyfriend and I have been binge watching them lately! I'm an absolute tomato maniac and I literally texted him "Ethan posted a tomato video!" We followed his sweet potato fries experiments last night and they turned out great!
I really love these deep dive food videos. Thanks for continuing to make them with such high quality in both information and testing! Could you maybe edit the volume of the eating noises to be quieter for those of us who are bothered by them?
For those who like growing their own tomatoes, Joseph Lofthouse, who advocates for landrace gardening, has reintroduced wild tomato genetics from South America and allowed them to freely (he calls it "promiscuously") pollinate with many different heirloom varieties. You can get some of his seeds if you want to experiment and see what comes up. You might be able to develop new, robust varieties that are highly adapted to your area.
My favorite low desert variety is Ciudad Victoria, from Chiapas. They are a relentless, thin skinned hundreds style. While only semi wild, the flavor is extraordinary and they readily reseed. One packet from Native Seeds/SEARCH out of Tucson came back every year for 12 years.
In Catalonia (Barcelona), we have our very special type of tomatoes that are use to spread over bread just like you would do with butter. It's a national dish called Pa amb Tomàquet (literally bread with tomato) and I encourage you to try it. This tomato has almost no skin at all, and all of it is juice so ideally you don't throw any of it. They are slightly larger than cherry tomatoes and then the bread is seasoned with olive oil and salt, and usually you would spread half a garlic clove before as well!
I really appreciate that this guy does the experiments himself, and learns lessons while also not leaping to conclusions. It's a really good approach to life in general, not just cooking.
Tomatoes are the only vegetable i find worth growing at home. It's such a huge difference vs grocery. Great video. Regarding refrigeration, my experience is it affects texture more than flavor (if you let them come back to room temp) and is dependent on how cold your fridge is. A very cold fridge seems to do more damage and lead to a worse quality.
GARLIC has to be right up there in the worth growing at home discussion. Its so easy to grow, stores very well, and unbeatable taste, plus you get to enjoy garlic scapes, early leaves, and, green garlic - in addition to the bulbs. Plus the value, good garlic is quite expensive in my area yet grows ultra easy.
That was an amazing plug for your second channel, I had no idea you had a second channel, and now I need to go check it out. Thank you, and fantastic work on this video.
I take culinary in high school, and your videos are so amazing that my teacher would use some of your videos to demonstrate things like your omelet video
lol the special I've been waiting my whole life for! fr fresh tomato on grainy toast with mayo and pepper is one of my favourite snacks! I recently brought home some campari that reminded me what tomatoes used to smell like! they were amazing!
Good video, Ethan. Tomatoes are so versatile and can carry the meal or be the background flavor equally well. Here are a couple things you could/should try: 1) when buying grocery store tomatoes for that BLT, sear the tomato slices for a few seconds before putting them on the sandwich ... it will enhance their flavor quite a bit 2) put slices of tomatoes in between the slices of cheese when you make grilled cheese. You can do this with them cold. at room temperature or seared. Maybe you could do a video showing how to make tomato paste from fresh tomatoes.
one important thing to take notice if you are going to grow your own tomatoes is that they tend to absorb a lot of water really fast,they can swell in the course of one night and in doing so they don't absorb the plant nutrients as well and sometimes they can burst due to the excesive humidity so when the tomatoes absorb too much water they get picked up faster and they dont mature so well. keep the humidity levels in your tomato plant stable so it can grow properly and get a better taste. note: sweet peppers work that way too
To be fair, it is a part of their recent history and totally changed their cuisine, shaping what they have today, sure, tomatoes did not originate there but it's still very culturally significant to them. Just like hot peppers were not original from India, but still present in almost each one of their meals
@@TheRealJBMcMunnyeah the old world loves to gloat about their cuisines but they literally owe it all to plants native americans domesticated, and we get no credit
We here in the Caribbean do not have such large tomatoes..but we do have very sweet and juicy ones available straight from farmers at the markets. Lucky us❤❤❤
I love your style of informative and fact based videos. You dont claim to know without backing the knowledge. Thats important and impressive. Good job and thank you
Man. I can't believe I spent half an hour watching Valtteri Bottas talking about tomatoes. Joking aside, thank you for an informative video. I really learned a lot today. I appreciate this so much
I like how you added Umami to sweet and sour as that’s the best way to describe the taste, most people just stick to sweet,sour/tart.. I agree you can’t beat a homegrown tomato and as an Italian I love making my Tomato Sauce for pasta from the garden as homegrown taste better in any use..
12:25 this flavor/temperature relationship applies to a lot of things. A classic common example is beer, in the USA beer is on average, brewed with less flavor, and meant to be drank cold. Whereas many countries brew more flavorful beer and serve it warmer to experience those flavors at peak. Typed as I sip my Columbia La Violeta Natural Processed coffee, at room temp of course. To experience and appreciate the sangria like fruitiness it provides. When hot, it tastes like coffee, with a hint of fruit. At room temp, punchy fruit juice.
Eh... Commercialised American beer. We got plenty of craft beer the country over which is pretty flavourful. But we do typically like our drinks cold. I do appreciate a beer more if it's decent at any temperature.
really nice comprehensive break-down, thanks. as a forager i would like to point out though that the fruit of _Atropa belladonna_ (deadly nightshade) do not taste bitter as you say but are in fact rather pleasantly sweet, which is what can make them particulary dangerous.
My aunt have grown the green striped tomato for 20 years(at least) in her orangery, saved the seeds every year. it is probably the only time where I am quite happy eating a tomato just by itself, perhaps with a bit on salt on.
It’s not just a Southern thing. I live in Rhode Island and it’s a classic here. I’ve been eating tomato sandwiches since I was kid in the ‘70’s in Swansea,Ma.
Fun fact: People used to think tomatoes were poisonous because plates were made out of pewter, which contained lead. The acidity of the tomato leeched the lead from the plate and caused people to get sick.
As someone who has eaten grocery store, farmers market, and straight from my mom’s garden, still not a tomato fan but I really appreciated learning about them.
Ethan, go to Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, or Uzbekistan and try their tomatoes. You would be surprised that you have never really tasted good tomatoes in the US and other Western countries. They simply do not exist there.
No, okra is not a nightshade: Botanical classification: Okra is a member of the mallow family (Malvaceae), while nightshades belong to the Solanaceae family. Other vegetables that aren't nightshades: Zucchini, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, onions, and coffee are also not nightshades. Nightshade vegetables: Tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, peppers, and tobacco are all nightshades.
