Green Tomatoes

So I harvested the last of the red tomatoes from the garden today (sad, sad day :( ), the last of the peppers, a quantity of basil that can be descibed in POUNDS (from 5 plants that were about 2.5' tall) AND about 10 pounds of green tomatoes (probably another 10 still on the vine).

So tomorrow after I go to the last farmer's market of the year to stock up on winter vegetables (stored in the basement), I will be busy making pesto, roasting peppers for freezing, and green tomato ________________. My plans are to make baked green tomatoes (as a substitute for fried) and I am going to try a green tomato cake recipe that I found on About.com.

What do you do with your green tomatoes????

Happy fall! :)

I used to wrap them in newspaper and store them in a single layer on shelves in the basement. Periodically I'd go down and feel em and bring up a couple that felt like they might be ripe. They DO ripen this way, and what a treat to have fresh home grown tomatoes at say Thanksgiving..... for your turkey sandwiches. You have to keep on them though - or you might come to find a bunch of tomato mush if you let them go too long.

Martha

There ain't much better on this earth than a green tomato fried right.
I say have a big Tomato Fry!

Pickles!! They taste sort of like a watermelon rind pickle! YUMMMM!!!!

How do you fry green tomotoes right? I have them in my basement on cardboard and they are slowly ripening but I still have a bunch of green ones.

I have read, but never tried, leaving your tomatoes on the vine and hanging them over a water pipe. They are supposed to slowly ripen on the vine.

Slice into circles just under 1/2 inch thick, salt and pepper lightly, flour, then dip into egg mixture then bread them.

heat canola oil in cast iron just under 1/2 inch deep. bring oil up to about 350F (test by dropping bread crumb, it should sizzle and float but not burnt). slide breaded tomato cook for about one minute then flip over carefully, then cook until golden brown. Remove, drain oil and I do the no-no by placing it on clean paper towel to remove wick away any extra oil.

I like it with ketchup.

smilingcat

Yum, except I fry them in butter (:eek: :eek: ) and ketchup??:eek: :eek: To each his own I guess... :D

Ketchup is a universal sauce. It goes on hamburger, it goes on omlette, it goes on just about anything else heck I even used it on herbed potato tonight ... :p :D

smilingcat

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Originally Posted by smilingcat

Ketchup is a universal sauce...

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SALSA!

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Originally Posted by zencentury

SALSA!

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I knew there was something I liked about you Zen;) This girl doesn't do ketchup, lol:eek:

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Originally Posted by smilingcat

Ketchup is a universal sauce. It goes on hamburger, it goes on omlette, it goes on just about anything else heck I even used it on herbed potato tonight ... :p :D

smilingcat

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Ketchup is ONLY for dipping my fries and for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. That's IT! Well, maybe teeny bit on a burger but NEVER on a hot dog!

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Originally Posted by kelownagirl

Ketchup is ONLY for dipping my fries and for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. That's IT! Well, maybe teeny bit on a burger but NEVER on a hot dog!

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Never a burger.
Never a dog.
mac and cheese? EEEEWWW
i went through a phase when I used it on scrambled eggs but that's long over

Green Tomato Chutney.
This is from Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Cookery

1 lb cooking apples
1 lb onions, chopped
4 lb green tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 lb sultans ( I believe these are large golden raisins)
.5 oz salt
.25 tsp cayanne pepper
1 tbls mustard seeds
.5 inch fresh ginger, bruised
1.25 pint malt vinegar
1 lb demerara sugar

Peel, core and chop the apples. Put them in a large saucepan or preserving pan with the onions, tomatoes and sultanas. Stir in the salt and cayenne. Tie the mustard seeds and root ginger in a muslin bag and add to the pan with just enough of the vinegar to cover. Bring to simmering point and simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile combine the remaining vinegar and the sugar in a second pan, stirring constantly over gentle heat until the sugar has dissolved. Add the vinegar mixture to the large saucepan or preserving pan and boil steadily until the chutney reaches the desired consistency. Remove the spice bag.

Pour the chuney into warm clean jars and cover with vinegar-proof lids. When cool, wipe the jars, label and store in a cool dry place.

This is a favorite of my husbands. It is a Brittish food, I don't really know what you eat it with except cheese sandwhiches. If you make it and you don't like it you could always send it my way.:)
Jones

I live in the south. Nothing like fried green tomatoes. I just wash them, slice them, salt and pepper and coat them in a little cornmeal and flour. Cook in a skillet in a small amount of hot oil. yummmmmmmm. yes, ketchup.

