Three Popular Tomato Varieties

With so many varieties of tomatoes available today, you may find yourself slightly bewildered when it comes down to choosing the particular variety most suitable to your particular culinary needs. Don’t despair. You need but a basic knowledge of the most popular varieties to suit your purposes. Here’s a brief overview of 3 of the more familiar varieties along with their unique culinary uses.

Beefsteak tomatoes are large, ribbed tomatoes, shaped much like a pumpkin that typically fare found in your local farmer’s market. Prized as the premier slicer, beefsteaks are the perfect accompaniment for hamburgers and tomato sandwiches eaten over the kitchen sink. Their unique balance of sweetness and acidity makes them ideal for eating both raw and cooked. When cooked, they retain their shape rendering them perfect stuffers for rice, potatoes, seafood, and the like.

Globe tomatoes are the typical fare of commercial supermarkets. A medium-sized, firm, and juicy tomato, they also make good slicers, with a balance of sweetness and acidity similar to that of the beefsteak variety. Unsuitable for cooking, however, globes are best reserved for raw salads, cold sandwiches, and either chopped or diced in your favorite salsa recipe.

Plum tomatoes, also known as Roma or Italian, are those red or yellow egg-shaped varieties available year round in virtually every supermarket across the country. Firm with a smooth outer surface, plums are neither as sweet nor as acidic as beefsteaks or globes. This quality, along with a lower water content and fewer seeds, makes them the premier tomato for cooking and canning.