Nothing better than home grown and freshly picked - easy to grow in grow bags or pots, even if you have little space. I love all varieties - as long as they are from my own hand and soil. No chems! Oh god, the smell of them when you pick is just amazing.
I really enjoy your video's and was really craving a BLT, the tomatoes are my favorite part. I have gained a better understanding of food from your channel and you have helped me be a better consumer and cook. Thank You...
Haven’t watched the video yet, but before I get convinced otherwise store bought tomatoes tend to taste like a basketball filled with watermelon juice texture water
BLT: what I like is to then salt the tomato on the side that goes against the top bread that has a thick layer of mayo. It gets messy but oh so good! I do love the yellow and the green stripe for caprese. They're quite different but both delicious.
0:07 it's a fruit. And yeah botanical vs. culinary, blah blah blah, it's still a fruit and it's not the only fruit used in this manner. That distinction is silly.
Botanically speaking all fruits are vegetables. Literally all edible parts of a plant are technically vegetables. Also he goes over this like a minute more in the video. If you're going to nitpick try to be right.
Don't get TH-cam premium, just get a different browser. Brave has built in add blocking and you can play with the screen off, you just gotta look up the settings
If you love tomatoes try this very easy simple recipe. A slice of rye bread with butter, slices of tomatoes with salt and pepper to taste AND mayonnaise. But use a european style mayo that is more savory and not vinegary or sweet.
Great video love all things tomato. Just combined an old can maybe 4 years old(does not seem to expire) of Summer is Inside(is in a red can with tomatoes stamped into metal) Salad Ready Tomatoes with olive oil with some microwave Uncle Ben's Jasmine rice pouch was awesome.
this channel has got me to think so much differently about food, when i leave for the Army in a month and some change its gonna make things interesting for various reasons
I work for a large produce supplier, the cheaper 80% of most tomato varieties are absolutely trash. The bigger, more perfect looking tomatoes sell the best, but are almost always the worst choice.
Great learnings, as always, Ethan. Thank you! 🙏 For those looking for concentrated flavor that's unmistakable, try seeking out dry-farmed "early girl" tomatoes. Kinda pricey early in the season, but mid-to-late season, prices usually come down as the bulk of the harvests come in.
Finally someone is talking about this! Now i need the same for carrots. I finally found supermarket ones which are good but carrots still taste of nothing here in the UK.
Love the explanations here. I had just chosen to roast up some storebought cherry tomatoes for a pizza sauce and it was the best I ever had. It made me wonder what's going on with storebought tomatoes and how they compare with even very high quality canned tomatoes typically used in a sauce.
I remember watching a video someplace where they did a taste test comparison of fridge vs counter tomatoes and tested at different time lengths. They found that non fridge was clearly superior, but it fell off quickly and the counter ones over ripened while the fridge ones stayed consistent. So really the biggest deciding factor should be how long are you going to wait before you eat them. If its going to be more than like a day, I'd put them in the fridge.
Thanks Ethan, this was fascinating. I grow tomatoes because I cook a lot of Indian curry, but I have never really thought about the variety before, this has been very informative.
Absolutely LOVE this video! I'm a tomato lover and growing up on a farm had access to fresh tomatoes all summer long and we canned our leftovers for the rest of the year.. My personal favorite tomato is the "celebrity" ones... There's absolutely nothing better than a tomato sandwich at peak ripeness in the summer
what is so great about your latest videos, even just looking at the topics, onions, tomatoeas etc., you just get curious and think about it for a second like, there are differences but i never really thought about it. maybe i should look more into this and its so informative. so just a big thank you
Word. I know that if Ethan is doing a dissertation on tomatoes, it's about to be the final word. I could easily watch an hour on this, my favorite food topic.
Another massive difference between hot house & "farmer's market" tomatoes is the soil they're grown in. In the Midwest & Atlantic regions, the dark loamy soil provides a sweeter flavor than the more clay-like soil in the south which is more alkaline.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 87 วันนี้!! คู่เอก "ก้องชัย vs โชคปรีชา"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YN6e7HVnekw/mqdefault.jpg)
We put together a little collection of recipes that use tomatoes in a variety of ways if you want to get some ideas on what to make this season: www.cookwell.com/discover/collection/tomato-season
Tomato season is almost coming to an end in Texas, I may need to travel to the east coast during August & September to prolong the season and get my fix 👀
You can cover your tomato plants with white shade cloth and give it phosphorous fertilizer. The reason they stop producing is because stress from the heat and the white shade cloth will help medigate that and the phosphorous fertilizer will help encourage production. You won't get a lot of tomoatoes but they will trickle in until October and in Texas, where I am also from, you get a second season because of our mild falls. Beginning in October you will have an explosion of fruit but most will not be ready when the first frost hits and you will be forced to pick a premature crop in the beginning of December or late November. These will be picked green and will have to ripen off the vine.
I don't have a green thumb by any means, but one year when I was growing tomatoes in flower pots on my porch (which I had grown from seedlings), I made a cool discovery that changed how I grew everything else thereafter. This was before composting was popularized.
But I started burying my food scraps in one of my tomato pots (organic plant matter only), and left the other pots without. I didn't do anything fancy apart from chop the veg scraps up and bury them in the tomato growing soil. The one with scraps grew 3x the size and produced the most, and the best fruit.
The other pots without the scraps were pretty shrimpy by comparison.
From then on, that soil was my rich soil that I'd distribute to other plants, as well as add more plant material.
Just make sure you bury it deep enough or it will smell and attract raccoons and flies.
\Are you ever going to do a video on the canning process to preserve things like tomatoes?
kevin says that vine ripened and home ripened tomatoes arent diffirent and better to pick at the breaker stage
I love that Chettie decided to video bomb your cameo lol
Grocery store tomatoes are certified NOT EPIC. Grow your own ;) - thanks for the feature, Ethan. Keep on growing, Kevin
Nice job Eric!
have you ever tasted a spicy Melon 🍈 , well we sell them back home and we get spicy Melons by planting a spicy pepper beside each melon. try to use a pepper that isnt too spicy. the trick is finding the best pepper for the type of melon you want to grow. its delicious in the summer! i hope this comment get to you. i am a subscriber and long time fan. oh and im not a bot lol
Was surprised to see you here!
