Every Way to Cook a Tomato (47 Methods) | Bon Appétit

Hello

every

one, I'm Emil, Static General Editor at Bon Appetit, and these are almost all the ways to

cook

a

tomato

. Who doesn't like a good

tomato

? There are so many delicious and different types to choose from, we have small and sweet ones. The sun gilts the fleshy Roma tomatoes in all different shapes, sizes and colors from traditional tomatoes, but today we are going to take a closer look at the good old fashioned beefsteak tomato, it has a great balance between pulp and juice, it is a super tomato, a tomato, it's really versatile and hey, stop, it's really verse 8, stop seriously, oh, stop, how do you like that?

Ok, we have a lot of tomatoes and we are going to try to

cook

them in all the ways we can think of. Let's stop doing it. That raw tomato of Mom's, well, you don't need to do anything to a tomato to eat it, so we'll just take it as is. You know a tomato is a fruit after all so I'll just eat it like an apple a little sweet a little sour you have a lot of texture contrast the skin the pulp the sea is the juice a lot of things are going on this was a peak summer tomato I would love to eat it in this simple sliced ​​and salted tomato, a little salt is enough, we will cut it with a serrated knife which is usually easier, we will place our slices on a rack, hit both sides of the salt and leave it sit for 15 minutes or so to get some water before you dig in, so while it's sitting you can see some liquid pooling on the surface and that's just the liquid from the tomato being extracted, it looks almost redder hmmm , so simple and delicious, this for me.

It is the platonic ideal of a raw tomato, this salt intensifies and concentrates the flavor so that it has an extra tomato flavor. Eva, sometimes simple is better and a braised tomato, okay, let's cut the core real quick, cut it in half and pat it dry so I'll take a whey or easily a little bit of oil in this hot pan, but our tomatoes and the cut side down and that's my friends, it's a charred tomato, it smells very good, we have a good caramelization of the tomatoes, natural sugars, hmm, well concentrated. complex flavor around those cut sides, but the rest is just raw tomato.

We'd probably get more bang for our buck if we'd sliced ​​this tomato instead of having it to create more surface area, although it's promising fried tomato that we're going to slice this into. Place five slices on paper towels and pat them with salt, then let them sit for about 15 minutes to draw out some moisture. Good, now we will coat them in flour, egg and then breadcrumbs. Carefully place them in this hot oil. turn them over when they are golden brown, hit them with a little salt and fried tomatoes, they are beautiful, very crispy all over and you can still see a hint of the tomato in there cutting through, you can see the inside looks soft and quite cooked hmm, that is.

Great, the tomato is a little watery, but the fat and crunch really complement the flavor and texture of the fruit. This is usually made with unripe green tomatoes, but would make a great appetizer, dried tomato, season, lamb soup, tomato. I'm going to take this peeled. knife and just make a little It was very easy to just peel the skin off this outer layer. Is it a little mealy? But otherwise, this tomato is totally raw inside, which is the idea. Mmm, yes, it's practically a raw tomato without the skin. It doesn't add as much tomato. dining experience, but if you would like to use tomatoes in a recipe without the skin, it is a very easy way to achieve it. tomato sushi now we are going to put a blanched tomato to good use, we are going to cut our tomato into pieces, remove the hard core. and then carefully cut the inner membrane with the seeds and juices, put them in a bowl and add some soy sauce, sesame oil and let it marinate for about 15 minutes, it's okay, the pieces are very delicate now that they are They have been marinating, we are a little warm. sushi rice that I'm going to form into a little nugget and then carefully place a piece of this tuna looking tomato on top and compress it slightly.

I'm not Giro so I guess this is sushi and as long as it's on top of the rice and it looks like fish, the rice is still hot and the tomato is cold so there's an interesting contrast, it smells really good I mean , lady. tasty, the flavor profile is excellent, the soy sauce really supports the fruits, natural umami, but the sushi is not made of tartar, we have another blanched and peeled tomato, we will cut it into quarters, remove the core and then remove it the seedless parts. and a membrane that will thin things out and then dice them up, we're going to mix them with a little bit of salt and olive oil, but this fancy circular mold on a plate pack this mixture in there to shape it, lift the mold up and tomato tartar this is more of a visual trick than anything else diced tomato made to look like meat or tuna tartare

every

thing falls apart it doesn't stick together the way a protein based tartare would, i mean it tastes good with salt and the olive oil, but this is basically just a bruschetta topping, where's the bread?

