Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Eating and Drinking => Cooking, Storing and Preserving => Topic started by: Wild Willow on September 20, 2013, 07:10
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Hiya,
Does anyone have any uses for green tomatoes apart from chutney? Can you add them to tomato sauce (spaghetti sauce) or chilli, etc.? Looking for ideas as I don't like chutney...thank you.
Char ???
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I am sure i did read somewhere that you can do a jelly with toms not sure it would work with green though. No idea where i read it either.
You could just leave them to slowly ripen all mine have and they were green as green
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Green tomatoes (with a little lemon to aid setting) make an excellent jam which sets really easily - the pips can be left in or the pulp passed through a sieve as desired. Plenty of recipes on the web (try also 'doce de tomate' and be prepared to use the translate key - my favourite is to use the lemon peel as a lemon shred rather than using the juice only, which is not traditional but tastes great.
The Portuguese make two versions - red and green - take your pick. The green tomato pulp can also be used to make other jams go further (gooseberry:green tomato in 60:40 ratio works well). The Portuguese will use the green version much as creme patissiere is used in pastries so it is quite versatile.
SS
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We've just pulled our plants and put the green ones in the cellar on apple trays, but now the air is fresher after a couple of showers it feels warmer down there than it did. We have plenty preserved in lots of ways but felt we couldn't just throw the sound ones out.
I have made some chutney, but I know we are unlikely to eat it.
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Chutney is useful as an ingredient for curries and tagines, so even if you don't enjoy eating it straight, it could be worth making some for that. A big pot of either can take half a jar easily. It makes the sauce nice and thick and adds sweet, tangy and spicy notes to the dish :)
I have lots of green fruit sitting on the windowsill. As BQ says, they mostly all do ripen in the end :)
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Any sign of blight on them? If not, recycle them in your compost heap! We don't have to eat everything we produce, do we??? I've got stunted cabbage slowly cooking in my heap as we speak!
Unwanted produce is a resource! It's as good as cash! :)
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Try green fried tomatoes as a vegetable. Lots of recipes on the internet.
If you like curries and tagines use the green tomatoes cut in quarters as another vegetable.
Do you like piccalilli? If so you can use them in piccalilli. I always make the house piccalilli with the green tomatoes; to special to add to the selling piccalilli.
You can also add them to mixed pickles, if you like pickles rather than chutneys.
Put a ripe banana in with the green tomatoes which wil help them to ripen.
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go get an old cardboard fruit tray ...cover the green tomatoes with newspaper and keep in cool dry are, lipping a ripening banana, the banana produces ethanol which ripens most fruit. worked a treat for me...
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Fried green tomatoes as of The Whistle Stop cafe
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Made this Green Tomato Soup this evening:
http://www.food.com/recipe/green-tomato-soup-141324
Made a double quantity. Used leeks instead of scallions. Added a tin of Butter Beans for added protein, and blitzed with a hand blender once cooked. Delicious - bright, citrusy flavour, with the smokiness of the bacon in the background. Recommended!
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Fried green tomatoes as of The Whistle Stop cafe
Good film that :)
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Apparently there's a green tomato mincemeat recipe out there somewhere. Not tried it myself as not keen on mincemeat.
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Fried green tomatoes as of The Whistle Stop cafe
Good film that :)
Ditto! :)
You could always make the dreaded chutney and give it away as festival prezzies? ::) :D
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mine do colour up a bit on the window sill, they dont taste quite the same but were nice grilled with cooked breakfast last weekend
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Fried green tomatoes with peppers, courgettes, onions mixed with on egg. Delicious :tongue2:
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Slice them coat in cornmeal/polenta and fry in oil till golden brown then use like croutons in soup especially spicy pumpkin soup hmmm :)
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Thanks everyone!
A lot of good ideas and composting them is always a good thing too.
I just have one question about composting blighted tomatoes...if they do have a touch of blight is it ok to compost just the tomatoes?
Cheers,
Charleen :)
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I wouldn't :)
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Neither would I.
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Any green toms left at the end of the season usually end up in the airing cupboard. Chop the whole plant, tie the stems with string, hang off a suitable sticky-outy-bit, and wait a while. They will normally ripen up and still be quite tasty. I made sure this year that a didn't hang 'em above the clean washing. The wife wasn't to happy when she saw the dried leaves scattered all over the clean bedding!
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Still a bit of time left yet before greenhouse toms stop ripening. Cold nights and harsher weather may put an end to outdoor toms now, but I'll be leaving all the toms on the plant as long s poss.
Totty
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GREEN TOMATO KETCHUP
THE WAY WE COOKED: VINTAGE GOURMET
SEPTEMBER 1948
Mix together in a large kettle 10 pounds green tomatoes, coarsely chopped, 10 green peppers, stems and seeds removed, then chopped, and 6 medium-sized onions, also chopped. Sprinkle the mixture with salt and let stand for a few hours. Drain off the liquid and place the vegetables in a large kettle with 6 cups vinegar, 1 tablespoon each powdered ginger, whole cloves, and peppercorns, and 1 teaspoon nutmeg. Let the mixture simmer gently until the vegetables are soft, then rub the mixture through a sieve. Place this purée in a clean kettle with 2 cups sugar (more or less, according to taste), 2 tablespoons dry mustard mixed into a smooth paste with a little vinegar, and more salt and pepper if needed. Simmer very slowly for another hour, adding a little vinegar if the ketchup looks too thick. Pour the ketchup into hot sterilized jars and seal at once. When cold, store the jars in a cool, dark, dry place.
This exclusive recipe is pulled directly from Gourmet’s archive. It has not been re-tested by our food editors since it was published in the magazine, but it's a pretty good indication of the kinds of things we once cooked—and ate—with great pleasure. :)
http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/1940s/1948/09/green-tomato-ketchup
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merged your post with the thread you were looking for sparky ;)
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Last year we had loads of green tomatoes (see picture below), but they kept pretty well on the kitchen window sill for a month, with only a handful not eventually turning red (or yellow). We only ended up with two jars of chutney!
This year, I've not yet picked them all as there are probably double the amount of green tomatoes to last year, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that the nights don't get too cold....
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Thx for this thread, having the same dilemma as we already have so much chutney this year and a full freezer! We had to pull all our tomato plants because blight had started, so don't want to leave them too long on the windowsill waiting to ripen, nor compost them. But I did read that you can use green tomatoes in most recipes where you'd use red ones, just mix them 50/50 red and green. I've also seen a couple of green tomato sauce and pasta recipes, usually with basil, so was going to make up something similar.