Annie's salsa.

Second Annie's salsa.

Fried green tomatoes are really delicious. Slice the green tomoto into 1/4 inch thick slices. After you have the amount you would like sliced, take a half cup of flour and several tablespoons of cornmeal and place in a shallow dish and add a pinch of salt. Stir to combine. Then place several tablespoons of flour on a plate and spread out. Next get a shallow bowl and place an egg in it and beat the egg. Place the containers of flour, beaten egg, and flour/cornmeal mix near your frying station. Get your frying station(skillet or deep fryer ready and start. Take one sliced tomato and dip in the plain flour. Coat both sides shaking off the excess flour. Then placed floured tomato in the beaten egg, coat both sides with egg and allow excess egg to drain off. Next place egged tomato onto the flour/cornmeal plate. Coat both sides and then place in hot skillet or deep fryer . Make sure the oil is hot. Fry only one or two at a time till golden brown. Do not walk away from them, they cook quickly. after cooking , drain on a paper towel lined plate. To keep cooked slices warm , place paper towel lined plate in oven after oven is barely turned on to low and allowed to heat while you prep your work area prior to frying. After oven is warmed up, turn off the oven. The remaining heat will keep the cooked slices warm. They taste the best when eaten hot.

I just slice the tomato, dredge in plain flout ( no salt as it draws out moisture) and fry in a mix of oil and butter....just 1/8 inch in the bottom of the pan....then salt and pepper and eat.
The flavor is not the same if there is any pink on the tomato....just solid green!
They will ripen better if you spread them out...
Linda c

I'm with Linda, although my mother uses all cornmeal. And I don't fry them a few slices at a time as my family will have salivated all over my kitchen floor by then! LOL I use a very large cast iron skillet (AKA "The Equalizer" LOL)and cover the bottom of the skillet with them, edges touching (only one layer). If you have bacon drippings and don't have to watch your cholesterol, use that to fry in. Lay the slices in about 1/8 inch of hot fat. It lends a baconey flavor that's really good. Watch the edges of the tomato slices and as each one begins to turn brown around the edges, use a turning fork to spear it and gently turn it over.

To some, fried green tomatoes is an acquired taste. If there is pink inside the tomato, you can still fry it. It will still taste good. The riper the tomato, the more delicate it will be during frying.

Don't leave the tomatoes in the buckets as the top ones will weigh down the bottom ones. They'll crack and start to spoil. Line them up on a surface, maybe covered with newspaper, with the cores down until the bottom half of the tomato has turned red, then turn it over with the core up to finish ripening. Some people wrap them in newspaper and pack them carefully in boxes but I have never done that as one bad tomato in the bunch can spoil a lot of them and the stench is not attractive, either. Also keep them out of the sun. People used to believe putting tomatoes to ripen in the sun helped the process but the only thing it really helps them do is spoil early.

There are lots of things you can do with fresh tomatoes -- freeze whole (cored first), make soup or juice, make tomato preserves, salsa, marinara sauce, enchilada sauce, etc., etc.

Hope this helps! --Ilene

Annie will hopefully pop in here...I saw her mention that she breads her green maters and then freezes them.

And her salsa is delish..

as far as ripening in the bucket..yes they will...but....the ones on the bottom with ripen faster than the ones on the top and soon you'll have tomato 'juice' pooling..Best to atleast put them in a single layer or 2 at the most.

No, Terri, I don't bread the tomatoes first. I slice the green ones, freeze on a baking sheet, then package in ziplock bags. I don't thaw before cooking them, I just bread them and fry them frozen. If you thaw first, they are a mushy mess!

I always spread the tomatoes out to ripen, because it's easier and less messy to sort out the ones that spoil before they ripen and because the ones on the bottom of the bucket either get smushed or a hole gets poked in them from the stem of another and that leads to spoilage.

This year I've canned tomatoes plain, tomatoes stewed, KatieC's roasted tomato and basil soup and salsa. I still have tomatoes on the picnic table, but it's going to be the last picking, I think.

Annie

oh okay...well I knew you did something with them..LOL
Glad you popped in to set my mind straight! LOL

Chili sauce - this stuff is so good with meatloaf.

Boil together 24 ripe tomatoes, three small hot peppers or a half teaspoonful of cayenne pepper, one onion cut fine, half a cup of sugar. Boil until thick; then add two cups of vinegar; strain, set back on the burner and add a tablespoon of salt, and a teaspoon each of ginger, allspice, cloves and cinnamon; boil for 5 minutes.

Hi GardenWeber.
You've gotten lots of good recipe ideas here, but I'd just like to add my two cents worth. (:

Jackie Clay is a garden/canning expert who writes for Backwoods Home Magazine.
I followed her tips for ripening tomatoes and found them to be exceptionally successful.
Just spread the green and underripened tomatoes out in a dark place. One layer. No sunlight. Do not refrigerate.
They ripen and taste just like vined ripened tomatoes.
My garden is a couple miles from where I live. This method allowed me to pick tomatoes every few days and still enjoy fully ripened flavor.

Try it. It really works.
Cream

Tomato preserves are the best! That is what I would do with the ripe ones. The green ones? I would eat every single one of them fried...dipped in egg, then in corn flake crumbs. With a little sour cream on the side. Heaven!! They wouldn't have a chance to get ripe.

If you cook them into sauce, you may have less than you think. ;-) I had a 25 lb box of tomatoes, so I peeled, seeded, then cooked them down 'to make spaghetti sauce to freeze.' By the time they were cooked down, we had enough for one big batch of spaghetti! We probably used about 5 lbs of the tomatoes for other things, but what looked like SO many tomatoes, ended up to be less than 4 qts of sauce.

It was fun, though...Especially because my boys were intrigued with the process of quickly boiling then dunking them in ice water to watch the peels come loose, and came in to help me.

During WWII my mother grew tomatoes in her victory garden plot and made them all into tomato jam. As the other family's crops came in, she swapped last year's jam for fresh vegetables. She continued to make at least one batch every year until Alzheimer's took her ten years ago. I continue to make it in her memory - and because it is really really good.

2 more buckets of tomatoes....I'm on auto pilot...I dunked and peeled tham...or rather Am peeling them...ongoing prpcess...
Added about 1/2 a head of chopped cekery and a huge onion....intend to fill the pot with tomatoes....oh and added a quart of chicken broth nearing the use by date.
Think I'll also add a big jar or roasted red peppers....some garlic, lots of basil and am thinking of adding some cooked chicken near the end...
Think I'll call it "hunter's soup"...don't know why...and a little hot peppers.....amybe the rest of that bottle of merlot from sunday...or maybe I'll just drink the wine and take a nap!!
Linda C..."matered out"....but I know that come January...