Loving the collaboration
Generally agree, but with cherry tomatoes I can't tell
I work at farmers markets in Germany and I love that you show flawed tomatoes in your video. It is so important for people to understand that flawed fruit and vegetables are perfectly fine.
We have those american style Farmers markets in Germany? Born and raised here, I only know the Turkish markets, which basically aell the same stuff as supermarkets
@@Caffeine.And.Carvings yeah, look it up, it’s called Wochenmarkt. If you want to get fresh local produce and delicacies, it’s the place to go.
He shows flawed tomatoes, and shows cutting/slicing them in general, but doesn't actually show dealing with the flaws in any way. On the one hand he never shows actually eating any of the flawed bits, so not showing these are safe to eat. But on the other hand he also never shows cleaning/removing around the flaws, so not showing how exact or limiting or wasteful handling the flaws is.
I'd have appreciated seeing something on that. Otherwise it really doesn't help "for people to understand that flaws fruit and vegetables are perfectly fine". That's a great expensive tomato, you just need to throw away about a half to third of it before using (so much more expensive than you think and also requires more work than if it wasn't flawed), may still be OK, but isn't "perfectly fine".
@@yarondavidson6434 the American mind can’t fathom that you can eat blemished produce
The only good tomato is an ugly tomato.
Home grown tomatoes are such a treat. Incomparable to store bought.
I could eat homegrown tomatoes like an apple
I must be the odd one out, cause I was so excited when I tried home grown tomatoes, and they looked fine but they tasted the same as a regular tomato.
@MIKAEL212345 were they 'heirloom' type or the standard around my part of the country.. Celebrity variety, or big boys, or some such? Another thought...did you pick them ripened on the vine or pick at first blush(to avoid critters getting them) and .aybe not wait quite long enough for them to ripen. I find the bigger best difference when testing heirlooms ...only store-bought I can handle are cherry type tomatoes as they retain more flavor than slicing varieties do.
@@marthasundquist5761 I don't remember exactly since it was last year, but I remember picking them multiple times over the summer. The first ones were definitely worse than the latter ones. My mother liked them so she is growing them again this year so I will have another chance to try them. I think this time I will do one of those blind tests that I see Ethan do with the "pick 2 of each, mix them up, pull one out then try to guess which is which" method. Thank you for the help
Depends on the tomato you grew. I jave some that taste sweet some that are almost salty and a mix of a few others.@MIKAEL212345
For whoever need it:
If you find a really nice tomato variety and want to save seed, don't just scrape the seeds on a paper towel. They will stick to the towel and the goo around the seeds inhibits germination later on, so you would need to sow more seed to guarantee success.
Instead, scrape out the seeds with the goo, add a bit of water and put that in a jar covered with a bound cloth. Let that sit in a warm place and start to ferment for ~5-7 days and shake up every few days.
If you pass that trough a strainer you'll get perfectly goo-less seeds that you can then dry without them sticking
Darn! I already did some on a paper towel, but I smushed/smeared them until the goo came off, so they look relatively clean. Do you think they might still be somewhat usable even though they didn't ferment like you described? Or should I try again?
Theyre just for personal use so it's not a huge deal if they don't have the best germination rate, but if they won't germinate at all I'd better save a new batch of seeds! I'm growing 22 varieties this year and I definitely want to save se3d to grow some of the same ones next year!:)
@@andysplants It's totally fine to do this way, I do it with excellent results, just make sure the seeds are very dry before storing
I was told the process of fermenting them to remove the coating was pointless.
@@CosmicDorns pretty much. My italian family would dry them on a piece of wood, never had a problem
Many of the hybrids do not produce seeds that will breed true while the old varieties will.
Some people dislike tomatoes because they've never tasted a perfectly ripe one off the vine. It's like the humble banana. I didn't truly taste a banana until I picked one off a tree in Sri Lanka. Orange skinned and small, it was a revelation.
Any fruit straight from the tree. I am from the Caribbean so we are blessed
@@karminiparsan9256I'll never forget the fresh bananas I had right off the bunch in the Carribean. What a treat.
You are blessed!!!
@Imbatmn57 I believe you are talking about the Gros Michel variety, which is not extinct. It is still grown all over the world but in small batches as large plantations are susceptible to the Panama disease. You could still have it if you travel.
The Sri Lankan bananas you're referring to are likely the kolikuttu type, or possibly the mysore, which are a different variety from the ones predominant in the US (the Cavendish). I prefer the US version because it has a cleaner taste, but the Sri Lankan variety is sweeter.
Quick note about vine ripening: you don't have to fully ripen tomatoes on the vine to get maximum flavour. When they're about halfway ripe, they've got all they need from the plant to completely develop their flavour. You can pick them then and let them fully ripen on your kitchen counter.
It's said to let the rest upside down. Id like to know if that actually helps 🤔
That's really good to know. When my homegrown tomatoes ripen on the vine, its a constant race between me and the mockingbirds to see who gets them first. Usually its the nefarious mockingbird!
I would add not to let them ripen on things like sheet trays - tomatoes cause some sheet trays to rust because of the water and the acid
@@MissGimpsAlot I think that is to minimize bruising. Less contact, and more air flow.
@@MissGimpsAlotit's because they ripen from the bottom up, so if the bottom of the tomato is sitting on your counter, it can bruise by the time the tomato is fully ripe
I love tomatoes and, as a life long restaurant cook, was excited to better understand the different varieties/flavors commonly available
It is super interesting comparing different varieties side by side!
Love hearing this. Respect to you for sharing that you’re still learning! Too many cooks “already know it all” ;) I’m excited for the remainder of this video. In the summertime a GREAT strawberry, or tomato can make my whole day.
