The Hill I Will Die On: Tomatoes Are the Best Flavor and the Worst Bite

The hill I will die on tomatoes is the strangest hill I have ever climbed, because I am standing on both sides of it at once. Tomato flavor makes wonderful food. Salsa, spaghetti sauce, tomato soup, the red sauce on a Friday night pizza — all of it. But the tomato itself, a raw slice just sitting there on a plate? Gross and slimy. It’s like clickbait. It promises the best flavor in the whole kitchen and hands you the worst texture in the whole produce aisle. The best AND the worst of flavor and texture, in one round red package. This is a hill I will die on. 🍅

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Y’all know I do not plant a flag without going to find some backup first, and my first stop was the oldest argument in the produce aisle: is a tomato even a vegetable? Botanically, no. It grows out of the flower and carries its own seeds, which makes it a fruit. But in 1893 the Supreme Court of the United States sat down and settled it the other way. A family of importers had brought tomatoes into New York from the West Indies and been charged the ten percent tax on vegetables, so they sued, arguing that a tomato is a fruit and fruit came in free. The Court ruled against them unanimously in Nix v. Hedden, and Justice Horace Gray’s reasoning was pure kitchen-table common sense. People serve tomatoes with dinner, right alongside the soup and the meat, and not afterward as dessert. That makes them a vegetable. I have never agreed with the Supreme Court more in my life.

And then I found the thing that made me put my phone down. A British chef named Heston Blumenthal tasted the jelly around a tomato’s seeds and thought it tasted more savory than the rest of the tomato, so he asked food scientists at the University of Reading to check. Their study came out in 2007. They tested more than a dozen varieties, and every single one had more of the savory umami compounds in that seedy jelly than in the firm flesh around it. One of the researchers put the difference at as much as eight times. Umami is that deep, rich, makes-you-want-another-bite taste — the same thing that makes a pot of sauce taste better after it has simmered all afternoon.

Hill I Will Die On Tomatoes — The Slime Is Where the Flavor Lives

Read that one more time. The slimy part, the exact part I cannot stand, is where the tomato keeps its very best flavor. It took the thing I love most and hid it inside the thing I hate most. If that is not clickbait, I do not know what is. Most sauce recipes even tell you to scrape the seeds out and throw them away, and the Reading scientists politely pointed out that you are throwing away the good part. So the tomato has been playing a trick on all of us, and I am the only one standing here calling it what it is.

It also explains my whole position better than I ever could have. Every tomato food I love has gotten rid of that texture one way or another. Salsa chops it small. Sauce cooks it down. Soup blends it smooth. The flavor stays and the slime goes, and that is the entire difference between a food I would fight for and a food I push to the side of the plate.

Tomato flavor is all over my kitchen. My baked spaghetti for a crowd starts with a big jar of chunky sauce. My taco cornbread casserole gets a whole can of Rotel. Homemade pizza for a crowd does not happen at our house without a good red sauce. And my chili, which as I have made very clear has no chocolate and no noodles in it, absolutely has tomato sauce in it. Not one of those has ever made me flinch.

Here is the irony. I live in Florida, and Florida is the biggest producer of fresh-market tomatoes in the country, harvesting from fall right through spring. I am surrounded. I also learned that most Florida tomatoes are picked while they are still firm and green, then ripened in special rooms with ethylene — a gas tomatoes make on their own anyway, just given a little help. The University of Florida says that when it is done right, those tomatoes ripen to excellent eating quality. I believe them completely. I am simply not the one who is going to eat them. Meanwhile, the man I married puts tomato wedges on a hot dog on purpose, which is a whole separate hill I have already died on once.

Hill I Will Die On — Tomatoes FAQ

Is the hill I will die on tomatoes about the taste or the texture?

The texture, all the way. I love the way tomatoes taste, and you can see that on half the recipes on this website. What I cannot get past is biting into a raw one and getting that cold, slippery jelly, the same way I cannot get past the texture of cottage cheese.

Isn’t a tomato technically a fruit?

Botanically, yes, and I will not argue with a botanist. But the Supreme Court looked at the question in 1893 and decided that because we eat tomatoes with dinner and not for dessert, they count as a vegetable, and I am siding with the Court. Nobody has ever handed me a tomato for dessert, and if they did, I would hand it right back.

But there is a cucumber tomato salad on your website.

There is, and it is a good one. I make my cucumber tomato salad for Jason, who eats Mediterranean and is very enthusiastic about feta, so he has something fresh on the table. Making it for him and eating the tomatoes out of it are two very different things.

Have you ever had a real homegrown tomato, still warm from the garden?

I knew this one was coming. A homegrown tomato may well taste better than one from the store, and I will take your word for it. It still has the jelly in the middle, and the jelly is the whole problem. Put it in a pot and cook it down, and I will eat every bite.

What about the tomato slice on a burger or a BLT?

Off it comes. The burger is wonderful and the slice goes to the side of the plate, where somebody at my table will happily take it. Put ketchup on that burger instead and I get all the tomato flavor with none of the slime.

So that is the hill I will die on tomatoes, and I admit it is a strange one: I am defending the flavor and refusing the food in the very same breath. I regret nothing. Now tell me in the comments which side you are on. Are you a slice-it-and-salt-it tomato person, or are you up here on this hill with me, happily eating the sauce and pushing the slice to the edge of the plate? And if you have a tomato you think could change my mind, I want to hear about it. I just cannot promise I will eat it.

More Hills Worth Dying On — Strong Food Opinions from Stephanie

• A Hill I Will Die On: Cottage Cheese — I Refuse — the other food I turn down over texture alone.
• The Hill I Will Die On: Hot Dogs Only Want Ketchup and Mustard — where Jason’s Chicago dog shows up wearing tomato wedges and I show up with ketchup.
• The Hill I Will Die On: No Chocolate, No Noodles in My Chili — a pot full of tomato sauce I will gladly eat, and two things that do not belong in it.
• Eggs and Ketchup: The Hill I Will Die On — tomato flavor has its place, and my breakfast plate is not it.
• Every hill, sorted by the kind of argument — all my strong food opinions in one place, or browse them newest first.

The Hill I Will Die On — About Stephanie Longstreth

Stephanie Longstreth is the home cook, mom, and storyteller behind StephanieCooksForACrowd.com. She cooks for a family of seven in Florida — five kids, two cats, and one husband who appreciates a good meal. Four of her children came home through adoption, and family stories are woven into everything she makes and shares. Find her crowd-friendly recipes, weekly meal plans, and real family life on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest @stephaniecooksforacrowd.