How to Eat Summer Tomatoes—Thomas Joseph Shares His Favorite Ideas

If you, like me, wait all year for summer tomatoes and can’t get enough of them while they are in season, you’re probably ready for some new ideas for using them. Even we tomato fans can get stuck in a rut, making the same caprese salad or plate of sliced tomatoes again and again. When tomatoes are really good, they don’t need much to shine—but that’s not to say you shouldn’t add other flavors. 

Ahead are some of my favorite ways to use tomatoes. I hope they inspire you to experiment with different salads, branch out with sauce-making, and even try cooking peak-season tomatoes. That might sound wild, but trust me, I think you’ll love the results. 

My Favorite Tomato Salad

My favorite simple side is also my all-time favorite way to use tomatoes. It's the most delicious thing, and I could eat it almost every day—as an accompaniment or even on its own with some crusty bread. It has a tremendous amount of flavor for very few ingredients. All you need is a combination of sliced, wedged, and cherry (or similarly sized) tomatoes with salt, pepper, olive oil, shallot, and capers. It’s a great party trick because it’s so easy to make and feels more special than just a plate of sliced tomatoes with basil. It's also a great foundation for other ingredients—add a delicious cheese like ricotta, burrata, mozzarella, or feta, or adorn it with cured meats or sliced avocado.

Typically, I cut the tomatoes for salad in different ways; I slice heirlooms, halve cherries, and cut medium-sized tomatoes into wedges so the salad has different shapes and the feeling of different textures. It also makes the tomato salad more visually interesting.

Grated Fresh Tomato Sauce

You might not have grated tomatoes before, but you should! I make a no-cook tomato sauce with grated or roughly chopped tomatoes mixed with lots of olive oil and seasonal herbs. Of course, basil is great, but it’s good to switch it up and experiment with mint, chives, thyme, oregano, or even marjoram. I add a tiny bit of grated garlic, and season generously with salt and pepper—that’s it. 

This is great over grilled bread, tossed with pasta, and it makes an excellent—and quick—pizza sauce. You can also serve it as a condiment alongside meaty grilled vegetables (think eggplant or summer squash) or, use it to steam mussels and other shellfish or as a poaching “liquid” to simmer delicate white fish filets in.

As you might expect, grating works well with larger tomatoes and requires peak-season produce. I use a box grater and take half a large tomato, hold it on the skin side, and grate over a bowl. The skin peels back as you grate, and all the tomato flesh and pulp ends up in the bowl, ready to use.

Roasted Tomatoes

Are you shouting at me here—why cook the best tomatoes? I do this because it transforms good tomatoes into something different—and I usually do this when I have a lot of tomatoes to use—it transforms them into something special, it makes them a concentrated flavor bomb!

When I buy summer tomatoes, I usually buy a variety of shapes and sizes, and roasting works with any of them. If I’m roasting cherry tomatoes, I’ll halve them. Larger tomatoes I usually cut into wedges. The key is to roast tomatoes with plenty of olive oil and butter, not submerging them in oil like you do for a tomato confit but using a generous amount. Using butter in addition to olive oil adds depth and richness. Try adding chiles if you’re into heat. A clove or two of sliced garlic is also great, and a splash of aged vinegar at the end is essential to heighten the flavor.

Roasted tomatoes are a delicious element you can use on so many different things. Serve them like a condiment alongside some grilled chicken, fish, or pork, or add to pasta with some cheese for a quick yet flavorful and rich meal. 

Tomatoes With Fruit

Tomatoes work so well with all kinds of fruit. (Yes, I know tomatoes are a fruit, botanically speaking.) Try pairing stone fruits—like cherries, plums, nectarines, peaches, and/or plums or plutots—or melon or mango with tomatoes in salsas, salads, chilled soups, relishes, and chutneys. A composed salad with tomatoes paired with melon or mango is amazing; a gazpacho made with yellow tomatoes and peaches is sublime. If you think pairing tomatoes with other fruits would be too sweet—more dessert than dinner—it’s not. The acidity of the tomatoes compliments the other fruits. Plus, the warm spices of a chutney or the acidic dressing of a salad balances it out nicely.

Tasty Variations on Simple Tomato Sauce

There’s more to cooked tomato sauce than the usual marinara. I like to start with olive oil, onions, garlic, a little tomato paste, and maybe some heat from chiles or red pepper flakes. I use lots and lots of chopped fresh tomatoes. My secret is that I leave the skins on. Most people blanch and peel them; some (Martha included) seed the tomatoes. I’m more rustic, I don’t mind the skins, there's such great flavor, and I don't mind the texture they bring. It also means the sauce is much faster to prep, just chopping the tomatoes into pieces and adding them to the pot with salt, pepper, and maybe sugar, and simmering until the raw taste of the tomatoes has dissipated. I like to break up the big batch and add other flavors to portions of the sauce before I freeze it. You can try:

• Adding a splash of white wine, thyme, and perhaps a little clam juice. This makes a great base for seafood stews or soups.
• Flavoring with harissa, cumin, and cilantro (I would typically use the stems here). This tomato sauce is an excellent base for shakshuka or as the foundational element for a flavorful braise with chicken or lamb or a quick simmer for fish or meatballs.
• Pickled green chiles or chipotle peppers in adobo with cilantro create an excellent simmering sauce for meats and seafood. They can also be added when making rice or beans for deeper flavor.

And because I’m less formal, I don’t food mill my tomato sauce. I like the texture. This is my secret sauce. It helps to pull a meal together quickly, whether on a weeknight or when I’m entertaining.

Preserve, Preserve, Preserve

By now you know how much I love summer tomatoes and might not be surprised to find out I often buy more than I can eat—but I never let them go to waste. I love to preserve tomatoes, but I tend to make concoctions to stash in the freezer to use in the winter rather than canning jars of tomato sauce.

• Grilled, chopped, embellished, and frozen: I’m not a big fan of grilling tomatoes and eating them as is. But I love to grill them to get the charred flavor and then morph them into a sauce or condiment to freeze and use in the winter when I’m missing that grilled flavor. Generally, I use bigger tomatoes for this, so I’m not losing cherry tomatoes between the grates and don’t need to bother getting out a grill tray. I’ll season the tomatoes with thyme, salt, pepper, olive oil, and any other aromatics, then freeze. This makes a great foundational element that can be defrosted, then embellished with fresh herbs, briney ingredients like capers or olives, a splash of vinegar, or just used as is.
• Slow-roasted tomatoes: This is a way I use up tomatoes, whether heirlooms or cherries. It’s easier with bigger tomatoes as they are faster to slice. Just pop them on a cookie sheet, salt them lightly, then roast. A slow roast concentrates the tomato flavor. Once they’re done, cool, stack, and store them in the freezer. You can chop them up for concentrated tomato flavor or keep them as is for use on pizzas, focaccias, etc.