Recipes Using Very Tart Tomatoes?

I need a good recipe for using very tart cherry tomatoes. I planted three yellow "Tumbling Tom" tomato plants which have loads of yellow one inch cherry tomatoes, but they are too acidic to eat out of hand.

Perhaps too much so to even use in any recipe I have. I've tried roasting them for sauce, which didn't work, still sour. I have thought about salsa, but I have neither cilantro nor hot peppers and don't plan to get any for at least several days. I hate for all these ripe tomatoes to go to waste. Any ideas? Many thanks!

Shawna from Paris, TN

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Kathy Klahn

July 15, 20080 found this helpful

i would pick as many as i could, wash them and throw them in freezer bags and freeze. then they wont go to waste while u figure out how to use them. oh and my hubby thinks they really arent ripe yet and that u r picking them too soon. good luck

Patty

July 15, 20080 found this helpful

If your tomatoes are tart from too much acid, you can add a bit of baking soda to whatever recipe you are using them in. I make tomato sauce with all my tomatoes, including the cherries, and if I am not canning it but using it right away, I will add baking soda. (I don't add it to the stuff I am canning, as the acid is needed to kill any bacteria.) The soda is a base, and it reacts with the acid in the tomato. There is foaming up as you stir, and this shows that a chemical reaction is taking place. I start with 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda, stir it in, and then taste it to see if I need to add more. I add a pinch or two at a time until it has the flavor and sweetness that I desire. Just a little note though, cherry tomatoes do not give the same flavor sauce that regular tomatoes do--I think it is more astringent.

One more thing, when I sauce cherry tomatoes, I put them in a dutch oven (large kettle), add an inch or two of water in the bottom, put a lid on and boil them till they are soft and the skins have split. Then I put them through my food mill, so that the skins and seeds are removed. After I have the pulp de-seeded and skinned, I put it back into the pot (rinsed so the seeds are all out, as the seeds make a bitter sauce), and cook it down until it is the consistency that I want. It might be good to add the soda to taste at this time (unless you are going to can it), as it won't be too sweet or soda tasting.

Brenda Norrish

July 16, 20080 found this helpful

Roast them! Cut the tomatoes in half, and lay them, cut side up, in a roasting dish. Drizzle them with a bit of olive oil, then sprinkle them with some salt, pepper, sugar (to counteract the tartness), dried oregano or any other herbs of choice (garlic salt instead of plain salt is good).

Roast in a pre-heated oven on a low setting for about an hour or so. These are good served hot or cold. To serve, drizzle with more virgin olive oil and a dash of balsamic vinegar if you wish.

Brenda Norrish

July 16, 20080 found this helpful

Sorry - was too hasty and didn't read the post properly. As they are cherry tomatoes, they would be too small to cut in half. You can roast them just the same, but reduce the time to about 30 mins. (They will be done when the skins start to wrinkle and split.)

Shawna

July 16, 20080 found this helpful

Original poster here...

Thanks for the input thus far! I didn't know that baking soda could sweeten acidic tomatoes, but it makes sense! I will try that, I think. I am not accustomed to making sauce with cherry tomatoes, but I might as well try since I have so many to spare. If I don't get around to making the sauce, I think I will do as katklaw suggested and freeze them. I want to add here that I know they are ripe...

I have left some on the vine longer because I worried at first that perhaps they weren't as ripe as they could be, and those (although they got so ripe that they began to split) were no better than the others.

This is one tomato variety that I am not going to plant again. The growth habit and yield was fantastic, but the flavor... it just sets my teeth on edge. Again, thanks for the advice!

Dena Roberts
Bronze Feedback Medal for All Time! 102 Feedbacks

July 17, 20080 found this helpful

I also put my extra tomatoes into freezer bags and freeze them. They look like marbles! These ones are great in chili! Just toss them in while still frozen. They cook up well.

Kim Churchman
Silver Feedback Medal for All Time! 378 Feedbacks

July 18, 20080 found this helpful

I would freeze them as other posters have described, and then put spaghetti sauce in a blender with a few thawed yellow tomatoes. They will really freshen up the flavor.

Try adding some rosemary when you cook them for other things, it will help balance the acidy taste.

By docz (Guest Post)

September 12, 20080 found this helpful

I find cherry tomatoes to be simply too acidic in flavor for most recipes using other tomatoes (e.g. Romas), even though you can find lots of recipes on the Internet which use cherry tomatoes essentially as other tomatoes.

There are several possibilities for very tart cherry tomatoes. Of course, one can use them in "fresh" salsas, where their acidity can be reduced with other ingredients. They also work well in canned salsas, if you reduce the amount of vinegar in the recipe to compensate for the excess acidity of the tomatoes. I've found that reducing the vinegar by half in such recipes is close to right, though it's worth making a small batch and tasting some right away to make sure this adjustment is right for your acidic tomatoes.

Generally, any recipe with tomatoes which calls for vinegar is a possibility for using tart cherry tomatoes. If you're canning the tomato recipe, don't eliminate ALL the vinegar, since the acidity helps retard bacterial growth.

Another possibility is to buy a tomato press. This allows you to remove peels and seeds quickly (which I find objectionable), and not spend hours doing it, and just use the pulp and juice. In salsa, mixed with other, less acidic, tomatoes this is another good way to use them.

Laura Meller

November 26, 20080 found this helpful

Next year see if they have the, same kind in low acid. If they do not plant 2-3 plants anyways, and try this. Add epson salts to the hole and cover with soil, plant like norm.Side dress with more epson salts and water.(after blooming).Epson salts adds sweetness to tomato, peppers.and corn.Old but good one.

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