The best tomatoes for cooking

Tomato varieties for use in salads or crudités

A tomato eaten raw in a salad or as a starter should be particularly tasty and full of flavour. Indeed, simply paired with olive oil, a little vinaigrette or salt and pepper, this tomato should have a certain personality and assert its difference with its intense flavour and aroma. Tomatoes with a mild, fruity flavour are to be preferred, varying from slightly acidic to sweet according to individual tastes.

Tomatoes destined for salads and crudités should also have crunch while being sufficiently juicy. They should be fleshy to provide some bite. The ideal is ultimately to combine several tomato varieties that are juicy, with flesh dense and rich in flavour to create an original and tasty salad. And if you add a splash of colour, it’s even better!

Among the tomatoes destined for raw consumption, several iconic and must‑have varieties can be selected. To begin with the ‘Cœur de bœuf’ (‘Cuor di Bue’) renowned for its size (one tomato can let you create a lovely crudité platter!), for its firm and fleshy flesh, its old‑fashioned tomato flavour, and its distinctive heart shape. It is a mid‑late tomato to harvest from mid‑July to mid‑October.

The traditional variety ‘Saint-Pierre’ will also make an excellent tomato for salads and crudités. Its large spherical fruits, borne in clusters of 4 to 5, offer firm flesh and good flavour quality, slightly acidic. It is also a very productive variety with yields higher than many other varieties, thus highly rewarding for gardeners. It is moreover a tomato versatile enough to be eaten cooked in a coulis or stuffed.

If Marmande, with its large fruits slightly flattened in a bright red, is also essential for salads, one can also select a tomato such as the ‘Rose de Berne’, a heritage variety with a very sweet flavour, dense flesh and pink‑red skin. It is also a disease‑resistant variety suitable for regions with short summers. You can also choose the ‘Cornue des Andes’, a variety with handsome long, red tomatoes, very dense flesh, sweet in taste, and with few seeds. The only drawback of this semi‑late variety may lie in its susceptibility to disease.

The ‘Black Krim’ (©La Ferme de Sainte-Marthe), the ‘Tangerine’ (©La Ferme de Sainte-Marthe), the ‘Green Zebra’, the ‘Saint-Pierre’ and the ‘Lemon Boy’ are tomatoes destined for salads

Pour ceux qui voudraient composer des salades haut en couleur, optez pour ces tomates originales :

• The Black Krim: large, distinctive fruits, weighing up to around 500 g, deep purple colour at maturity, fleshy, with flesh dark with a hint of green, endowed with a mild flavour and few seeds
• The Tangerine: mandarin‑sized tomato that offers a pretty yellow‑orange colour. Its sweet flavour is enhanced by citrus notes
• The Osu Blue: with this tomato bearing a blue epidermis, you are sure to astonish your guests. The flesh is pink to purple and the flavour is highly fragrant. It is an early variety with good cold resistance
• The Green Zebra: a variety with chartreuse green fruits veined with yellow. Its emerald‑green flesh is sweet, tangy and melts in the mouth, ideal for salads
• The Lemon Boy: a variety with bright yellow skin that produces large fruits with a sweet flavour.

And above all, don’t forget the basil!

Further reading: the 7 best tomatoes for salads

Tomatoes for coulis and sauces

Sauces, coul is, smoothies, juices… To make all these delights, you should favour tomatoes that are low in water content, not too firm (therefore well ripe), with dense, melting flesh and thin skin, and with few seeds. For coul is and Italian sauces, moderately juicy tomatoes with dense flesh are preferable.

Several varieties are particularly suited to the preparation of sauces and coulis. In particular the ‘San Marzano, an oblong-fruited variety, with a deep red colour, reminiscent of peppers. With their firm flesh, these tomatoes are emblematic of Italian cuisine. The variety ‘Roma’ is just as good! It produces a very large number of fleshy fruits, of medium size, longer than wide, with firm and sweet flesh, of excellent flavour. In the vegetable garden, this variety forms a very ramified plant and is harvested from August to October.

The ‘Roma’, the ‘San Marzano’ (©La Ferme de Sainte-Marthe), the ‘Rio Grande’ and the ‘Costoluto Genovese’ are ideal tomatoes for coulis and sauces

Let us stay in Italy with the ‘Costoluto Genovese’, an old beefsteak-type variety with dark red, deeply ribbed fruits. Very popular in Italy, this variety suited to regions with hot and sunny summers yields fleshy tomatoes, low in seeds and in juice.

The variety ‘Rio Grande’ is a Roma-type tomato with oblong fruits of a very intense red. With few seeds, these tomatoes also offer a meaty texture. It has the advantage of being resistant to common tomato diseases.

Tomato varieties for stuffing, grilling and roasting

If you fancy making tasty tomato-based dishes, such as stuffed tomatoes or Provençal-style tomatoes, you should select large, easy-to-work tomatoes, that is, one can peel, hollow and deseed. [Note: The closing strong tag should accompany this sentence as in the original.]

Thus, to make stuffed tomatoes, it is best to choose fruits that hold their shape during cooking and have well-defined cavities. They should also be sufficiently firm.

If the varieties ‘Cœur de bœuf’ and ‘Marmande’ are essential for this culinary use, you may also turn to less well-known varieties. Here is our small selection of tomatoes for stuffing, roasting and grilling:

• The Pyros F1: this hybrid, very vigorous variety yields large round, flat and ribbed fruits with good firmness and excellent cooking stability. Some tomatoes reach up to 150 g! Harvest runs from mid-July to mid-October
• The Brandywine: a beefsteak-type variety that produces large fruits up to 200 g with a delicate pink-red colour. These tomatoes are slightly ribbed and endowed with excellent flavour. It is a productive variety but sensitive to humidity
• The Corazon F1: a large-calibre variety with purse-shaped, very ribbed fruits. It is a tomato with sweet flesh and few seeds and little juice
• The Liguria: an Italian-origin variety of the Beef Heart type that produces large dark red fruits, particularly ribbed. Some tomatoes can reach 1 kg! They benefit from a very mild flavour
• The Jack White: a variety that produces large fruits in a beautiful white colour leaning toward cream, heavily ribbed, with a flavour that is both tart and sweet
• The Yellow Stuffer: an Australian variety that typically produces stuffing tomatoes. Indeed, these tomatoes are hollow and contain little juice. They also have the peculiarity of being yellow!

For further reading: The best tomatoes for stuffing

Tomato varieties for jams and chutneys

To make delicious chutneys and jams, the choice of varieties with a flavour that is both sweet and tangy is recommended. And colour variations can also be achieved.

‘Green Sausage’, ‘Orange Bourgoin’ et ‘Huge Lemon Oxheart’ (©La ferme de Sainte-Marthe)

If you want to prepare green-coloured jams or chutneys, ‘Green Zebra’ is essential. But you can also opt for the variety ‘Green Sausage’, with cylindrical fruits, green skin striped with yellow and dense flesh. This tomato can also be used for juices and purées, or for drying.

The variety ‘Orange Bourgoin’ is a fruit with a lovely orange colour. These tomatoes offer a sweet flavour and a fruity aroma that will work wonders in jams.

Finally, the variety ‘Huge Lemon Oxheart’ produces large heart-shaped tomatoes in a pretty lemon-colour, with a very sweet flavour, ideal for making delicious jams. These tomatoes are also great in salads or when stuffed.