So there’s been this “wild” tomato plant that mysteriously appeared one day in the far corner of our yard, where it bothers no one and is at least a couple yards away from anything else growing, but for some reason Mr. Pikko needed to have it pulled out and thrown into the green bins. I managed to postpone the inevitable by insisting that it was showing decently sized cherry tomatoes and since all of his grape tomatoes died, I needed something to provide my bentos with red.
I finally agreed to yank it out yesterday and it was quite the task since it was actually growing through the chain link fence and down into the canal behind our house. Little did I know just how freaking far it was growing down!!!
I began by snipping the branches in my side of the fence, then slowly lifted it up through holes in the fence bit by bit until I could reach over and grab it and then threw it in a pile of branches that I could pick through later. As I got more down the fence, I began to see just how ENORMOUS this little tomato plant that was probably born from some passing bird’s poop was turning out to be. It reached all the way down to the bottom of the canal, about eight or more feet. Crazy town!!!
I put out a beach chair and began to pluck all the tomatoes off, green ones and all. The results were just amazing.
Seriously, that’s a whole big Ziploc container worth of tomatoes. I ended up looking online and tweeting for recipe ideas and the general consensus was to try them fried, so I laid out bowls of flour, egg substitute (Costco was sold out of eggs), and a panko mixture with parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, and garlic salt.
Then, as if they could smell the frying pan coming, the tomatoes made a break for it!
I kid, of course. I was just having a hard time finding the bigger ones, so I dumped it out. Boy was that a shocker. I hadn’t realized just how many tomatoes that dang plant had. Then I think about the 20 roma tomato sprouts in my backyard garden and begin to get scared.
The egg helped the crumbs stay on and I fried them up pretty easily, though obviously on too high heat because I was viciously attacked by a juice-oozing tomato that spit hot oil all over my arm.
They looked cute, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of them because they were so freaking sour inside. I think I just hadn’t cooked them all the way through, which is hard when they’re tiny little balls. I’m willing to give it another try with real tomatoes, as who doesn’t remember that scene of Idgie and Ruth in Fried Green Tomatoes?
I still have like what looks like 200 more tomatoes, so I think I might try a salsa next… If you have a tried and true delicious suggestion, let me know! I’m not too sure I’m into green tomato chutney though, to be honest…
We always had them sliced, then fried. BIG green ‘maters.
Yeah I know, but this was all I had. 🙂
This reminds me of how I was frying chicken last week…but my heat was on WAY too high and Alice literally jumped back 10 feet when it started sputtering…smart her.
Too bad they didn’t taste as good as they look! 🙁
I have these purple splotches on my arm today. 🙁
I never even thought about using cherry tomatoes to fry! Blows my mind because I fry up alot of tomatoes over the season.
Try slicing them in half before breading…it would release some of the juice and be more likely to cook through…
Those will eventually ripen if you’ll lay them in a large box top on several layers of newspaper and slid them under your bed or some place sort of dark. They may have fried up a little better if they were cut in half, although they look so much more appetizing in their whole form. Here in the South we’ll veer off the freeway for fried green tomatoes.
You can also pickle those green tomatoes. This is a master recipe from the Momofuku cookbook that I used for some Korean melon, though you can use it pretty much anything: apples, beets, watermelon, watermelon rinds, carrots, napa, whatever. It’s sweet and salty. Feel free to play around with it, adding whole spices (coriander, chile flakes, whatever) or subbing vinegars. It makes about a quart of brine:
1 cup water, piping hot from tap (seriously, it says so in the book. But if you want, you can boil some water too)
1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
6 TBSP sugar
2 1/4 tsp kosher salt
Just combine all ingredients and stir til the sugar’s dissolved.
Sometimes I eat the pickle out of the jar, sometimes I use it as a garnish. And pickling is way fun now that I’ve got an easy, basic recipe.
Deep fry might be much better for these. I fried them in a skillet and I’m pretty sure that’s why they were sour, they weren’t fully cooked!
I saw another blog do that, but she said the breading only stuck to the cut side. Now that I think about it though, she probably didn’t use egg wash and that’s why it didn’t stick.
Thanks for the tip! Some of them are really small though, so I might try cooking them.
Thank you so much Rexy! I have all those ingredients, so I’ll give that a try. Do you think I need to cut the tomatoes or should I just pickle them whole?
For a quick pickle, I’d halve them. And then you can enjoy them after a day or so. If you want to let them sit in brine for over a week, I’d leave them whole, so the tomato can slowly pickle. When I wasn’t sure if I’d like the pickle, I’d just make a tiny batch in those plastic chinese take-out soup containers. Glass jars, plastic tupperware, whatever. Hope you like it!