Green Tomatoes Have Their Own Merits (2024)

FAQs

Should I pick green tomatoes that won't ripen? ›

Consider picking and ripening your green tomatoes indoors to give them a fighting chance. If you're seeing a bit of red on those green tomatoes, picking them individually and bringing them inside may be the best chance for ripening tomatoes. Like many fruits, tomatoes continue to ripen once they've been picked.

Understanding the Chemistry of Tomato Plants

Twenty to 30 days later, there will be green tomatoes that should grow to maturity. Once the tomato is full size, it takes about 20-30 days for the full-size green tomato to turn red.

Even though they do not taste like red, ripe tomatoes, green tomatoes do have their own merits that deserve just as much attention as their red counterparts. Ripe green tomatoes are a very good source of vitamins A, C and potassium. They also contain iron, calcium, dietary fiber, magnesium, and other minerals.

If you've brought slightly under-ripe tomatoes home from the farmers market or hauled some inside from your garden, leaving them on the counter will allow them to slowly ripen on their own.

It seems counterintuitive, but direct sunlight is not needed to ripen tomatoes. In fact, tomatoes on the vine outdoors and exposed to direct sunlight can heat up which inhibits ripening or even causes sunscald.

Can Tomatoes Ripen off the Vine? It's possible to ripen green tomatoes indoors as long as they've been kept at room temperature. Tomatoes start the ripening process on the vine and continue to ripen after they've been picked because they produce a gas called ethylene.

This colour change is usually easy to recognise on ripe fruits. If you are unsure or have chosen a fully green variety, press lightly on the fruit a little with your fingers. If the fruit yields slightly and feels soft, it is ready to harvest.

There is a higher presence of this Solanina toxin in green tomatoes than in ripe red tomatoes, making it harder to digest for humans. Therefore it is recommended to cook them in order to sweeten the taste, de-neutralizing the Solanina that causes the bitterness in raw green tomatoes.

Tomatoes reach their peak harvest times between the months of July and September, but there are a couple of options when it comes to the optimal time to pick these juicy, sweet veggies. Ideally, they can be harvested at their prime or earlier, as they are capable of ripening after picking.

Can you eat too many green tomatoes? ›

Green, thus unripe tomatoes contain a substance called tomatine in addition to solanine. Both tomatine and solanine are toxic so it is not wise to eat green tomatoes in large quantities. Solanine poisoning can cause unpleasant symptoms like fever, abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, drowsiness and lethargy.

That said, some varieties are naturally higher in this healthy antioxidant compound than others. Here are a few lycopene-rich tomato varieties to try: 'Crimson Cherry': Of all the tomatoes, cherry and roma varieties are the highest in lycopene, and, for us, Crimson Cherry comes top of the heap.

Southern-style fried green tomatoes are the crisp, tangy, and boldly savory appetizer you should be making all year. This classic, down-home dish features sliced unripe tomatoes that are dredged in flour and cornmeal before being skillet-fried to buttery-brown perfection.

Expose Them to Ethylene

"Other mature fruits like apples and bananas also emit ethylene, so if you want to ripen mature tomatoes off the vine, store them in a bag with an apple."

Hard green areas on the 'shoulder' of the fruit: This is known as greenback. These areas remain hard and unpalatable as the rest of the fruit ripens. The causes are usually excess light, high temperatures, and/or insufficient feeding.

The good news is that even if you eat a hard-as-a-rock green tomato, you'll probably survive. You may not even get a bellyache—but you might.