@@EthanChlebowskiyou should do a video on dry vs fresh aromatics
@donscott6431: As a restaurant cook, talk to the farmers, there's a lot that was not included in this video. Sorry Ethan, but you missed the #1 answer to your question. I give talks on this. The main difference is a better focus on the explanation of the distinction between heirlooms vs F1 hybrids. Conventional tomatoes were hybridized for production: uniform size, shape, color, disease and pest resistance, yield, and to ripen at the same time for easier harvest. With every “feature” mentioned, what do you lose? *FLAVOR.* This is the *number one reason* for lack of flavor. *Heirlooms will always win out over hybrids for flavor.* This is the number one answer to the title of this video. Even over “how” they are grown or where they are grown (farm vs home). Heirloom cultivars, particularly when home grown are the tomato of choice for true tomato connoisseurs. What you ate was an F1 hybridized tomato that likely also received too much water before harvest. Both contributing factors to lack of flavor. And if they used synthetic inputs for fertilizer, and failing to stop irrigation before harvest also take away from flavor. You said you tried them multiple times throughout the summer. Plants (like humans and all animals) have a peak of optimum health in an average life. A young tomato plant or young fruit true does not come into maturity even though it can get pregnant. The plant and human have to be mature enough to reproduce healthy offspring. The phenomena is consistent for most fruit bearing vegetables, annuals and fruit trees. A fruit tree may not come into full maturity until it's 7-13 years old for the best tasting fruit. And even then, each season the early fruit will never taste as good as a couple of weeks or so later. My advice to you: grow "Cherokee Purple" and grow darker colored heirloom cultivars. You can harvest all tomatoes no matter what color they are- blindfolded. Give them a gentle squeeze and if they give like a ripe avocado or peach, and release *easily* from the vine when you tilt it up, then it's ready to eat.
@@violetviolet888all heirlooms were hybrids at some point
Another reason why people were scared of tomatoes during and before the early 1800's was because not only did they _think_ they were poisonous, they also appeared to be poisonous as well. Tomatoes are quite acidic, and when eaten on pewter plates like many wealthy people did during and before the 1800's, it leached lead (and possibly antimony) from the pewter plates, causing many cases of lead poisoning. This lead people to believe that the tomatoes themselves were poisonous, rather than the plates they ate off of.
I thought it was because of the use of copper pans, which the tomato acid would form copper salts, which causes copper poisoning. If it was lead from the plates, that should have been a lot slower and harder to pinpoint, where as the side effects of copper salts would be noticeable after ingestion. It's still a risk today if you use copper pots/pans and they're damaged.
@@Jack-vk5ko I did some googling to double-check, and it confirms that when tomatoes were eaten off of pewter plates, the acidity of the tomatoes caused significant amounts of lead to leach from the plates, leading to lead poisoning, which contributed to the belief that tomatoes were poisonous.
When it comes to copper cookware, copper toxicity usually occurs from chronic exposure to small amounts of copper rather than acute poisoning, which is rare and would require ingesting several grams of copper salts at once. Chronic copper poisoning occurs over time, often from using unlined copper cookware, but it typically takes several months to years to become apparent.
So, while both lead from pewter plates and copper from cookware can cause poisoning, when it comes to the early 1800's, the main problem back then was the lead from pewter plates, since they were so widely used by wealthy people, who were also the types of people to be able to afford to import these fancy new berry things from the New World being grown in Southern Europe.
@@Jack-vk5ko Moreover, copper oxidize to becoming blue-green, and you'd basically bring the original colour back, so it's something easily noticeable on the spot you'll remember after feeling sick and link those events (even if you got food poisoning from something else).
So you're telling me nobody ate dishes seasoned with citrus juices or vinegar? Or are you saying anyone that did became sick from heavy metal poisoning and people didn't notice the reason why?
@@OptionallySavage it wasn't as likely to be the main part of a dish, or at least enough to affect the total pH this much, being seasonings they were kinda everywhere so no way to track it back to them and yes, lead exposure due to their dishes and chalices (because it was a luxury alloy, not as much as silverware but still not for "commoners"), as wine is also acidic, was a serious social issue, even though something chronic and widespread is easily brushed off as "normal" (like cancer could be nowadays, we know risk factors, but many are things everyone do so most of us wouldn't be surprised to end up in the wrong side of the statistic)
No way Kevin was featured 😂 I've been subbed to him for years, totally was not expecting this colab!
You mean Eric, right? 🤣
@@PersiAndLeo ah yes, excuse me, Eric. The shamamalay gardener.
He finally figured out what do do with his tomato trees lol
@@Lexlugr *cough* you mean Eric *cough cough*
@@PersiAndLeo haha. Yes
To be clear "Tomatl" in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, referred to Tomatillos! What we call "Tomatoes" today would have been "Xitomatl": See David Bowles's Medium post for more on the etymology. Also, while in this case culinary history is a tiny part of the video in general, I do wish that with New World crops, people spoke more about their Pre-Columbian use, not just them originating in the Americas and then solely talking about their use in Eurasia: Ancient Americas for example has a 40 min video on Chocolate's culinary, economic, and ritual use by Mesoamerican civilizations like the Aztec and Maya (I helped write that video!).
In general, there's a lot more info out there then you might expect on botany and horticulture by Mesoamerican civilizations, the Aztec especially, because the Columbian exchange was NOT just Spain etc exporting New World crops, but also seeking their botanical and medical knowledge, the Aztec especially having really developed sciences for those areas, with botanical gardens acting as sites of study and for experimentation and to stock medical herbs, hydroponics, etc. The rest of this comment will be a bigger explanation of that, if anybody is curious!
-------
Mesoamerican city planning in general had a big emphasis on incorporating open and naturalistic or green spaces into urban areas, with city centers organizing temples, palaces, etc around plazas, and palaces in turn having open-air courtyards rooms were arranged around, with gardens often being built into communal spaces or inside or around palaces. Around the main urban core of cities, you then radial suburbs of commoner residences extending out, interspersed with agricultural land or managed natural reserves and agroforestry.
But the Aztec sort of took this to another level. Most of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital (which was located in the middle of a lake, now drained) was built out of artificial islands known as chinampas, which involved staking out the shallow lakebed, filling it with layers of soil and vegetative matter, and then anchoring it to the lakebed via planting Willow trees; with canals left between the plots. This used both to make extra urban/residential land and as hydroponic farms, all while his used local soils, preserving the existing ecology with fish and amphibians, the trees acting as wind breakers and the canals/plots as flood management. So a huge amount of the city was criss-crossed with Venice like canals that ran through suburbs with tons of greenery and flowers, and then you also had massive, richly painted palace and temple complexes, giant markets, aqueducts, royal zoos, aquariums, aviaries, etc.
