To expect tomotoes to taste

[Sunny67]

I've just had a ham and tomato sandwich for lunch, made with beef tomato. It didn't taste of anything! I've tried salad tomatoes, cherry and vine ripened over the last couple of weeks but might as well have used a sponge. I know it's winter so these are all going to be imported but even so. It's not much better in summer unless I grow my own!
Whinge over!

This is what the internet was designed for.

They're absolute rubbish aren't they, like watery pulp with a hint of tomato! Even the ones bought in season aren't much better, and certainly not a fraction of the flavour of the cherry tomatoes I've grown myself.

Modern mass produced/farmed muck. The mission statement:

"Make it weigh as much as possible, so we can charge low £/Kg and still make a buck."

IN come watery (water weighs a lot) easily planted and grown veg that can grow in high densities

OUT go flavour taste and texture.

Does anyone remember "Sungold" tomatoes ? Amazingly nice (I write as a salad dodger). Disappeared off the face of the earth (so much for supermarket "choice" - but that's another rant). Why ? Because they're too expensive to sell in a mass market.

Last year we tried every tomato variety from Sainsburys, Tesco, Asda and Waitrose. All identically bland pap. This year, when we have the patio sorted, we may just order some to grow ourselves.

if you keep the vine ripened toms on your windowsill it should pep them up a bit.

home grown are the best though.

They're grown 8n poly tunnels or indoors with specific levels of (weak) nutrients. It does lead to bland (if uniform) fruit.

*in

Don't eat them straight out of the fridge. Eat them at room temp. They're still crap, but not quite as crap.
Sainsbury's Taste the Difference are nice , but grow your own are best.

Stuff grown out of season usually tastes a bit meh.It may help if you don't refrigerate tomatoes.

I know, they're just wet, soggy and ghastly. I bet their food value is zilch.
We grow hundreds of tomatoes in our greenhouse in the summer, several varieties, and they're heavenly. No comparison.

Well if you're eating tomatoes in January you really can't moan that they're tasteless! They're were probably picked weeks/months ago and stored on racks in ripening rooms. Just eat things that are in season if you want the benefit of full flavour.

Having spent time living in the Canaries, the tomatoes yiu can buy there are completely different, they aren't the same size, have lumps and bumps and aren't a uniform colour. We are sold pretty ones but I'd swap for flavour any day. As I said at the beginning, I know it's January but they aren't much better in July.

Aren't a lot of tomatoes in British Supermarkets grown in Thanet Earth these days.

YANBU, but it would appear that the only way to get tomatoes that taste of anything in the UK would be to either grow your own, or buy them straight from small producers when they are in season and are grown 'naturally'.

YY to Spanish tomatoes tasting better, but we're generally so conditioned to seeing perfect appearance over taste, that they probably wouldn't sell in UK supermarkets even if they did stock them.

Avoid Dutch tomatoes. They are grown in a horrid way. There is one plant that is grown so that it produces thousands of tomatoes. Obviously the more there are the more diluted the flavour and nutrients.

Try to get Italian or Spanish tomatoes but only when they're in season.

Morrisons sell 'heirloom' tomatoes- the bulge-y deeply flavoured ones you tend to find in France and Spain. I like them so much I also grew them last year, one plant gave me about 50 fruit (it would have been more but I dug it up after it took over the herb patch, it was the size of a bush!). I keep mine in a fruit bowl rather than the fridge.

Tomatoes just do not taste the way they used to. At the moment, the best I can find are the vine ripened tomatoes in Aldi (the ones with a bit of stalk attached to them) but even they are not like what my grandfather grew. His tomatoes (cherry and ordinary size) were divine. One variety was Ailsa Craig but can you find them now? No, of course not. Older people know what tomatoes should taste like but certainly not the supermarket chiefs because they are too young to know. My way of shopping for tomatoes (apart from Aldi's) is to ignore the shiny ones and choose those that are not shiny and have a matt finish. They taste better.

Keep them in the fruit bowl instead of the fridge and put a little sea salt on them before you eat them.
Best plan is to grow your own though that won't help much in the winter!

I used to like them sliced up with olive oil and basil. But it's been ages since I had a decent tomato. Roll on June.

The reason that supermarket toms taste bland, even the supposed organic ones, is that they are grown in water, not soil. Hydroponics.

I bloody hate supermarket tomatoes.

and both Ailsa Craig and Sungold [an F1 variety] are available as seeds.

There was an article on the radio about this a few months ago. The tastelessness of modern tomatoes is because they have been kept at too low a temperature, which destroys the flavour compounds in the fruit. Once destroyed, these compounds can't be revived, but if you cook with them you should include a tomato that has not been chilled to get a rich tomato flavour. I would imagine that most tomatoes you can get from supermarkets have been chilled at some point, so the only way of ensuring a tasty tom is to grow them yourself! Also, don't keep them in the fridge.

A bit like everything else. Broccoli and cauliflower taste of nothing as well. So depressing.

The supermarket label that always makes me :o is "slicing tomatoes".

Okaaay.

There was an article in the Telegraph (I think) in the past few days about how to use a fridge, one of the points was that you should never store tomatoes in a fridge because it destroys the flavour.

You're getting the tomatoes that you want. Shoppers pick the prettiest red, round blemish free fruit. So that's what supermarkets sell, so that's what growers grow. Looks and shelf life are way more important than taste, and it's all consumer led.

Dont refidgerate. put them in sunlight for 10 mins before you eat them.
do this with mushrooms too.

It's really worth having a go at growing them yourself. I grow mine in pots (as I live in a flat) and, even with a north facing shady patch they still taste far better than anything you can buy in the supermarkets. Even if they do have an annoying habit of all becoming ripe the day before you leave on holiday . There are small bush tomatoes that are designed to be grown in pots or hanging baskets. I've successfully raised these indoors on a windowsill.