What exactly to Fried Green Tomatoes taste like??

They sound a bit unhealthy to me...but are they a treat?

C

Fried green tomatoes taste like red tomatoes actually, only "stronger". I was leary at first but they are delish. I guess if you think butter is bad, you might think they aren't good for you, but other than the butter, they're a pretty good food to eat, imho.

I've always believed that "Life's to f'ing short to eat margarine".

That phrase pretty well sums up my philosophy that we need to eat healthfully most of the time but we also need to enjoy life. :D (Hope I haven't offended anyone... :o )

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Originally Posted by zencentury

There ain't much better on this earth than a green tomato fried right.
I say have a big Tomato Fry!

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Yummilicious - and I am glad y'all are using salt instead of cornmeal to fry-

Canuck- ever see the Jessica Tandy/Kathy Bates movie- Fried Green Tomatoes ?-- the fried tomatoes Kathy Bates character 'fixed' (that's southern for prepare) were sliced thick and dusted in cornmeal- Pauline-
that's my momma always sliced them kinda thin & used flour, salt & pepper-

she would fry up a big colander full & we would clean it out!

oh, i want some green tomatoes so bad. I saw a compost pile yesterday that had green tomatoes sitting on top.
I did consider stopping but was too chicken:(

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Originally Posted by Jones

Green Tomato Chutney.

This is a favorite of my husbands. It is a Brittish food, I don't really know what you eat it with except cheese sandwhiches. If you make it and you don't like it you could always send it my way.:)
Jones

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Chutney goes very nice with ham, baked chicken, or turkey. Yum! Or stir it into Indian Food (Asian variety, not N.American). The Brits picked it up from India, then the migration over to this side of the pond continued with the southern love of things pickled. Or fried.

Well, I'm bumping this to 2008 because I've been having severe tomato anxiety this weekend.

I picked over 40 POUNDS (yes, 40 pounds) off of 5 tomato plants on Thursday night before the snow storm hit. So I've had bowls and boxes of tomatoes all over my house and I'd been fretting what to do with all of them. I gave away about 10 pounds, but that still left me with a whole lot of tomatoes. Most of them are small, and some are on the way to being ripe.

I relegated the ones that look like they could ripen in the next week to the kitchen counter.

The ones that are in good shape (not cracked or otherwise prone to moldation [yes, I made that word up and I like it!]) are in various window sills in the kitchen and laundry room. That still left me with a whole bunch of small green tomatoes.

So today I made a tomato cake (dud, I tasted it :mad:), two green tomato pies (went in the freezer uncooked), and 10 big jars of pickles (I hope I meet some pickle lovers soon). I think I'll make Jones' chutney tomorrow or the next day (I'll need to go by the Indian grocery and get some sultans and demerara, whatever the heck that is). So my anxiety has lessened but I still have tomatoes all over the freakin' place!!!

I might fry some tonight. They are so small, though, that it might not work all that well.

And the rest? I can even think about that now... and I haven't even starting thinking about the peppers, which are only in the 5 pound range. But they are small. And hot (mostly habaneros).

Gawd, life is so hard. :rolleyes:

Sultanas are golden raisins - its a term mostly used in places that learned to speak English from the Brits... If you ask for a sultan, you are likely to get something quite different ;)
Demarara sugar is raw brown sugar. You should be able to find both items in your regular grocery store.

We run a vegetable farm, and this is favorite fall treat around here. The green tomatoes add this really nice tangy touch to apple crisp. Everyone knows something's unique about this, but no one can put a finger on it...just don't tell them until after they know it's tasty.

Green Tomato Apple Crisp
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine 4 C chopped green tomatoes, 4 C peeled, sliced apples, 1/2 C raisins, and 1 tsp grated orange rind. Sprinkle on 2 Tbsp flour, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ground cloves, 1/8 tsp salt. Toss with apple mixture. Drizzle on 1/2 C honey, and mix to distribute evenly. Place fruit in an oiled 7-1/2x12 baking dish.
Combine 1/2 C whole wheat pastry flour, 1/2 C brown sugar, 1 C quick-cooking rolled oats, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp salt in a bowl. Cut in 1/3 C cold butter with a pastry cutter or two knives until the mixture is the texture of coarse meal. Spread the topping over the apple mixture. Bake for about 50 minutes, or until the apples are tender.


