Quantcast
What To Do With Green Tomatoes—Including Recipes! | Almanac.com

What To Do With Green Tomatoes—Including Recipes!

Subhead

How to ripen or use in green tomato recipes!

If your green tomatoes never turned red, all is not lost! Green tomatoes can often be ripened indoors—or, made into delicious recipes. We’ll show you how to do both—including recipes for fried green tomatoes, salsa, chutney, relish, and more. 

Harvesting Green Tomatoes

Let’s start with the gardeners who are harvesting the tomatoes. After months nurturing your tomato plants it can be disheartening to have lots of unripe fruits that need harvesting before the weather turns or blight strikes. But there’s no point leaving them on the plant if frost is pending or they’re no longer ripening on the vine. If you’re completely done for the year, cut down the entire vine but be gentle in handling the fruits. 

The next step is to check through our haul of fruits. Any fruits showing signs of blight damage should be removed and discarded. They won’t keep and won’t make good eating either. Any fruits that are simply damaged should be set aside for immediate use.

Now separate your healthy, clean tomatoes into two piles.

  1. Tomatoes that have are showing any hint of color, usually at the blossom end of the fruit, have a good chance of ripening indoors, off the vine. Full-sized, darker green fruits may also ripen but will take a little longer – up to several weeks.
  2. Our second pile of tomatoes are paler green. There’s next to no chance of these ripening to maturity, so we’ll be using them up in some green tomato recipes later on. 
Unripened green tomatoes on the vine
Unripened green tomatoes. 
Credit: Valery Rybakow

How to Ripen Green Tomatoes  

So how do you ripen tomatoes without them being attached to the plant? One of the simplest ways to do this is to place them in a paper bag or lidded cardboard box along with a ripe banana. Most ripe fruits give off ethylene gas, which speeds the ripening of nearby fruits, and bananas are especially good at emitting ethylene. It’s a common misconception that tomatoes need sunlight to ripen – it’s actually warmth that does the trick!

Fruits already showing some color will ripen just fine simply left on the countertop at room temperature, out of direct sunshine. But again, adding that banana will help to speed things along.

If you have lots of green tomatoes, you can stagger ripening by keeping the bulk of your underripe tomatoes in a cool, dark and – crucially – dry place to reduce the risk of them going moldy. Aim for a temperature of around 50 to 55 Fahrenheit, or 10-13 Celsius and then, when you need them, bring them up to room temperature to ripen up.

Check out our video on ripening green tomatoes for more tips.

Fried-Green Tomatoes

That’s our ripening hopefuls sorted. Now onto using up our other green tomatoes, starting with a Southern soul food classic: fried-green tomatoes. These firm, underripe tomatoes are perfect for this as they’ll hold their shape when fried.

 Fried Green Tomatoes on a plate
 Fried Green Tomatoes. 
Credit: Cartela/Shutterstock

Let’s get cooking! Start with three bowls: one filled with a quarter cup or around 30 grams of plain or all-purpose flour, one with two beaten eggs, and the third with another quarter cup of flour mixed with a half cup or 65 grams of cornmeal. If you can’t find cornmeal, polenta will do, and I like to add a good pinch of cayenne pepper to this mix for a spicy kick.

Prepare the tomatoes – this recipe uses three or four standard-sized fruits. Slice them into quarter-inch or half-centimeter-thick slices then season both sides with salt and pepper.

Now the fun part! Dust each slice in the flour, shake off the excess, then dip it into the egg. Allow any excess to drip off, then coat in the cornmeal mix. Repeat for each slice, keeping one hand for the dry coatings, and the other for the wet.

Pour a quarter-inch or half-centimeter layer of oil into a frying pan or heavy-bottomed skillet. Heat the oil up so it’s nice and hot, then lay the tomato slices into the oil. Fry till the undersides are golden brown then flip them over to fry off the topside. Each side should take a couple of minutes. Fry in a single layer, in batches, and remove the fried slices onto a paper towel-lined plate to soak up the excess oil. Enjoy your crunchy fried green tomatoes with a hot sauce, salsa, or as an accompaniment to other fried meats or shrimp. Just yum!

See the Southern Fried Green Tomatoes recipe.

