What is your favorite sandwich tomato?

[luke]

Green tomato chutney. Now that's something I might like to try. Is there a recipe in one of the recipe forums?

This has become an interesting discussion, and I look forward to trying several that have been mentioned that I've started from seed this year (first time).

And I can agree, any good summer tomato should make an acceptable sandwich. I just bought a few Creoles from a road side stand, and while they were not what I would call a true home-grown, and could even be considered to be somewhat of a commercial tomato, they worked for sandwiches. We had them Friday night, and my 6 year old requested a tomato sandwich for lunch after church today.

[Suze]

Would be impossible for me to list The One favorite because there are sooo many that I like for sandwiches.

But here are a few thoughts/suggestions--

If you are looking for a tomato that won't cause a messy sandwich that leaks all over the place, Wes is a great choice because it is meaty. The flavor is there (Wes is one of my very favorite red hearts), but it won't drip too much when you eat it.

But, if you don't mind a really messy, juicy sandwich, Aunt Ginny's Purple is a great choice. Might want to eat that one over the kitchen sink or wear a huge bib. Other pinks besides AGP would include Terhune (because it is in my top 2-3 for flavor) and would be good with / on anything. Earl's Faux, Hunt Family or Dot's Delight are other possibilities.

For a dark, CP, Indian Stripe, Big Cheef, Black Bear, JD's Special C-Tex come to mind as great sandwich choices.

Red beefsteaks - Top Sirloin or Linda's Faux are great tomatoes and also good sandwich slicers.

I don't really tend to think of greens and yellows/oranges as sandwich tomatoes like I do red/pink/darks, but Cherokee Green, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Aunt Gertie's Gold, Orlov Yellow, or Maylor Roth's Orange all have a lot of zip and will stand up to the other flavors on your sammy just fine w/o getting 'lost', so would also be good choices.

[Jeannine Anne]

Luke, the green tomato chutney I make is an English one from my Mum and is probably 70 or more years old as her Mum made it too. If you can't find anything suitable in the recipes here you are very welcome to it, just let me know,

XX Jeannine

[Dewayne mater]

I too go with the ripest and I'm not afraid to mix and match. Had two delicious sandwiches this weekend, one with Terhune and another with 1/2 goose creek and 1/2 Indian Stripe.

My wife developed the sandwich as we call it and it goes like this:
Best bread you can find or make toasted in a panini maker.
tomatoes sliced thick, fresh ground salt and pepper.
your favorite greens.
top the greens with balsamic vinegar and EVOO
lay thinly sliced avocado all across the top, more fresh ground pepper.

Mmm, mmm good!

Dewayne Mater

[tam91]

Jeannine, I'd love an old family recipe for chutney, if you will share it.

[gtnate]

Man, you guys talking about all these sandwich tomatoes are making me jealous. Do any of these varieties you are talking about do well in cold climates? I live in Seattle, and we are still hovering around the mid 60s for our daytime highs with lows around 52.

Anyone have any good recommendations for short-growing season sandwich tomatoes? The slicers I am growing this year are Stupice and Sophie's Choice. I've heard that they do well in cold weather, but have never tried them before.

[dice]

[cold climate slicers]
Stupice is not so much a slicer as a "saladette" (up to twice the size of
a golfball). Good flavor, though; Grunt (in eastern B.C., near Okanagan)
said he would always harvest Stupice separately from everything else
and saved them for making tomato juice for canning.

Comparable tomatoes to Stupice (same size fruit, at least as early,
good flavors):

Moravsky Div
Bloody Butcher
Kimberley
Kotlas

Early with larger tomatoes:

Fireworks II (good luck finding this at a commercial vendor; Peters
Seed Research has closed up shop)
Moskvich (not impressed with production per plant,
but good tomatoes)
Sasha's Altai (small slicers on 3' plants)
Gregori's Altai (earliest big pink slicer I have grown, kind of bland
in rainy weather)

Not quite as early as Fireworks II or Moskvich but outperformed
other plants last year in comparably bad weather:

Super Marmande

Two I am growing for the first time that might be as early
as Fireworks II and big enough for a sandwich:

Victoria
Morden's Yellow

Two that seemed early enough but were taken down by
verticillium wilt in mid-summer:

Orange-1
Black Sea Man

Some variation in fruit sizes but good flavor and early enough:

Ben Gantz ( http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/Ben_Gantz )

(If you click on Tomatoes under the Informational Database
menu on the left of that page, you get to an alphabetical index
of tomato cultivars listed in the TOMATObase.)