This one is also good, but I don't use quite as much oil as they call for:

Green Tomato Pasta Sauce
Put on a large pot of water, and cook 1 lb fettuccini (or other) pasta. Soak 1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes in boiling water for 10 minutes, drain, and cut the tomatoes in slivers. Heat 6 Tbsp olive oil in a large, deep skillet over medium heat. Add 6 cloves garlic, finely minced, and 1/4 tsp chili pepper flakes (optional). Carefully add 4 to 5 green tomatoes, very finely chopped, and the sun-dried tomatoes. Cook, stirring often, for 3 to 5 minutes. Drain pasta and return to cooking pot. Pour hot green tomato sauce over pasta and add 1/4 C fresh chopped basil leaves and 1/4 C finely minced parsley. Season with salt and pepper. Toss to combine well, and serve! Top with grated parmesan cheese if you wish.

On my fried green tomatoes, I dip in milk, dip in flour, dip in egg, dip in cornmeal. Of course they must be fried in a cast iron skillet or dutch oven.

Don't go too green with them. Let them lighten up a bit.

I make dill pickles with the small ones, or even quarter the larger ones so they'll absorb the brine. wash the tomatoes, put in sterile jars with dill, garlic buds, and if you like hot, a pinch of red pepper flakes. Boil brine and pour over the pickles in the jar, and seal. If they don't seal I keep them in the refrigerator and eat them first.

The crisp recipe sounds great!

Hey Yellow!

We picked a bunch of tomatoes before the storm and are keeping the green ones in the garage. In the past, we have had luck wrapping them in newspaper and waiting for them to ripen. Don't know what DH's plans are for them this year. I also gave a bunch of green ones to a friend who likes to fry them.

We gave away a lot of tomatoes this year to "tomatoless" friends. Seems like the bees really liked our yard and didn't go anywhere else. :)

I left a "pickling cucumber disguised as a pumpkin" in the yard. I wasn't going to eat it. . .

For as long as I can remember, my mother has made a so-called "green ketchup" which until very recently I thought was "relish" (it's not, obviously) but rather green-tomato based. It's SO good on everything, including Shepard's pie.

Actually Shepard's pie is ONLY good with green ketchup.

I have no idea what the recipe is but it's probably something like onions and green tomatoes. I could ask if you want.

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Originally Posted by Lifesgreat

We picked a bunch of tomatoes before the storm and are keeping the green ones in the garage. In the past, we have had luck wrapping them in newspaper and waiting for them to ripen.

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Garage? What's that? :p

Remember my little house? Now picture boxes and bowls of tomatoes. They are now spread all over, some in windowsills, some in the fridge, some in the freezer, and a bunch still on the counter. I'm going to skip the wrapping and just keep them in boxes and will rotate them, kind of like an incubator. That is, until I have a space-related hissy fit (they seem to happen weekly) and they end up...somewhere else. :rolleyes:

Off topic: we've been in this small--by American standards--house for 3 years now, intentionally choosing it because of its size (1200 SF, which includes a finished attic, no garage, built in 1890). I really thought I would have adapted by now, but I haven't. I'm grateful for what I have, but, man, this bumping into stuff all the time makes me c-r-a-b-b-y.

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Originally Posted by yellow

Off topic: we've been in this small--by American standards--house for 3 years now, intentionally choosing it because of its size (1200 SF, which includes a finished attic, no garage, built in 1890). I really thought I would have adapted by now, but I haven't. I'm grateful for what I have, but, man, this bumping into stuff all the time makes me c-r-a-b-b-y.

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I'm right there with you!! We'd be fine in our 1500 sq ft (with a couple of hundred square feet lost in a strange little room where the attic access pulls down, but not useful for anything else) house for about a year. Without 9 bikes (including a tandem) and a bike trailer + a golden retriever in the house, we'd be fine. But yeah - there's just not a lot of clearance between stuff. And we've significantly de-junked. There's a long way to go...

Ours was built in 1912.

CA

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Originally Posted by CA_in_NC

Without 9 bikes (including a tandem) and a bike trailer + a golden retriever in the house, we'd be fine. But yeah - there's just not a lot of clearance between stuff. And we've significantly de-junked. There's a long way to go...

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We have 2 Labs with extremely happy tails. But we only have 4 bikes in the house (the other 4 are divided between the itty bitty basement, a garden shed, and our neighbor's garage)! Dog beds take up a lot of space!

The nice thing about a small house is that you have to de-junk. And it keeps us from accumulating things other than bicycles, fishing rods, and running shoes. :rolleyes:

Here's my cute house :)

I'm with Sandra. Fry them in corn meal and flour mix after lathering in egg.
Tastes as good as fried okra! Sounds like something you would buy at the Whistle STop Cafe. I was raised in Mississippi.....Bekki