Tomatoes may be the world’s favorite fruit, though they may not make it on any list. What would you expect when this fruit isn’t sweet and hardly eaten as a snack on its own? But every culture in the world uses tomatoes as a base for many many dishes. The tomato has quite a few myths and misunderstandings. We know by now that it is in fact a fruit, because it has seeds inside and grows from a flower (like eggplants, cucumbers, peppers, and pumpkins). So let’s get some facts straight, and learn a few things about the tomato.
You don’t need to put tomatoes in sunlight to ripen them.
Light actually doesn’t do anything to help ripen as it’s all about humidity and temperature. A great way to speed up the process is to place them in a paper bag, in one layer. Check on them daily until they are as ripe as you want them.
The best way to store tomatoes is stem side down, at room temperature. When you refrigerate tomatoes, it breaks them down, so you lose some of the flavor. Keeping them out is the way you want to go.
Cut tomatoes with a serrated knife.
You won’t lose the juice, as the serrated knife cuts through the skin easier than a straight edge, and the tomato and slices will be left more intact.
Tomatoes got a bad rap in Europe for almost 200 years.
In the 1700s, the tomato was nicknamed the “poison apple” because aristocrats got sick and died after eating them, but it was not the tomato that was the culprit. Pewter plates were popular and had a high lead content. When tomatoes were served on them, the acid from the tomato would leach lead from the plate, causing the toxic reaction.
Pizza anyone? When pizza was invented in the 1880s, tomatoes became popular again, and is still much of the western world’s favorite way to enjoy them.
There are around 3,000 varieties of tomatoes, in all sizes, colors, and levels of sweetness.
No wonder we use them so much! Raw, cooked, from salads to soups, sauces to sandwiches, we’re very happy to live in a place where we can have the best of tomatoes so many months of the year.
