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Old July 12, 2014   #23
brokenbar
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Location: South Of The Border
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Romeo X Costoluto Genovese or Russo Sicilian Togeta. Chinese X One of the Costoluto's (Genovese, Fiorentino or Parma)

Federle X Russo Sicilian. While Russo Sicilian has more moisture and seeds than I want, NOTHING out produces this tomato and in all weather and crummy seasons. Also, it has a better flavor than Costoluto IMO. And apologies, but sauce is red, period. Even in the sun dried tomato business, absolutely no market for dried tomatoes other than red or a few of the blacks. Yellow sauce, pink sauce, green sauce, orange sauce...not sauce...

Sauce tomatoes MUST be dry (very little moisture or gel fraction). Cooking alters the taste of sauce as it creates a chemical change. The longer you have to "reduce" it to get it thick, the worse the changes distinguishable in the finished products flavor. Start out thick, not much cooking needed. Many of the sauce tomatoes taste like crappola fresh. Cooking changes their flavor making them tastier in sauce.

Size is also an important consideration (at least to me.) Small-ish tomatoes are too much work for the product you eventually get. Romeo is the hugest paste tomato I have ever seen and it is Sahara-like dry, about 15 seeds or less to a 1-2 lbs tomato and it has a decent flavor, even fresh. Negatives, late. But...even ripened "off the vine" flavor remains good.
Federle has the best taste raw and cooked but it is really late, even in Mexico. A runner up for production to Russo Sicilian Togeta. Chinese and Cow's Tit are tied for overall production, taste cooked, dryness and hardiness and are stellar tomatoes for drying. And "bah" on determinates...plants too small, paste tomato size is affected negatively and it takes way too many plants to get the number of tomatoes one needs if making large batches of sauce to can. It is ALWAYS about production, no matter what you do with tomatoes you grow for whatever purpose. I routinely process 300 to 500 lbs of tomatoes for sauce...sounds like a lot but take away the seeds, skins, moisture and you lose about 1/4 of that weight. Cook it at all and you lose another quarter. So now three hundred pounds is 150 lbs and a quart of tomato sauce weighs 2lbs (without the jar...) so you would get 75 quarts or just under 19 gallons...not so much when you started out with 300 pounds of tomatoes. It's even worse when you are growing tomatoes exclusively for drying...300 lbs becomes about 30 lbs of finished product (you lose 65-to 85 percent of weight in the drying process.)

But my sauce is Costoluto Genovese only. Nothing compares. A superior sauce tomato grown for generations for sauce and only sauce. Everything a sauce tomato should be. Over 35 years, I have probably grown well over a hundred and fifty varieties of sauce-type tomatoes (including hearts...) Those listed above are all I grow for sauce and drying (with drying being my preeminent
purpose.) Wyoming was a tough growing environment and these varieties took whatever the weather threw at them. It's easier in Mexico because just about any tomato grows well here.

Now if you want a "magic" cross, lets talk Tomatillo X Cotoluto Genovese...Tomatillos are tomatoes on crack. Nothing gets in their way. Will produce enormous crops in all weather and thrive on neglect...They grow like one of those old Disney movies where they show a plant growing from seed, getting big and having flowers in about 2 minutes. I swear to God you can watch tomatillos grow if you look hard enough. And as they get nothing but sweeter as they ripen, that should satisfy those who want a sweet sauce. (ugh)

Sauce and drying...only things RED tomatoes were ever grown for...how many BLTS can a person eat (or should they be eating what with the unhealthy, nitrate-laden, salt-saturated bacon and all...)
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Last edited by brokenbar; July 12, 2014 at 01:42 PM.
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