Raw tomato sauce. So this is the simplest raw tomato sauce possible. We'll grate it into a bowl that's cold because the skin stays on my hand. a little oil a pinch of salt stir everything and voila, oh the texture is loose, pulpy and uneven and well, we have no skin there, we still have some seeds hmm, that's really delicious. Simply pure, clean tomato flavor with an attractively rough texture. I don't think I'd necessarily want this with pasta, but it would be great with some garlic and parsley as a fish sauce or something like a tomato passata sauce.

This is probably the best option. The simplest Italian tomato sauce, there are some that wouldn't even call it a sauce, we will cook them for just a few minutes until they break down and become a soup of sorts and now we will transfer our freshly cut tomatoes to a food mill that will break down the tomatoes and it will keep the bits of skin and seeds out of the finished product and we're done, so there's no seats or skin in there, it's just totally smooth and homogeneous, it's definitely a little loose since it made it. Don't cook long enough for the water to come out, it's definitely sweeter than our raw sauce because the seeds tend to give a little bitterness, not bad but it would be a better base for another sauce than a sauce alone, tomato sauce similar, but different, we have our Posada, but now we are going to put it back in the saucepan and let it cook for the next 45 minutes or so to try to concentrate its flavor, it definitely looks concentrated.

Put this in a bowl and we have got a tasty looking tomato sauce, obviously this doesn't have any of the aromatics that you would normally associate with a proper tomato sauce. It's darker and noticeably thicker, not as watery, mmm wow, it tastes so different, darker, deeper, much more concentrated in saltiness. What I definitely want is the base for my tomato pasta with spaghetti sauce. Let's go one step further. We have our tomato sauce cooked in 45 minutes and we will put it in this tray and let it cook in the oven for another time. four hours wow that looks like tomato paste okay this is noticeably darker and thicker than store bought tomato paste it would be almost gelatinous and it's very dark around the edges mmm oh my gosh this on It's actually so delicious, you know?

Store-bought tomato paste often has a metallic raw taste, but it has an incredible, huge, umami-flavored flavor. Tomato leather. We have our sauce to cook, we're going to spread it evenly on this parchment and then we're going to grab the rack. Put it in there and leave it at 135 degrees for about 10 hours. Wow, this looks wild. An ancient scroll made of dinosaur meat or something. It is hard and leathery. It definitely feels like it's dry. Wow, no flavor is that concentrated really. It really has a fruity, sweet, sour flavor. I bet you could convince someone this was raspberry or something.

Definitely great, tomato powder. Let's take our dehydrator situation one step further. Let's cut our tomatoes. Put them on the rack of the marine hydrator. Let go. at 140 degrees for about 12 hours, okay, now they are good and dry, now we have our spice grinder, let's break our dried tomato slices into pieces and prepare them, there you go, tomato powder, this has a dark reddish rusty color so beautiful. color and it just sticks to your hands like Dorito dust mmm good, wild, it's really sweet, very fruity, a ton of acid upfront, this would be great as part of a dry rub or a popcorn seasoning or something like that You know, it's a beautiful day. we take this party outside smoked tomato we have a tomato we have a smoker let's open this we put our tomato in there close it tight let's get our smoked guy out of there it looks good this is looking strange the skin is starting to peel and everything feels pretty smooth.

I mean, it was there at low temperature for a really long period of time on the inside, fully cooked, still quite juicy, mmm, a good amount of smoky flavor on the outside, which is really nice with the tomatoes. natural flavor porch tomato we have our tomatoes we have our searzall which is just a modified blowtorch let's do our thing alright oh yeah that looks done I guess we have a lot of color on those cut sides but yeah it's pretty totally raw on the inside Yes, it's not particularly special, the Browning doesn't have the same appealing smoky quality as our charred tomatoes.

