The tomato is the most misrepresented ingredient in the British kitchen. Available year-round, mostly from the Netherlands, Spain or Morocco, it has become a staple that people use without particularly expecting anything from it — a thing you put in a sandwich or chop into a sauce without much thought. This is understandable. For ten months of the year, the tomato available in a supermarket offers very little to think about.
For six weeks in late summer — roughly late July to early September, depending on the year and the source — it’s a different ingredient altogether.
What makes a good tomato
Flavour in a tomato comes from the balance of sugars and acids that develop during ripening, and from the aromatic compounds that give different varieties their character. These things require time on the plant, direct sunlight and warm nights. They are almost entirely incompatible with the requirements of commercial tomato production, which prioritises yield, shelf life, uniformity and the ability to withstand several days of refrigerated transport.
A supermarket tomato is bred and grown to survive the journey. A good tomato — from a farm shop, a market, a kitchen garden — is grown to taste of something. The difference is not subtle. A good August tomato sliced thick, salted and left to sit for five minutes is a dish in itself. The same treatment applied to a supermarket tomato in January produces something that tastes primarily of water.
How to use them when they’re good
The first rule: don’t refrigerate them. Cold destroys both the flavour compounds and the texture of a tomato. A good tomato left in the fridge overnight loses the thing that makes it good. Store them at room temperature, stem-side down, and eat them within a few days.
The second rule: salt them and let them sit. Sliced tomatoes seasoned with sea salt and left for ten minutes release liquid and develop an intensity they don’t have straight from the knife. The salt draws out moisture and concentrates the flesh. Whatever you’re going to do with them — eat them as they are, add olive oil and herbs, use them as a base — this resting step improves them significantly.
The third rule: very little else. A plate of good August tomatoes — different varieties if you can find them, some sliced thickly, some left whole — dressed with sea salt, excellent olive oil and torn basil is not a starter or a side. It is the main event for a summer lunch, alongside good bread and perhaps some cheese. This requires confidence in the quality of the ingredient and resistance to the urge to complicate it.
The one cooked application worth doing
Slow-roasting is the exception to the rule that August tomatoes don’t need cooking. Halved tomatoes, cut-side up on a roasting tray, drizzled with olive oil, scattered with thyme and garlic and left in a 160°C oven for an hour, concentrate into something entirely different from what they started as — intensely sweet, slightly caramelised at the edges, collapsing into a thick paste of their own making.
These slow-roasted tomatoes are worth the oven time. They keep for five days in the fridge, improve over that period, and work in ways fresh tomatoes don’t: spooned over ricotta on toast, stirred through pasta, used as the base for a sauce, spooned over baked eggs. In this form, they bridge the gap between summer and the months when good fresh tomatoes are no longer available.
The window
It won’t last. By mid-September, even the best summer tomatoes are thinning out, and by October the season is over. What’s left in the shops after that is the year-round version again — fine for cooking into sauces and braises, where the concentration of heat compensates for what the ingredient itself isn’t providing. But for eating raw, with nothing but salt and oil, the window is short.
Pay attention to it while it’s open.