It was REALLY common for Aztec rulers to have giant botanical gardens built into palaces or royal retreats: At Huaxtepec, Moctezuma II had a royal botanical garden that covered 10 square kilometers with over 2000 kinds of plants, some of which were intentionally brought in from different climates to see if they would grow there. At Texcotzinco, a site of a royal palace retreat, baths, and gardens for Nezahualcoyotl, the most famous king of the second most powerful Aztec city, Texcoco; the bathes and gardens were fed water via a 5 mile long series of aqauaducts, which at some points rose 150 feet off the ground and had a series of pools and channels to regulate the flow rate. This aqueduct then formed a circuit around the hilltop the palace and baths were at, where the water flowed into fountains and shrines with painted frescos and sculptures, and then finally formed artificial waterfalls that watered the terraced gardens at the hills base, which had different sections to emulate different Mexican biomes and ecosystems.
As the playing around with ecology and growing conditions implies, a lot of these royal gardens weren't just recreational elite pleasures, but were actually a precursor to modern academic botanical gardens (indeed, it's been suggested the first European examples of that, which show up in Europe within the next century or so, were inspired by Aztec examples, since there's some other academic borrowing of botanical science, which I'll get back to): You had them stocking plants used for medical purposes, experimenting with growing conditions and properties, sorting them into taxonomic systems (not phylogentically, because no theory of natural selection, but still a formal taxonomic system, even with a binominal naming scheme!) etc! I don't know if we have sources discussing the management of them, but we know that Moctezuma's zoo and aviary had full time staff to care for animals and (take this with a grain of salt as I can't relocate the source, I may be thinking of Jaguar remains at the Templo Mayor or at Teotihuacan) there's even been Jaguar remains found that had healed surgical wounds, so there surely would have been career botanists caring for and overseeing things.
Sadly, of course, almost all Prehispanic Mesoamerican books and documents were burned by the Spanish, but we do have some surviving botanical documentation, mostly from sources with joint Aztec-Spanish authorship made during the early colonial period, such as the Badianus Manuscript and books 10 and 11 in the Florentine Codex. Both of these sources also describe a ton of pharmaceutical and medical applications for plants and herbs, with the Aztec also having really developed medical and sanitation practices for the time (there was an entire fleet of civil servants that washed buildings and streets and collected waste from public toilets to reuse for fertilizers and dyes, to name one example), with tons of toothpastes, mouthwashes, soaps, colognes, perfumes, laxatives, and ointments made from plants; recorded surgeries for skin grafts, eye surgeries, the first recorded use of intramedullary nails to set broken bones, better understanding of the circulatory system then Europe at the time (perhaps not surprising given sacrifices...), etc. Francico Hernandez, the personal naturalist and physician to Philip II, actually traveled to Mexico and documented Aztec medicine, botany, and zoology (sadly only some of his records on this survive) and begrudgingly admitted Aztec sciences here were better then Spain's, something Cortes and Motolinía also claimed.
And then there's all the ways flowers and plants played into art and poetry and such. People love to talk about sacrifice and skulls and such with the Aztec, but ANY sort of context you could possible imagine they'd find a way to slap flowers or birds/feathers or jade into things artistically, and those 3 things were seen as the prime symbols of luxury and elegance, in the same way we talk about Gold or Diamonds. Newborn children were talked about by their parents in nursery songs as bundles of jade or flowers or precious feathers, The word for "poetry" in Nahuatl/the Aztec language literally meant "flowery song", soldiers who died in combat were reborn as hummingbirds or butterflies to suckle on nectar in a floral solar afterlife; while another afterlife, Tlalocan, was a tropical mountain paradise with lakes, streams, and springs, which many royal botanical gardens were an emulation of.
For people who wanna read more on this, I recommend "An Aztec Herbal: The Classic Codex of 1552" (an annotated translation of the Badianus manuscript) and "Flora of the Codex Cruz-Badianus" (there's also some high res color scans of the original Badianus manuscript online on the INAH's mediateca site); Book 10/11 of the Florentine Codex, "Public Health in Aztec Society", "Aztec Medicine by Francisco Guerra" (though it repeats outdated, disproven info re: inflated sacrifice totals), "Empirical Aztec Medicine by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano", and "Precious Beauty: The Aesthetic and Economic Value of Aztec Gardens" (and a lot of papers/books by Susan Toby Evans, who is an expert on mesoamerican gardens and palaces), and Kelly McDonough and Enrique Rodriguez-Alegria's research on testing Aztec medical treatments. A lot of this stuff is published online for free as open access research, too. I also have extended writeups about this I've made myself (I do essays and help history/archeology channels with stuff on Mesoamerica), if people want that messag me on twitte, I'm Majora__Z
Thank you for sharing all this information!! Learned a lot from it. It’s such a shame so much of Mesoamerican history and knowledge has been lost due to colonialism, and on top of that, what we do know is not widely shared so we can learn from it. As someone from Chile and has lived and traveled around the globe, it aggravates me how much of what is taught is primarily or almost exclusively through a European/Western lens. People across the world have so much to offer, we as humans should learn to embrace our collective past and learnings!!
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Hoping this gets pinned!
This is spectacular. Thanks for this!
Fascinating read!
I heard a lot of the tomato varieties in the US are made, not with taste in mind, but with shelf life and ease of cultivation
Not forgetting eye appeal😊
That is a business thing. Most grocery stores world wide source from producers that have tomatoes that are grown for shelf life and consistency. Personally I grow various tomatoes to see which grows and taste better in my area and which are less a drag on fertilization and soil types. More stores that source locally are able to have more varieties that are friendly with local ecology. Some varieties grow better in different soil types. The US is so big with many different climate and agricultural zones so different varieties.
In the grocery store... 100%
@@jujube2407 Sort of depends on the store but yeah. Big store chains tend to source cheapest and from large producers. Local grocery stores and farmers markets try to source closer and from local "within the area" producers. On producers or farms it is up to how their tomato market supports the farm. With my small garden having tomatoes that rot fast is not fun because I cant eat them fast enough and my neighbors get tired of me leaving veggies on their doorsteps, haha. Ethan basically described why grocery store tomatoes lack a flavor contrast. It is because they have to be stored.
@rnkelly36 nost grocery stores thst carry local farmers mean within 150 miles... those are still picked green... and most of them( not allllll) are hybrids... some hybrids are good... but most of them are not nearly as good as heirlooms taste wise... he's got tiki tomatos that are a trade marked commercially grown tomato... either his farmer lied to him and they aren't tiki... or they are tiki and he's a conventional grocery farmer and these are his "waste" that is still good enough to sell...but by far is not going to beat home grown heirlooms in quality and taste... that lemon boy ahould.not have the word acid anywhere near its description in flavor either... I question the ethics of the farmers at his market...