I'm going to pass on this laser tomato, this one here is the most powerful laser we could find on the Internet. okay let's let it break something's happening okay let's try a different place see what we can do here okay you know I'm tired of holding this let's call it hello world so yeah we have a little smiling laser tomato here. one eye here and then there's other slightly smaller eyes here and then this sickly smile here you know I'll call him Thomas Thomas isn't really cooked well look at that face yum it's a raw tomato not sure what else it is Simon yet there's really juicy sorry little one I'm not sure all this fresh air is good for me look let's get back to the kitchen tomato juice we have our tomatoes we have our juicer let's turn this bad boy on and let it rip so This is it great, you have this kind of foamy part and the bottom seems to be much thinner and more watery, so it's quite tasty.

You know, it's much smoother, lighter and full-bodied than a tomato puree. Tomato water. Now we're going to make a kind of imagined tomato juice, we're going to quarter the tomatoes, put them in this blender with a pinch of salt, give them a stir, and then pour the puree into a fine mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth. We'll put it in the refrigerator and leave it. Let it sit overnight, now that our solids have separated from our liquid, we're going to pour this in and that's our tomato water. It has a beautiful pinkish orange color. It is almost completely transparent.

There are a few flecks of tomato solids in there that got through. the gauze mmm mmm, the tomato flavor here is mild, very sweet, the texture is really fascinating, tomato soda, if we can make tomato water, why not tomato soda? We have our tomato water, we're going to connect it to this carbonator and press this button. They rarely make it visit tomato soda the operating instructions say not to put anything but water in the machines so maybe that had something to do with it overflowing it looks nice and clear but it's not very fizzy it's light it's fruity it's more sparkling mineral water than fizzy seltzer it's interesting but it's quite disorienting to drink it, you know, now that we're good and hydrated, let's get some sun at a campfire Tomatoes, ah, the outdoors, we'll have these three tomatoes and we're going to put them here over the char coals and then we're going to put this one wrapped in foil right here and we're just going to take them off when they're ready.

The tomato wrapped roll didn't get much color, but it's definitely very soft, nothing too exciting, I mean. It's cooked through, but there was nowhere for the liquid to go so it was kind of steamed, I'm not sure why you would cook a tomato this way but it works. I assume it's a charred tomato, so the skin burns and peels off. and it's definitely fully cooked, that's really delicious. I was worried the skin would taste too bitter, but it has a very nice smoky flavor, lots of complexity. You know, I want to take this one step further.

Let's go back to the campfire tomato. sauce is okay, let's put a pot on the heat here and squeeze a couple of our charred tomatoes in there, add a little bit of oil and salt and let it cook a little bit to create a sauce, it should be fine, let's give this a try , we have some little bits of that charred skin that didn't break maybe it's not ideal it's nice and withchunks although very thick the flavor is really delicious we have cooked down some of that water and it is really concentrated with tons of umami there is some paste in there and you would have an amazing cookout tomato on a stick.

Well, if we're going to cook more over this fire, we'll need a little more firewood, so I might as well use this. easel because I'll never be a real artist I'll never do anything make a name for myself it's like my mom always said you like to paint anyway people love youtube you know they'll just go online and watch these videos and no one will want to watch my paintings or anything I've ever done this roaring fire brought to you by my deflated sense of self so we've got a tomato on a stick and we're going to spit it roasted onto this fire of broken dreams and we're going to see if it amounts to something pretty I'm sure there are some chemicals in that wood that is probably poisonous that is on fire and there it goes we all saw it coming, aren't we surprised to see if I can save at least a shred of my dignity, sense of self worth? oh, okay, this, like many things in life, is a real disappointment, it's ugly, messy and dark, I guess I'll have to eat it mmm, it tastes like ashes, both literally and figuratively, bitterness, despair, you know, I think it's time for us to go back inside the tomato ice.

