Testing expert Jack Bishop reviews a variety of tomatoes.
Get our recipe for Pasta with Cherry Tomato Sauce:
Get our recipe for Spinach and Ricotta Gnudi:
Get the recipe for Upside-Down Tomato Tart:
Get the recipe for Horiatiki Salata:
Buy our winning food processor:
Buy our winning baking sheet:
Buy our winning Dutch oven:
ABOUT US: Located in Boston’s Seaport District in the historic Innovation and Design Building, America’s Test Kitchen features 15,000 square feet of kitchen space including multiple photography and video studios. It is the home of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and Cook’s Country magazine and is the workday destination for more than 60 test cooks, editors, and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes over and over again until we understand how and why they work and until we arrive at the best version.
If you like us, follow us:
48 Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Fresh local tomato season is short where I live. I discovered that campari tomatoes actually have flavor worth buying in winter. I savor fresh local tomato season but only get campari when local tomatoes aren't available. I will have to check out kumato when local tomatoes are unavailable.
I love both Roma and San Marzano tomatoes as they have great flavor and sweetness and I make bolognese a lot so these imo are the perfect options.
I prefer thick walled 🍅
I wish some of these wonderful choices were available in my small town in South Central Texas. It is so HOT, that tomatoes are hard to get – Vine Ripened, Roma and Grape Tomatoes are pretty much it. What would be truly helpful, is to help me choose which tomatoes to put in my cart. How can I tell from the outside which tomatoes will have more "jelly" and thinner walls? Thank you for your help in educating us.
TIL there's a difference between grape and cherry tomatoes. Thought they were just two names for the same thing.
I thought I knew a lot about tomatoes but again you have so much to teach me! Thanks.
What's your thoughts on Campari tomatoes.
Excellent info! More of these types of videos would be helpful – fruit and veggie comparison videos. Thanks!
I am going to the Farmer's market tomorrow. I am going to get several heirloom tomatoes there. I like trying different varieties but lately I been leaning towards the dark skinned ones like Cherokee Purple. Which heirlooms do you like?
While it’s true nothing beats farmers market-fresh in-season tomatoes, another passable winter sadness tomato I’ve found is Campari, usually sold in a clamshell and somewhere between a cherry and a vine tomato in size (formally a “cocktail tomato”). Not great but among the better of the worst at the supermarket when that’s your only option.
Thank you for doing this video.
For the simplest sauce of yellow and orange heirlooms I lose the skins and seeds cook down by half before tossing in the Vitamix. No oil or seasonings of any kind. I've briefly added whole herbs and touch of salt.
Give it a try.
Fresh tomatoes are one of my favorite foods. Watermelon is the other.
It's really about money. Most people can't afford those "good" tomatoes.
Wow
The best variety of tomato I get out of my garden is a variety I got from my 80 year old neighbor, and it has almost no jelly whatsoever. The lack of jelly make them perfect for sandwiches, and the taste is fantastic.
I was given one of those european brown tomatoes the other day. I ate the peel and planted the seeds in the yard, hopefully they sprout and fruit , the taste was absolutely rich and fabulous
BEEFSTEAK!!!! Still growing same seeds since the 70's.
It don't change a sandwich much if you add a slice of typical FARMERS MARKET tomato but add a slice of Cherokee Purple or Brandywine that sandwich becomes a TOMATOE sandwich . With some hamburger or grilled chicken condiment maybe!
Creole Tomatoes are no longer a documented variety LSU found seed obtained from multiple sources and sold as Creole produced different tomatoes! Further, gott'ya tv has dozens of examples of tomatoe being shipped hundreds of miles and and sold as local farmers produce.
I hate the jelly; texture just ugh
I canned some romas this month. I bought a 25 lb box and canned in 3 batches. I had the final batch for 10 days. Only one tomato got over ripe. Most were not ripe when I processed them. I had no idea how Unripe tomatoes are.