The purple tomato he likes so much is called Cherokee Purple in NJ. I have 4 of those, but I'm still waiting for them to ripen. Unfortunately, if I fully ripen on the vine, the mockingbirds come and ruin the fruit. I lost a lot 2 years ago.
They’re a different variety entirely. There’s an estimated 10,000 tomato varieties in the world! 500 that are actually available for growers
Let them ripen to 50-75% ripeness and then put them in the windowsill. I've done that this year and haven't had any birds eat my tomatoes.
you sound like a man that has seen great loss (rip those tomatoes)
use a net to cover the plants.
I put socks on my prize tomatoes.
They do just fine.
Socks on your ears of corn at the right time keeps the critters away.
growing & eating your own tomatoes is a joy unlike any other
I tried, twice, they just refuse to stay alive. tomatoes either grow like weed or die if you look at them wrong, there is no middle ground.
@@danilooliveira6580 They need heat.
@@bbrainstormer2036 I live in Brazil, they got plenty of heat. Unless they were not getting enough sun since the pitanga tree I have in my backyard steals most of the sunlight
@danilooliveira6580 oh yeah, they definitely need sun. Especially to ripen. But also too much heat (I think between 85-90 degrees F) can stunt growth. We get temps over 100 here so I plant mine early when it's in the 70s so they are strong by the time the hot heat kicks in. They still grow but it's slower than in the spring.
@@quirkyviper then I'll probably need to plant them by mid autumn and try to find a spot that still gets a lot of sunlight
1:48 minor correction. Gooseberries are NOT related to nightshades. Physalis Peruviana common called the misnomer “Cape Gooseberry” is a relative of ground cherries which is a tomatillo like plant in the nightshade family. True Gooseberries are in the currant family and do not have a papery husk as is common with nightshade fruits.
Correction to your correction: specific epithets (species names) are not capitalized.
Always appreciate fellow plant people who understand the value of Scientific names for plants. And in this case, plants that yield fruit. @ludwigiapilosa508 is correct, it is _Physalis peruviana_ - not Physalis Peruviana.
This is a cage match between pedants 🤣
also, aren't tomatoes considered fruits?
@@seeking.eternity botanically, yes
This is the collab I did not expect and I LOVE it! I learned a lot from Kevin @ Epic Gardening and am growing my own tomatoes for the purpose of farm-to-table gardening/cooking. Great episode, Ethan!
These ingredient deep dives are so far the only thing on TH-cam that has gotten me interested in actually cooking. It would be interesting to see you make a series about how to build your own rubs, seasonings, and sauces.
I've seen so many of these videos now. But I'm still in complete awe at how much food he can shove into his mouth in a single bite. He should go competitive eater. Dude can literally shove an entire sandwich into his mouth in one bite. Incredible.
Hey Ethan! Just wanna say I love these deep dives. Keep em coming 😃
My boyfriend and I have been binge watching them lately! I'm an absolute tomato maniac and I literally texted him "Ethan posted a tomato video!" We followed his sweet potato fries experiments last night and they turned out great!
I really love these deep dive food videos. Thanks for continuing to make them with such high quality in both information and testing! Could you maybe edit the volume of the eating noises to be quieter for those of us who are bothered by them?
For those who like growing their own tomatoes, Joseph Lofthouse, who advocates for landrace gardening, has reintroduced wild tomato genetics from South America and allowed them to freely (he calls it "promiscuously") pollinate with many different heirloom varieties. You can get some of his seeds if you want to experiment and see what comes up. You might be able to develop new, robust varieties that are highly adapted to your area.
My favorite low desert variety is Ciudad Victoria, from Chiapas. They are a relentless, thin skinned hundreds style. While only semi wild, the flavor is extraordinary and they readily reseed. One packet from Native Seeds/SEARCH out of Tucson came back every year for 12 years.
In Catalonia (Barcelona), we have our very special type of tomatoes that are use to spread over bread just like you would do with butter. It's a national dish called Pa amb Tomàquet (literally bread with tomato) and I encourage you to try it. This tomato has almost no skin at all, and all of it is juice so ideally you don't throw any of it. They are slightly larger than cherry tomatoes and then the bread is seasoned with olive oil and salt, and usually you would spread half a garlic clove before as well!
Ethan- you are the modern day Alton Brown, taking us on deep dives into the history, varieties, and uses of multiple individual ingredients.
Ethan and Adam Ragusea. They dont teach cooking, they teach food
Alton Brown would salt and pepper his BLT tomatoes 👀
No he isn't. Alton Brown's still alive.
He should make regular collaborations with Kenji Lopez-Alt
Man, never expected to see Eric make an appearance on an Ethan Chlebowski video, Epic Gardening is spreading and I love it!
😂
"My worlds are colliding!!!"
What type of tomato smells best?
A Roma
Whatever one you brush against in the garden!
I do grow Roma for sauces and chutneys
Underrated comment 😂
there are basically two schools of thought
I really appreciate that this guy does the experiments himself, and learns lessons while also not leaping to conclusions. It's a really good approach to life in general, not just cooking.
Tomatoes are the only vegetable i find worth growing at home. It's such a huge difference vs grocery. Great video. Regarding refrigeration, my experience is it affects texture more than flavor (if you let them come back to room temp) and is dependent on how cold your fridge is. A very cold fridge seems to do more damage and lead to a worse quality.
GARLIC has to be right up there in the worth growing at home discussion. Its so easy to grow, stores very well, and unbeatable taste, plus you get to enjoy garlic scapes, early leaves, and, green garlic - in addition to the bulbs. Plus the value, good garlic is quite expensive in my area yet grows ultra easy.
Homegrown potatoes are amazing as well
Agree
@@bbrainstormer2036 really? i'm surprised but i'll try to track some down and give them a try.
They're fruit. Which is why they don't spoil as quickly out of the fridge
Absolutely genius to have someone who GROWS the ingredients that we cook with highlighted
I grow a single tomato plant all the time on my balcony
not a ton of space for gardening but the tomatoes I grow always taste incredible
What’s the difference between a Cowboys fan and a tomato plant ?
@@JohnHausser the tomato plant is less inbred 😂
That was an amazing plug for your second channel, I had no idea you had a second channel, and now I need to go check it out. Thank you, and fantastic work on this video.