Popp, okay, let's heat things up a bit, so we're going to put our tomatoes in this blender with a little bit of sugar to keep the popsicles from getting too icy and get everything cooked. Now I'm going to put these in the freezer overnight and now that they're completely frozen we're going to put this in warm water to loosen it up and there's our Popp tomato ice cream, it's interesting, it looks like the water from the tomato and the solids They separated a little, it certainly smells like tomato, you know, it's not as sweet as you'd expect and it's a little icy.

I should have added more sugar. It's intriguing, but it would be better if it tasted like a Bloody Mary or something on its own, it's a bit of a disappointing tomato slushie, okay, let's blend our tomato concoction together with a little sugar and salt, then strain it and pour it into this mold For bread, we'll put it in the freezer for about an hour now that it's almost frozen. use a fork to break it up a bit and then put it back in the freezer for a couple more hours. Okay, now it's totally frozen, let's break it up even more and place the slushie in a bowl.

Beautiful, it looks very nice. The texture. It's like shaved ice hmm, the mouth feels very cool, it's icy and refreshing and it kind of just dissolves on the tongue, it really brings out the sweetness of that tomato. I don't know how much of this I would like to eat. but it would be an excellent palate cleanser in the middle of a long summer meal tomato ice cream we have an ice cream maker we have a crème anglaise which is just a simple French custard made with creamed sugar, a little salt and a little egg yolks egg, we're going to pour them into the machine and we'll come back when it's almost frozen.

Okay, now that the ice cream is almost there, we're going to pour in some tomato passata and let it finish freezing and then we're going to Put this in a loaf pan and freeze it until it's totally solid, okay, let's make a little ice cream . Should we put cherry tomato on top? Perfect, the texture is a little icy and that's only because there is so much water in that tomato passata that we added. It's not super super smooth mmm, the tomato flavor is quite dull, in fact I think it would have worked much better with tomato paste, but I think the sweet floral qualities that come out are interesting, but I think I prefer to eat the granita al final.

At the end of the day, baked tomato, we have a tomato and we'll put it in a 300 degree oven for about an hour and we got a baked tomato, so since it was at such a low temperature we didn't get a ton of color but it has shrunk a little not super cooked inside still a little firm the flavors definitely concentrate a little but I think it could have lasted a few more hours and I sure want a little salt and fat, not that much happens here but this method It has potential for roasted tomato, now we have a hab tomato with a little salt and oil and we are going to put it in an oven at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes and Audi definitely comes cooked quite significantly, it has changed color. a lot and it's nicely charred even though it's still quite juicy, that's really nice, the flavor is much denser and that char has a lot of complexity that balances the sweetness and acidity.

This is a great oven method. Roasted tomato once again, for good measure, salted and oiled. and we're going to put it under the broiler ooh, smoky, okay, roasted tomatoes, the heat was very intense and direct and the oil produced a lot of smoke. You can see this skin is coming off here but it still feels very firm on the inside. It's mostly raw, yes, it has a slightly pungent smoky flavor inside, it's floury and quite raw, it would probably be better with a smaller, less dense tomato, but it didn't work here. Confit tomato for my last trick in the oven.

We have some tomatoes that we have cut in half and dipped in olive oil and we are going to put them in a 300 degree oven for about 45 minutes, voila, candied tomatoes, these are definitely firmer than I thought they would be after so much time in the oven. This would probably work better with a smaller tomato, but they are very bright without olive oil. It's really beautiful. Hmm, you know, it's super tasty, very rich in that texture, it's almost silky. This is a winner, for sure. Know. I think I'll finally do it. ready to go again roasted tomatoes we have our tomatoes we have a hot grill we are going to put a whole tomato here and then a tomato that we have cut in half, salted and oiled here and then some pieces of tomato that we have threaded on skewers here, let's go to take them out as they are ready, whole roasted tomato, so the skin has split a little and we have some grill marks, but it still feels very firm.

