Top Ten Ways To Use Tomatoes

Ten great ways to use your tomato harvest.

Hopefully by now, you are beginning to harvest tomatoes or perhaps you are lucky enough to be rolling in them.

Homegrown tomatoes are so good, you wouldn't want them to go to waste.  And while you could preserve them by drying or canning, its more fun to eat them fresh at their peak of ripeness.

To that end, here are ten great ways to use those tomatoes.  In no particular order.....

Tomato Top Ten:

1. BLT - this is a classic sandwich.  Try kicking you sandwich up a notch by using the best ingredients.  Here's my wife's way of jazzing up a BLT while staying true to the traditional recipe -- The Ultimate BLT.
2. Pizza - The hardest thing about making pizza at home is making the dough.  After that, it couldn't be easier.  However, to get a really good crust, you'll need a baking stone for your oven.  If you try homemade pizza, I guarantee you'll never look at Dominoes, Pizza Hut or any of the other chain store pizzas in the same way.  Most recipes call for tomato sauce in the list of ingredients.  We ditch the canned stuff and use fresh cherry tomatoes which we slice and de-seed (this reduces the water in them).  Then just lay the tomato pieces on top of the crust just like you do with the cheese and other ingredients and bake.  Homemade Pizza.
3. Tomato & Mozzarella Salad - The fastest salad you could ever make.  On summer nights when we don't want to cook, this is a great light meal.  Just slice both ingredients and plate by alternating slices of tomato and cheese.  Drizzle with olive oil and add salt a pepper to taste. The Italians call this dish Insalata Caprese, an elegant sounding name for an elegant dish.
4. Salsa - I'm sure that you may have heard that American's now use more salsa than ketchup.  I checked on this and found that this is only sort-of true.  According to the Wall Street Journal (Sept 20, 2007), Americans eat more pounds of ketchup per year than salsa -- 330 million pounds of ketchup vs 185 million pounds of salsa .  But salsa is more expensive on a per pound basis, so from a spending perspective, Americans spend $460 million on salsa and only $299 million on ketchup.  I'll leave it to you to decide whether the salsa versus ketchup story is true or urban legend.  What I can say definitively is that salsa is great on chips, eggs and burgers.  Here's a salsa recipe from Alton Brown of Food TV Network.
5. Ketchup - speaking of ketchup..... here's a recipe to make your own at home.  In a spirit of full disclosure, I have not tried this recipe so I can't tell you how close this tastes Heinz 57.  Ketchup.
6. Gazpacho - this is a Spanish vegetable soup that is served cold.  Like the recipe tomato & mozzarella salad, this dish is particularly nice on hot summer nights. This particular recipe for Gazpacho calls for fresh tomatoes and canned tomato juice.  If you have lots of tomatoes and a juicer, you can use fresh juice and make this even better.
7. Ratatouille - A few years ago, Disney Studios produced an animated comedy about a rat that cooked gourmet food including this dish.   Pronounced "rat-eh-TOO-ee", this side dish from southern France features tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant and thankfully, not a bit of rat.  Give ratatouille a try.
8. Fried Green Tomatoes - For those that have not tried this, this dish tastes a lot better than it sounds. Here's a recipe for fried green tomatoes from Paula Dean.
9. Tomato Soup - Perfect for summer soup and sandwiches.  Tomato soup is pure comfort food. Here's a recipe from Martha Stewart.
10. Homemade Tomato Sauce -  There are so many recipes for tomato sauce that I won't even point you to a specific recipe.  Try your grandmother's favorite recipe, or cruise the internet and get one from Grandma Google.

By the way, I'm gathering consumer ratings on the best varieties of homegrown tomatoes.  If you have a just a few minutes, please rate your favorite tomato varieties by clicking here.