I take culinary in high school, and your videos are so amazing that my teacher would use some of your videos to demonstrate things like your omelet video
lol the special I've been waiting my whole life for! fr fresh tomato on grainy toast with mayo and pepper is one of my favourite snacks! I recently brought home some campari that reminded me what tomatoes used to smell like! they were amazing!
Cherokee Purple is hands down my favorite tomato variety. If you can find some at your farmers market they are worth a try.
Just made a tomato corn sweet onion salad with some feta and sumac with the Cherokees. It's a great summer salad
Good video, Ethan. Tomatoes are so versatile and can carry the meal or be the background flavor equally well. Here are a couple things you could/should try: 1) when buying grocery store tomatoes for that BLT, sear the tomato slices for a few seconds before putting them on the sandwich ... it will enhance their flavor quite a bit 2) put slices of tomatoes in between the slices of cheese when you make grilled cheese. You can do this with them cold. at room temperature or seared.
Maybe you could do a video showing how to make tomato paste from fresh tomatoes.
one important thing to take notice if you are going to grow your own tomatoes is that they tend to absorb a lot of water really fast,they can swell in the course of one night and in doing so they don't absorb the plant nutrients as well and sometimes they can burst due to the excesive humidity so when the tomatoes absorb too much water they get picked up faster and they dont mature so well.
keep the humidity levels in your tomato plant stable so it can grow properly and get a better taste.
note: sweet peppers work that way too
7:46 love that little shout out to Made With Lau, this channel and that channel keep me well fed and happy year round
🇮🇹: 🍅 is deeply part of our History
Food historians : LOL
To be fair, it is a part of their recent history and totally changed their cuisine, shaping what they have today, sure, tomatoes did not originate there but it's still very culturally significant to them.
Just like hot peppers were not original from India, but still present in almost each one of their meals
@@blrfivvuvuYeah but the Italians act like they struck a rock and out popped tomatoes.
@@TheRealJBMcMunnyeah the old world loves to gloat about their cuisines but they literally owe it all to plants native americans domesticated, and we get no credit
@@Matty002 lol what about citruses than?
Hi, fellow Texan! I'm in Houston and I started my first garden this year and it's been a learning experience! I love these deep dives!!
We here in the Caribbean do not have such large tomatoes..but we do have very sweet and juicy ones available straight from farmers at the markets. Lucky us❤❤❤
I grew Cherokee Purple tomatoes for the first time this year. It was the best tomato I ever tasted, cant wait to try some other heirlooms.
Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad. Philosophy is wondering if ketchup is actually a smoothie
You have to be more specific with ketchup. Historically, it was NOT always a tomato product. 😂
I love your style of informative and fact based videos. You dont claim to know without backing the knowledge. Thats important and impressive. Good job and thank you
Man. I can't believe I spent half an hour watching Valtteri Bottas talking about tomatoes.
Joking aside, thank you for an informative video. I really learned a lot today.
I appreciate this so much
I like how you added Umami to sweet and sour as that’s the best way to describe the taste, most people just stick to sweet,sour/tart.. I agree you can’t beat a homegrown tomato and as an Italian I love making my Tomato Sauce for pasta from the garden as homegrown taste better in any use..
12:25 this flavor/temperature relationship applies to a lot of things. A classic common example is beer, in the USA beer is on average, brewed with less flavor, and meant to be drank cold. Whereas many countries brew more flavorful beer and serve it warmer to experience those flavors at peak.
Typed as I sip my Columbia La Violeta Natural Processed coffee, at room temp of course. To experience and appreciate the sangria like fruitiness it provides. When hot, it tastes like coffee, with a hint of fruit. At room temp, punchy fruit juice.
Eh... Commercialised American beer.
We got plenty of craft beer the country over which is pretty flavourful.
But we do typically like our drinks cold.
I do appreciate a beer more if it's decent at any temperature.
@@themarlboromandalorian I agree! The commercial beer is what I was alluding to.
really nice comprehensive break-down, thanks.
as a forager i would like to point out though that the fruit of _Atropa belladonna_ (deadly nightshade) do not taste bitter as you say but are in fact rather pleasantly sweet, which is what can make them particulary dangerous.
Hothouse vine tomatoes from Canada are usually serviceable and often on sale. Been enjoying Campari tomatoes lately
Yes, they are terrific.
My aunt have grown the green striped tomato for 20 years(at least) in her orangery, saved the seeds every year. it is probably the only time where I am quite happy eating a tomato just by itself, perhaps with a bit on salt on.
Sounds sooo good! Add lemon too and oh my god. This comes from someone who thinks lemons overpowers the taste from dishes!
Your little aunty would be proud of you
Seriously, you pick the best topics
"Grow them yourself" is the best! But if you can't, I'm SO glad you spoke on the "organic" thing. Thanks for another great vid
A tomato sandwich on white bread with salt, pepper, and a healthy slathering of Duke's mayo is a Southern classic.
It’s not just a Southern thing. I live in Rhode Island and it’s a classic here. I’ve been eating tomato sandwiches since I was kid in the ‘70’s in Swansea,Ma.
@@Mixxie67 Hell yea
You are so right. A good tomato doesn’t need bacon! But requires a good mayo!
That and banana sandwiches
@thechugdude: Take it to the next level. Lightly salt the tomato slices 10 minutes before putting the rest of it together. And add fresh basil leaves.
Yes! As I am older and can't manage tilling the garden I really miss the homegrown taste and variety I had grown used to.
Fun fact: People used to think tomatoes were poisonous because plates were made out of pewter, which contained lead. The acidity of the tomato leeched the lead from the plate and caused people to get sick.
I love that you know how to take a nice big bite out of your food in your taste tests. No nibbling, just go for it!
As someone who has eaten grocery store, farmers market, and straight from my mom’s garden, still not a tomato fan but I really appreciated learning about them.
I love these deep dives on ingredients!!
Excuse me 0:15, but most people know very little about most things.
What do you mean…?
The green striped you enjoyed is a black krim. I'm growing them, and it's one of my very favorites.
Ethan, go to Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, or Uzbekistan and try their tomatoes. You would be surprised that you have never really tasted good tomatoes in the US and other Western countries. They simply do not exist there.
I know right all that Chernobyl fallout, illegal, pesticides and heavy metals in the soil really bring the flavor out in those third world Produce🤣
No, okra is not a nightshade:
Botanical classification: Okra is a member of the mallow family (Malvaceae), while nightshades belong to the Solanaceae family.
Other vegetables that aren't nightshades: Zucchini, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, onions, and coffee are also not nightshades.