I think it's too thick to cook properly this way, yes. I mean it's hot throughout, but it's not really cooked through, yeah, not much going on here, this is basically just a heated tomato, roasted tomato, this definitely looks more cooked and we have some attractive charring here, but It also stuck together a little, so I think the tastier bits may have been left behind mmm okay, okay, a little bit of that caramelized flavor we like the sweetness, the complexity, all that, but not too much, not bad, but it's also not that distinctive skewered tomatoes, these chunks feel universally soft and have some color around the edges, but we also lost a few chunks on the grill because the chunks got too soft.

You know, this actually tastes better than the other two. We increased the surface area, which made them cook more completely and quickly. a little clumsy but not bad at all, let's get back to the kitchen, just look, there are many different ways to make a spot, but my favorite is one that is thin, drinkable and emulsified with lots of olive oil, a pinch of salt, add a bit. sherry vinegar for acid and once that's done, we're going to add that olive oil and process it until it's smooth and matte and looks beautiful. The weight of the olive oil emulsified there changes the color a lot, it's almost orange hmm Mmm, I love this. it has good body thanks to the oil it is acidic it is very refreshing tomato cooked in blender now we will use the heat of this high power blender motor to cook our tomatoes, these have been blanched and peeled, we will prepare them, put them in our blender and let it run for about ten full minutes ooh, the steaming blender cooks the tomatoes, this is pretty hot after being in the blender for so long, the motor generates so much heat it's definitely airy, it's a little frothy mm-hmm, I mean, it tastes like lightly cooked tomato. if we had a little garlic, maybe a little cream or butter, we would have a proper soup, not bad, but more of a starting point.

Microwaveable tomato, we have our tomato, we have our microwave, we're just going to stab this a few times to let the steam come out. take it out when it cooks and put it in there for about four minutes hmm ok let's put it in for another round and microwave the tomato it pops a little and some of the liquid leaked in here hmm I mean it seems cooked quite unevenly, some really soft parts. and some still quite firm, I mean it's just a hot tomato, I'm not sure why you would do this but I'm not offended.

Iron tomato, we have cut the tomato in half, we are just going to spray our iron with a little Pam. just sitting in my hotel room needing to cook a tomato with whatever I have, I guess this is already done, it definitely has some irregularities in terms of coloration, but we browned a little over here, oh yeah, it's still pretty raw, I mean. I like the flavor that the brownie offers, but this is just a mostly raw tomato, sous vide tomato, we have an already blanched tomato, we're going to season it, we're going to suck all the air out of this bag and this immersion circulator is going to cook it to a temperature constant at one hundred and forty degrees for about 45 minutes and it has been fascinating, so the tomato seems fully cooked but also very firm, the pulp was a little compressed and is much denser, a lot of liquid has leaked here mmm this It's really great, the pulp is very meaty and the flavor is denser and more concentrated than I would have expected.

It has a lot of potential. I'd love to see what it would taste like. We add a marinade or a spice mix or something like that. tomato in slow cooker we're going to take this lid off, we put our tomato in here and then we add about a cup of water to get it going, turn this bad boy on, we're going to let it sit for about four hours, yeah, it's cooked through. Everything feels very soft and it's definitely dark, which is still very juicy. Mmmm, I mean, it's very tender, but it has a hooky flavor.

It would make much more sense to use a slow cooker to cook a posada or something with a whole tomato. It's a bit of a silly Timm tomato, we have three tomatoes that we've already blanched, we're going to core them, put them in our jar, add a little salt and lemon juice, close it and put it in this pot of hot water. so it will seal fine, it's been 45 minutes these tomatoes are definitely canned fine, let's open them up yeah yeah, we're actually just looking at whole tomatoes floating in their own liquid, they've fallen apart a little bit, they're almost intact, you know? actually much tastier than I expected, much better than canned tomatoes from the supermarket, none of that canned taste.

I would love to use it as a base for a pasta dish or a delicious braised tomato brulee, well you can make brulee with grapefruit, why not? a tomato, we're going to sprinkle our tomato halves with a little sugar and then use our culinary blowtorch to blow them up, it looks crunchy, contact me, we achieved a pretty beautiful crust here and it really smells like caramel, the tomato underneath is almost completely raw, there's an interesting bit to it, it's obviously super sweet, there's also a strong salty note where the tomato juice caramelizes along with the sugar, not bad exactly, but definitely an unexpected flavor situation, not sure if I like it or not, made for tanning, this dish is traditionally made with apples, but why not tomatoes?