Green Tomato Chutney 

How about something besides frying? Green tomato chutney is an old English classic. Pop it onto crackers, serve with cheeses, dollop onto curries, or give it away as the perfect home-grown gift! It’s simple to make because all the ingredients are simply boiled up in a single, heavy-bottomed saucepan or stockpot.

green tomato chutney
Green tomato chutney makes a great gift!


And here are the ingredients: 4 cups or approximately one liter of chopped green tomatoes, a diced green pepper, 2 chopped-up apples or pears, an optional hot chili pepper, chopped, one medium diced onion, 3 cloves of minced garlic, 2 tablespoons of fresh ginger, minced, the rind and juice of one large lemon, half a cup or 120ml of white or rice wine vinegar, half a cup or 120ml of sugar, a half teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of coriander seeds, 2 teaspoons of mustard seeds, and – almost there! – a quarter teaspoon each of cinnamon, allspice, and turmeric. 

Warm it all up on medium to high heat, stirring continuously until it comes to a boil. Once it does, turn down the heat to low and simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour until the chutney’s reduced to a pleasingly thick consistency. Don’t forget to stir it from time to time so it doesn’t stick, especially as it thickens. Spoon the chutney into hot, sterilized jars and leave to cool. Keep the chutney in the refrigerator for up to two weeks or, to extend the lifespan of your chutney to up to two years, process it in a water bath. See our guide on water bath canning if you’ve never done it before.

Green Tomato Salsa

A similar recipe is for green tomato salsa. Here’s a recipe that is simple and fresh tasting! It’s so delicious with chips, added to BLT or quesadilla, served with catfish or meat, served over a roasted sweet potato, with buttered cornbread, or atop cream cheese and crackers.

See out Green Tomato Salsa Recipe.

Green tomato salsa.
Green tomato salsa. 
Credit: Plateresca/Shutterstock

Green Tomato Relish

Consider using your green tomatoes in chowchow or piccalilli, basically, relishes consisting of cabbage, green tomatoes, and a whole variety of fresh vegetables. Excellent on burgers and with baked beans. These were great depression recipes where everything was used for something and meals could be far between. See our Green Tomato Relish recipe

Green tomato relish.
Green tomato relish. 
Credit: Chatham172/Shutterstock

Piccalilli Recipe

Piccalilli is a pickled relish made of a mixture of minced vegetables seasoned with vinegar, salt, and pickling spices. It’s great on burgers, brats, and sandwiches! See Piccalilli recipe.

homemade Piccalilli
 Piccalilli. 
Credit: Jamie Roger/Shutterstock

Speaking of sandwiches, you can always just cut up a tangy green tomato for your sandwiches! We like fig jam; some folks just enjoy mayo.

Green tomatoes on a toasted ham sandwich.
Green tomatoes on a toasted ham sandwich. 
Credit: Anna Tarasova/Shutterstock.

Do you have any green tomato recipes? We’d welcome more ideas! Please share the recipe in the comments below for our Almanac readers!

About The Author

Catherine Boeckmann

Catherine Boeckmann loves nature, stargazing, and gardening so it’s not surprise that she and The Old Farmer’s Almanac found each other. She leads digital content for the Almanac website, and is also a certified master gardener in the state of Indiana. Read More from Catherine Boeckmann

No content available.

John (not verified)

8 months 4 weeks ago

The dad of one of my best friends was an avid gardener. Every year at the end of the season, he made green tomato pies. They were like very tart apple pies, and I always looked forward to it. Really good stuff.

Folks, we’ve updated the recipes on this page; all should work now. Enjoy!

Esther Leonard (not verified)

2 years 6 months ago

I used to help my mother make Green Tomato Mincemeat, but I have never made it myself. There is no actual meat in it, but it does call for suet which rises to the top when the mincemeat is sealed in jars. Suet helps preserve the mincemeat in the same way that wax preserves jams and jellies.

Jacquie Reid (not verified)

2 years 6 months ago

I'm definitely going to try some of your suggestions on green tomatoes . . . possibly the chutney. Also, pickled tomatoes have been suggested.

I have a very small veggie patch, with not a lot of sun because of a giant Norway Maple (:( ) and a neighbour's fence . . . but I'm trying. :)