Adaptive Seeds has some decent early tomatoes (although early
in the Willamette Valley is not necessarily the same as early up
along Puget Sound): http://www.adaptiveseeds.com/catalog/4

From their Red Tomato list:

Ararat Flamed: not really early, ripened in September in a warm
summer, with smaller fruit than described with excellent flavor.
Marmande and Spring King: bland, commercial tasting tomatoes;
impressive production from Spring King.
Aurora: early, strong flavor, handles bad weather, fairly seedy;
indeterminate, but no bigger plant than your average 3' determinate.

[Jeannine Anne]

I have had a few requests for the recipe for Green tomato chutney, where is the best place to put it please.. here or somewhere else?

XX Jeannine

[tam91]

There is a "Preserving Your Harvest" section of the forum (page way down on the forum index) where a lot of recipes are. That might be a good place.

Thank you in advance

[dice]

[cold climate flavor note]

Note that a lot of slicers that taste fine grown where summer
temperatures are in the mid- to high-80s F while fruit are
ripening taste bland where temperatures drop into the 60s and
70s F while fruit are ripening. Others growing in hot climates have
noted the same thing growing fall crops, that the same tomatoes
that taste fine harvested in hot weather from a spring crop do not
have the same flavor harvested in October and November. A few
cultivars are not affected: if they are ripe they have good to excellent
flavor, regardless of the weather. (And a cool weather Earl's Faux
or similar may still be the best tasting tomato on the table, even if
the flavor is only half as good as when it is harvested in weather that
brings out its best flavor.)

[Elliot]

Tell me more about German Johnson or German Queen. Several of my tomato plants are not doing well and one by one I am removing them and buying some large plants from a local nursery. One big seller is German Johnson and another is German queen. What is the yield on these plants. Are they fairly disease resistant? How do the tomatoes taste?

Elliot

LI, NY

[KLorentz]

Anything big and tasty has my vote



Kevin

[Noreaster]

Originally Posted by Lee

Cuostralee.... see signature...

Lee

Totally agree.

Could be best heirloom ever !

[Mark0820]

Originally Posted by cushman350

Oh, try purple sweet onions slice thin. Also, I love tomatoes sliced on a tuna salad sandwich.

I will definitely give a slice of sweet onion a try. I am still about a month away from a ripe tomato though.

[camochef]

Originally Posted by Elliot

Tell me more about German Johnson or German Queen. Several of my tomato plants are not doing well and one by one I am removing them and buying some large plants from a local nursery. One big seller is German Johnson and another is German queen. What is the yield on these plants. Are they fairly disease resistant? How do the tomatoes taste?

Elliot

LI, NY

Elliot,
Having grown both numerous years I must start out warning that there are various German Johnson's out there. A regular leaf and a potato leaf, this is further complicated by more than one in each leaf type. My favorite has been the German Johnson (Benton strain) grown and distributed by Dana Gilmore of Dana's flower and garden place in nearby Littlestown, Pa.
It produces large tasty pink tomatoes on a fairly large plant that suffers no more than any other large slicer from common diseases. Production is high and taste above average.
I cannot be as nice in my description of German Queen. While the plant is large and production decent, the taste of the fruit is not impressive. While it wasn't one of the worst that I've grown over the years...it certainly wasn't one of the best either.
I'm a lover of Pink Brandywines and would recommend them over most others, including the Brandywine crosses like Liz Birt and Dora also. Still one must plant what they can find and almost any tomato is better than none at all.
Camo