Whatever kind of supermarket tomato that you get, leave it to sit until it is just beginning to rot. This will happen at the stem end. Slice this off. The rest is very good and makes heritage tomatoes unnecessary.
ATK. Hello, JACK, I LOVE a REALLY JUICY FLAVOURFUL TOMATO,,MANY years ago when finished my job,,I bought same really bueatiful tomato’s from HOLLAND, even my wife said they looked great ! Damned CARDBOARD , and cost so much ! NEVER AGAIN, THE FARMERS MARKET CARRIES THE BEST ! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
We can only get locally grown heirlooms during a very short window at the peak of summer. All the other heirlooms at Whole Foods, etc. are grown year-round in Mexico and shipped. I've seen them in January in Arkansas! I've been using the campari ones lately for soups and tomato sauce, but only after letting them sit on the counter until they are very VERY ripe.
Thanks for the info. I'd love a video going through your favorite heirlooms!
Thanks for the education.
I am a tomato freak..wasted so much on the wrong ones..thank you!
Thanks for actual captions for the Deaf
He's right about the kumato tomatoes. In the depths of a Canadian winter they're the only non-terrible choice. Out of the heirlooms I've tried every cariety I could find and my favourite is green zebra. Is tastes of delicious tomato, not overwhelming sweetness which I've found some heirlooms do, and it's a preference if you like that or not.
Met so many people who claim to hate tomatoes. Hurts my feelings. I know they haven't had a real tomato.
Not exactly true about grape tomatoes. I got some from a local farm near NYC that were heirloom and absolutely herbally delicious.
I have to confess that actual information in the clip is lacking 😞. Buy the thin-walled ones, if available. Don't buy the fat-walled ones. Above all, you can't slice them up in the shop to check.
It would have been far more informative if you had mentioned the variety names of the good ones, and the names of those to avoid.
Here, down-under, we grow our own, mostly heirlooms, for maximum flavour. Probably the only all-round flavour-some named variety is Moneymaker.
It would be nice to get locally grown tomatoes as the grocery stores advertise, but mostly they are from Mexico which I do not buy. Next year I will try to grow my own.
This comes out just hours after reports of tomatoes becoming scarcer and ketchup prices rising.
I wish I'd seen this 20 years ago, because I always bought those on-the-vine tomatoes, thinking they were the best.
Orrrrr, if you're Californian buy dry-farmed early girls in August.
Consider growing tomatoes in your garden or even in a nice big grow bag or pot. Even if they're hybrids that look like the typical supermarket beefsteaks, they'll probably taste way better than supermarket tomatoes because you're not gonna pick them green then redden them with ethylene gas. Unless they're a sensitive variety like a Momotaro, it is almost impossible to screw up growing a tomato as long as you start with a good quality soil, give them some structural support with twine and stakes, and make sure to water them deep.
🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅
We just had tomatoes grown in my yard for supper tonight, so delicious!
Mmmmm…tomatoes
Thank you, Jack.
So thankful for farmers markets and garden fresh summer beefsteak tomatoes! Wait all year for them! And yeah, in winter the kumatos are the best.
dry farmed tomatoes are EPIC. sweet af. super good.
Tomatoes in the USA don't taste like anything because the seeds are genetically treated to, for example, have a harder skin among other things, so any tomato will taste the same; no matter what kind of tomato it is… Geneticists never take care of the taste of the tomato, if not, that the skin is as hard as that of a turtle so that the fruit does not break….
I grow 40 heirloom plants per year. I'm spoiled rotten. Needless to say, I can't stand store bought anymore. When I see a fleshy tomato like the one you pointed out, I just cringe. Where is the flavour?
canned tomatoes, fire roasted
Everyone grow your own tomatoes! You can even just grow two tomatoes in two big beautiful pots from Costco. Even people that cannot grow can do it I assure you. I never had a green thumb and I can grow a garden. All you have to do is follow instructions. Then when something happens figure out what that is it’s not that hard fix it and you learn more and more
THANK YOU 😊 WHO KNEW 👩🍳