Nightshade vegetables: Tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, peppers, and tobacco are all nightshades.
Nothing better than home grown and freshly picked - easy to grow in grow bags or pots, even if you have little space. I love all varieties - as long as they are from my own hand and soil. No chems! Oh god, the smell of them when you pick is just amazing.
I really enjoy your video's and was really craving a BLT, the tomatoes are my favorite part. I have gained a better understanding of food from your channel and you have helped me be a better consumer and cook. Thank You...
Haven’t watched the video yet, but before I get convinced otherwise store bought tomatoes tend to taste like a basketball filled with watermelon juice texture water
Two of my favorite creators collab! How awesome! I have learned so much from both of you
I'm eating homegrown tomatoes as we speak, and this video was posted like seconds ago. This was spooky hahaha
It’s so timely with tomato season upon us!! No more flavourless tomatoes for a couple of months!! 🎉
BLT: what I like is to then salt the tomato on the side that goes against the top bread that has a thick layer of mayo. It gets messy but oh so good! I do love the yellow and the green stripe for caprese. They're quite different but both delicious.
0:07 it's a fruit. And yeah botanical vs. culinary, blah blah blah, it's still a fruit and it's not the only fruit used in this manner. That distinction is silly.
Botanically speaking all fruits are vegetables. Literally all edible parts of a plant are technically vegetables. Also he goes over this like a minute more in the video. If you're going to nitpick try to be right.
The collab I never knew I needed. Glad to see you and Kevin in this vid!
Bro. How many ads can you put in a friggin video? Tone it down! It disrupts the entire flow of the video.
I don't have ads. Get TH-cam premium
Use Firefox and plugins.
@@evilkillerwhale7078It's sooo nice😂😂😂
@@evilkillerwhale7078why would anyone do that lmao. Get revanced extended app, it's free TH-cam premium
Don't get TH-cam premium, just get a different browser. Brave has built in add blocking and you can play with the screen off, you just gotta look up the settings
Thanks again for your videos Ethan. Great content, always very thorough and a great edit. Simple graphics, perfectly done.
Not only considered a fruit, but also fits the description of a berry along with Cucumbers and Bananas!!
bravo, very well done Ethan🙂
Your deep dives are useful, informative, and uniquely differentiate you from everyone else.
I look forward to these Masterclass videos from you Ethan! I always learn so much. Thanks a million always for your content!
I love this type of content. Thank you, Ethan for all of your efforts. They do not go unnoticed.
If you love tomatoes try this very easy simple recipe. A slice of rye bread with butter, slices of tomatoes with salt and pepper to taste AND mayonnaise. But use a european style mayo that is more savory and not vinegary or sweet.
Planted 8 tomato plants and we're just about to get our first san marzanos. Can't wait. Haven't made sauce with the real deal home grown.
Great video love all things tomato. Just combined an old can maybe 4 years old(does not seem to expire) of Summer is Inside(is in a red can with tomatoes stamped into metal) Salad Ready Tomatoes with olive oil with some microwave Uncle Ben's Jasmine rice pouch was awesome.
What a great video! Super informative and loved the collab with Epic Gardening and shoutout to Good Eats!
OMGGGG!! Two of my ABSOLUTE FAVORITES doing a crossover on one of my favorite things to grow?!? I am GEEKING out
Love the research on your video! And the knowledge yet REALNESS that hits the normal home cook.
i just found your channel and this video is very reminiscent of unwrapped or other food documentaries of the 2000s and I love it!!!
This man answers the questions we all had but never asked
this channel has got me to think so much differently about food, when i leave for the Army in a month and some change its gonna make things interesting for various reasons
I work for a large produce supplier, the cheaper 80% of most tomato varieties are absolutely trash. The bigger, more perfect looking tomatoes sell the best, but are almost always the worst choice.
Great learnings, as always, Ethan. Thank you! 🙏 For those looking for concentrated flavor that's unmistakable, try seeking out dry-farmed "early girl" tomatoes. Kinda pricey early in the season, but mid-to-late season, prices usually come down as the bulk of the harvests come in.
Ethan's ability to taste test such a variety in one go is impressive. 😂
Finally someone is talking about this! Now i need the same for carrots. I finally found supermarket ones which are good but carrots still taste of nothing here in the UK.
Love the explanations here. I had just chosen to roast up some storebought cherry tomatoes for a pizza sauce and it was the best I ever had. It made me wonder what's going on with storebought tomatoes and how they compare with even very high quality canned tomatoes typically used in a sauce.
Yo, this was amazing all around. A+ on the production
I remember watching a video someplace where they did a taste test comparison of fridge vs counter tomatoes and tested at different time lengths. They found that non fridge was clearly superior, but it fell off quickly and the counter ones over ripened while the fridge ones stayed consistent. So really the biggest deciding factor should be how long are you going to wait before you eat them. If its going to be more than like a day, I'd put them in the fridge.
Thanks Ethan, this was fascinating. I grow tomatoes because I cook a lot of Indian curry, but I have never really thought about the variety before, this has been very informative.
I’ve been following you for years. This is my favorite video you have ever made.
I’ve only been growing my own tomatoes but the taste is incredible. Having my first bit of the summer tomorrow for lunch!
Absolutely LOVE this video! I'm a tomato lover and growing up on a farm had access to fresh tomatoes all summer long and we canned our leftovers for the rest of the year.. My personal favorite tomato is the "celebrity" ones... There's absolutely nothing better than a tomato sandwich at peak ripeness in the summer
what is so great about your latest videos, even just looking at the topics, onions, tomatoeas etc., you just get curious and think about it for a second
like, there are differences but i never really thought about it. maybe i should look more into this and its so informative. so just a big thank you
How am I subbed and only seeing this for the first time today? I feel like I usually am on top of all of your content!
i love trying the oddly-shaped heirloom slicers from sprouts...as well as the farmer's markets, even though there aren't many here in vegas
Word. I know that if Ethan is doing a dissertation on tomatoes, it's about to be the final word. I could easily watch an hour on this, my favorite food topic.
Another massive difference between hot house & "farmer's market" tomatoes is the soil they're grown in.
In the Midwest & Atlantic regions, the dark loamy soil provides a sweeter flavor than the more clay-like soil in the south which is more alkaline.
I LOVE food and Ethan brings out our inner "mad scientist" with his experimentation and research. Well Done, sir!!