These common tomatoes look similar – but one is built for the taste, the other for durability

Sweet, sour and bursting with taste, there may be no other kind of emblem for summer – at least for me – than the tomato. When the last frost date is finally over, I look forward to digging my hands into the sleeping garden beds in my garden and breaking the hardened soil that weathered the long and enemy winter in the middle west. After the first plants in the soil have without question and convinced me to convince me again.

I have always planted classic beefsteak tomatoes in my garden, but in recent years I have convinced my family to grow a wealth of cherry tomatoes, including sungold, sugar storm and chocolate cherries. I have always noticed that the small tomatoes that I get from the grocery store were called “grapes” tomatoes, and I wondered: Was there a difference between grapes and the cherry tomatoes with which I was better familiar with?

In order to learn more about the differences between cherry and grapes and to dive the best uses for everyone, I turned to the tomato expert and the garden author Craig Lehoullier, whose book Epic tomatoes is now in a seventh pressure with more than 80,000 copies in printed form.

How to differ cherry tomatoes and torment tomatoes

In order to understand the most important differences between cherry and groom tomatoes, we first have to understand more about tomatoes in general. Botanically speaking, tomatoes are considered fruits that are defined as a fleshy part of a flowering plant that envelops one or more seeds. For this reason, botanists consider tomatoes to be a kind of berry that belongs to the genus Solanumwhich is the biggest genus within the plant family Solanaceae. These plants are usually referred to as nightshade, and the larger plant family includes tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and potatoes.

Lehoullier explained to me that tomatoes that are native to South America – most likely Currently Peru and Ecuador– A thousand years old and how many we harvest today grew before they cultivated earlier civilizations for consumption. The old peoples domesticated and selectively bred old tomatoes for the best taste. Old wild tomatoes resembled today’s cherry tomatoes in size, shape and colors, which appeared in red, yellow, orange and possibly also in other colors. There are still wild tomatoes that grow in the Andes today, although they are not a popular ingredient due to their somewhat smaller size and steamed taste.

Compared to cherry tomatoes, tolter tomatoes in the culinary scene in the USA are extremely new. “Total tomatoes only appeared in the 1990s,” says Lehoullier. They appeared their global appearance First on the Chinese mainland And before you hit the American market shortly afterwards. Only after Andrew Chu, owner of the self -names Chu Farms in Wimauma, Florida, received a seed package from his friendA Taiwanese plant breeder that America learned from the grapes. Chus friend asked him to grow the grapes on his farm in Florida, which Chu did with an amazing success. The grapes planted for the first time was Santa Claus. According to Lehoullier, there were two types of torment tomatoes from all over the world, both of them from this first class of torment tomatoes and the greatest support on the Trot tomato market Since then: Santa and Julia Grape tomatoes.

Lehoullier at least partially leads to its sweetness and robust taste, especially compared to globe-tomato-the standard tomatoes that most people find in the grocery store. “People who are fed up with trying boring, tasteless tomatoes will buy a pack of torment tomatoes, bring them home and think:” Wow, it’s pretty cute. They are pretty good, “says Lehouillier.

Cherry tomatoes and tort tomatoes have several important similarities, but differ in an important way. Here is a breakdown of how to compare side by side.

Look: The classic red cherry tomato is delicate and round, similar to the namesake. Total tomatoes, on the other hand, are elongated and oval. Since cherry tomatoes are older thousands of years older than their younger grapes cousins, there are more varieties that have a number of tomato skin colors, including red, yellow, orange, purple, striped and more. Although torment tomatoes can sometimes be found in yellow and orange these days, red is still the most common.

Taste: Both cherry and grapes are loved because of their sweet, acidic taste. However, torment tomatoes usually have a higher sugar content and are therefore sweeter than many cherry tomatoes. Since cherry tomatoes have been there for much longer and have been selectively bred for different properties, there are some incredibly sweet cherry tomatoes. For example, The Sungold is a favorite among chefs, domestic chefs and gardeners, including Lehoullier, because of its intense sweetness and his deep, rich taste.

Texture: Cherry tomatoes are rounder, mild and a little juicier than grapes. This is due to several factors. A consideration is how much locular gel-die-like substance, which contains the seeds relatively relatively to the amount of the inner meat of the tomatoes. Another is the volumetric capacity of cherry tomatoes that are balls, compared to torture tomatoes that are ellipses; The elongated shape of the tort tomatoes reduces the entire dream for locular gel, which is the individual juicy element of a tomato next to juices that are stored in the meat itself. Total tomatoes also have thicker skin than cherry tomatoes, which contributes to their longer durability.

Extension: As far as the cultivation is concerned, both tomatoes are usually uncomplicated and fruitful efforts for home gardeners. “One of the best things on cherry and grapes tomatoes is that they open the flexibility of a gardener on less than perfect growth conditions and cut them off well in containers,” says Lehoullier. “Let’s take a deck and you only have three hours of sun. If you grow it in a five gallon pot, keep it fed and irrigated, and you will have beautiful, delicious, freshly tasting tomatoes right in front of your back door.”

Is it important which tomato you use?

Despite the much younger development tomatoes than cherry tomatoes, the two varieties are largely interchangeable.

“I would say that the use of cherry tomatoes and torment tomatoes can probably be similar,” says Lehoullier. “When people either eat them from the vine or in the garden or blow them or suck them in olive oil until the skin tastes a little and then puts them in pasta, the taste only dipped out.” Chefs that are spoiled with a wealth of cherry or torment domat Fast pasta sauceor Keep them as a tomato jam Enjoy your taste in the cold months.

“Overall, I would say that I preferred more cherry tomatoes that I met in my life as a grape (very general generalized in view of the number of different varieties), but from a practical point of view I look at them more or less interchangeable,” says Daniel Gritzer, editorial director of Serious Eats. “Since cherry tomatoes tend to be seeds and juicier, I think that they are a better bet if they want to do something like a burst tomato noodle sauce because they collapse faster and release more juices than most grapes.”

The culinary editor Genevieve Yam reflects Daniel’s feelings and finds that their favorite diversity of cherry tomatoes are Sungolds. “They are cute and lively and make them a versatile tomato to enjoy raw or cooked.”

Both cherry and grapes are greater than classic globe tomatoes and also in pectin. So when you exchange one of the small tomatoes for globe tomatoes, you will receive a sweet and thicker end product. Between the two smaller tomatoes themselves produce the sweetest and thickest result, since torment tomatoes are typically even sweeter than cherry tomatoes and contain less liquid. To maximize the yield in sauces, cherry tomatoes can be more suitable. Grapes, on the other hand, keep their shape better and fill less juices when roasting, which is ideal to keep the oven tears tastefully without adding too much liquid in the pan.

The most striking difference between the two types of tomatoes in the kitchen would be when cutting. Since tort tomatoes are firmer and a little less juicy than cherry tomatoes, they tend to keep better under the average knife. Cherry tomatoes, on the other hand, are more susceptible to lose their shape or burst under pressure, especially if the knife is blunt. However, cherry tomatoes offer more options for a variety of flavors, such as juicy, spicy sung golds and smoky, earthy chocolate cherries – and they offer more colorful selections in terms of presentation, including green, purple, pink, gold, black and striped.

July 2024