Spread butter on this cast iron skillet, pour a layer of sugar on top and place our prepared tomatoes. Let's turn on the heat and let the sugar and tomato juice cook until we obtain a caramel. Now we layer. some thawed puff pastry on top, tuck it in, make some slits, and pop it in a 450 degree oven for about 24 minutes. Beautiful, all we have to do is put this plate on top and try to clean it in one fluid motion. Hey no. Too unfortunate, this kind of smells like dessert pizza, hmm, this is really special and different, it definitely brings out the sweeter side of tomatoes and this buttery dough really rounds things out.

Super cool tickled tomato, okay, let's put our prepared tomato slices in this jar. We will add a little salt and sugar to this hot mixture of vinegar and water and stir it to dissolve. I'm going to pour it on top, close it, and then we'll refrigerate it until it's cold and spicy. Let's remove the lid mmm, it smells good. and vinegar hmm Mmmm, the sugar in the vinegar really supports the natural sweetness and acidity of the fruit, so it really tastes like tomato. Eve. I couldn't eat a whole plate of these, but they would be great with cheese or to accompany a drink of fermented tomato with cold vodka Now that we have pickled the tomato, we will try to ferment one, remove the core, dice it, mix it with a little salt and then we'll put it in a bag and seal it, let it rest. for a few days at room temperature while the friendly microbes and bacteria do their thing.

Wow, okay, so we can tell they're fermented because the bag is inflated, which tells us that the little guys in there have been converting the sugar into acid and co2. We're going to open it, oh, that smells wild, that smell iscrazy, it's very yeasty and weird, which I find very appealing, but others may find it disgusting, the tomato pieces have broken down a little, almost like they've been cooked, that has a good flavor. Yeah, wow, it's funky, almost fizzy, sort of sour and malty beer flavor, great umami energy, almost tastes fruitier than before. It has a lot of potential.

I'd love to see what this would be like in a tomato sauce. It's time for caviar science, okay, we've got some tomato juice here and we're going to add some sodium alginate which will thicken it. They let it cool for a few hours. Now it's very thick and shaky, almost like tomato sauce. We have some warm water. here and we're going to mix this calcium chloride until it dissolves, then we take the syringe, slurp up some tomato and start adding a drop at a time to the water bath, looking more like tadpoles than caviar beads, but I guess that's is something, so here we have our tomato caviar in quotes.

I mean, it barely looks like caviar, but the pearls are definitely firm and formed a bit of skin. Yeah, honestly, it just tastes like tomato juice, but it has kind of a spongy texture to it. It's more a matter of gimmicky molecular gastronomy than anything else. I'll pass this on thanks, tomato gelatin, a little throwback to a 50's dinner for you, let's bring some tomato juice to a simmer to reduce it a little bit while we have a little bit of cold water here and we'll beat this gelatin until is completely dissolved and then we'll spray this mold with Pam so that our look doesn't.

Don't stick, then add our gelatin mixture to the hot tomato juice and pour it into our mold. This will need to sit in the refrigerator for a while to set well so you can see that our gelatin has set nicely. Now comes the hard part. We're going to put it in this bowl of warm water so that it hopefully releases from the pan. We put a plate on top and boom, tomato jelly, who's hungry? JBL, this looks crazy, he's so bouncy and weird looking. Can you believe people used to serve this? You know, it actually tastes pretty good, the texture is weird and every little bit helps, but if I was really inclined, I'd love this with a little bit of cottage cheese right in the middle.

This is definitely one way to cook a tomato. Well, today we prepare it. Tomatoes in almost every form we can think of, what do we learn well? Tomatoes have a wide range of complex flavors and different

methods

take advantage of their different strengths. We also learned that tomatoes contain a lot of water and some of our favorite ways to cook. It was about concentrating them as much as possible. You have a method that you didn't see here today. Leave it in the comments.