Tomato
Few ingredients transform a dish quite like a ripe, sun-warmed tomato — bright, juicy, and endlessly versatile.
In a nutshell
The tomato is a fruit botanically but a vegetable in the kitchen — and one of the most-used ingredients in American cooking. It brings natural acidity, sweetness, and a deep savory quality called umami to everything from pasta sauces to fresh salsas. Available year-round, it’s at its absolute best in late summer when local varieties hit peak ripeness.
Nutrition
≈ 2 Calories and 0g fat per tablespoon.
Tomatoes are remarkably low in calories while delivering real nutritional value. They’re a solid source of vitamin C and potassium, and they’re especially celebrated for lycopene, a powerful antioxidant carotenoid that gives tomatoes their red color and has been studied for its potential role in supporting heart and prostate health. Interestingly, lycopene becomes more bioavailable when tomatoes are cooked with a small amount of fat — so that drizzle of olive oil in your tomato sauce is actually doing double duty. The modest fiber content supports digestion, and the naturally low sodium makes tomatoes a great base for dishes where you want to control salt yourself. Nutrition per 100 g.
Culinary uses & pairings
Raw tomatoes shine in fresh preparations — sliced on a BLT, tossed into a green salad, diced for pico de gallo, or layered with fresh mozzarella and basil in a classic Caprese. At peak summer ripeness, a tomato needs almost nothing: a pinch of flaky salt and a splash of good olive oil is all it takes to make it the star of the plate.
Cooked tomatoes are the backbone of countless beloved dishes. Roasting concentrates their sweetness and deepens their savory notes; simmering them down builds the foundation of pasta sauces, soups, shakshuka, and braises. Canned tomatoes are a pantry essential for reliable, consistent flavor year-round, and tomato paste delivers an intense umami punch in small quantities.
Pairs well with
Substitutions
Buying & storage
Look for tomatoes that feel heavy for their size with smooth, taut skin and no soft spots, cracks, or dull discoloration. Color should be deep and even — whether red, yellow, or heirloom-striped. Give them a gentle sniff at the stem end; a truly ripe tomato smells like a tomato, earthy and sweet. At the supermarket, vine-on tomatoes and hothouse varieties are consistent but often milder than local farm-stand fruit. During peak season (June through September in most of the US), seek out locally grown heirlooms or beefsteaks at farmers markets for the most complex flavor.
Varieties
- Beefsteak: Large, meaty, and low in seeds — the classic choice for slicing onto burgers and sandwiches.
- Roma (Plum): Thick flesh, low moisture, and concentrated flavor make these the go-to for sauces and canning.
- Cherry and Grape: Small and sweet with a snappy skin; perfect raw in salads or roasted whole until they burst.
- Heirloom: An umbrella term for open-pollinated heritage varieties like Brandywine and Cherokee Purple; extraordinary flavor range and striking colors.
- Campari: A trademarked tomato-on-the-vine variety popular in US grocery stores — sweeter and juicier than Roma, great for snacking and fresh sauces.
Recipes using tomato
1649 recipes across our recipe sites use tomato. A few favorites:
Cooking with tomato tonight?
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History & origin
The tomato originated in western South America, where wild species grew in the Andes and were first cultivated by Indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica — the Nahuatl word tomatl is the root of its English name. Spanish conquistadors brought it to Europe in the 16th century, where it was initially eyed with suspicion (it belongs to the nightshade family) and grown as an ornamental plant. Italy embraced it for cooking relatively quickly, and by the 18th and 19th centuries tomatoes had become central to Southern European cuisine. In the United States, Thomas Jefferson famously grew tomatoes at Monticello, helping dispel lingering doubts about their edibility. Today the US is one of the world’s largest tomato producers, with California’s Central Valley supplying the vast majority of the country’s processed tomato products.
How it’s made
Tomatoes are warm-season fruits grown from seed — started indoors 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost date, then transplanted outside once temperatures stay reliably above 50°F (10°C). They need full sun, consistent moisture, and well-drained soil to thrive. Commercial growers often cultivate determinate (bush) varieties that ripen all at once for mechanical harvesting, while home gardeners typically favor indeterminate varieties that keep producing until frost. Most grocery-store tomatoes are grown in greenhouses or picked slightly underripe and allowed to ripen with ethylene gas during shipping — which is why locally grown, vine-ripened tomatoes taste so dramatically different from their supermarket counterparts.
Good to know
- Botanically, a tomato is a fruit — it develops from the flower’s ovary and contains seeds — but the US Supreme Court ruled in 1893 that it should be classified as a vegetable for trade tariff purposes.
- Lycopene, the antioxidant that makes tomatoes red, actually becomes easier for your body to absorb after cooking, especially when paired with fat like olive oil.
- China is the world’s largest tomato producer by volume, and the US (mainly California) is among the leading exporters of processed tomato products.
- There are thousands of known tomato varieties worldwide, ranging from tiny currant tomatoes the size of a pea to massive beefsteaks that can weigh over 2 pounds (900g).
- The average American eats roughly 22 to 24 pounds (about 10 kg) of tomatoes per year — most of it in processed form as ketchup, sauce, and canned products.
