In my dad’s garden, you can find the biggest and most delicious tomatoes in the World! I swear they are soooo good!

By late October, sometimes mid November depending on the year, unfortunately it’s over. It makes us really sad. As the temperature are slowly decreasing, as morning are getting chill and days are becoming shorter and shorter, you can tell that the green tomatoes which are still on the vine, will never turn red.

Sure you can try to get some to ripen by wrapping them and praying for the best. My dad does it and it works for some. However if the tomatoes already have brown spots, they will most likely spoil and rot before even turning orange. He has too many green tomatoes to do it for all of them anyway!

All of this seems like an eternity ago, but it was actually just a few weeks back! There we were, with a bucket full of green tomatoes. Not the prettiest ones, not the biggest ones… but it would still have been a shame to waste them.

And so it was therefore time to cook green tomatoes!

Do I regret not taking more tomatoes from the bucket? Yes slightly. But then again I knew I wouldn’t have much time to experiment.

The most common recipes for green tomatoes

I’ll admit I love fried green tomatoes! The best know and most popular recipe I guess. But then again this isn’t the healthiest way to eat them.

On his side, my dad does tomatoes jam but I don’t like jam so this isn’t for me.

Although I must say that I did use tomatoes jam by accident in an apple pie and it was delicious. It gave me ideas and I could totally see myself using some tomatoes jam in a sweet and sour recipe of sort, or maybe in a pie mixed with leaks… Anyway I shall try and let you know!

This year, I wanted to try to do a green tomatoes chutney.

Another common way to use green tomatoes is to do ketchup. To me it’s fairly similar to chutney, it just takes longer, is smoother and sweater.

It is worth noting that there is a myriad of ways to preserve green tomatoes: canning, drying, freezing, or pickling! Some also preserve their green tomatoes in olive oil.

The question remains: what do you use them for once preserved?!

It seems that most use them to do sauce, salsa and condiments of all sorts. The concept is that you can use green tomatoes wherever you would use ripped tomatoes. It will just have a slightly different taste.

My green tomatoes chutney test

Making chutney isn’t the most complicated thing, but it does take an awful amount of time because it is very long to cook!

How did it go?

Well, as usual, I didn’t measure anything! I just used whatever tomatoes I had and removed the yucky brown bits. I added a big onion, a bit of garlic, some salt, pepper and herbs.

Most recipes recommend adding an apple or 2 and I think this is a good idea. It probably binds the chutney. I didn’t have any. Some add raisins and honestly why not!

The important thing is to add some vinegar and then cook… cook a very long time!! What does it mean? 1 hour? Nope longer!! 2hours? Well, getting there! 3 hours?! maybe!!

No, you got to cook it more than this!!

Is it ready yet?! Probably not but I was famished!

As I said, I could have probably let my chutney cook some more. Most chutney that turn a deep orange or a burn red are probably cooked with brown sugar. I didn’t want to add any.

How was it?

Well, delicious actually! Not too sweet, but still had a taste of tomatoes. It went very well with the green beans, the rice and yes the tofu!

Indeed I wish I had brought back more green tomatoes! Next year!!