Today, food scientist Ali Bouzari joins Epicurious to demonstrate how to transform the humble tomato to level up your cooking. From tomato water to the skin, Bouzari shows you all the ways to use every part of a tomato turning it into a culinary Swiss army knife.
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00:00This is more than a tomato.
00:03It's a Swiss army knife.
00:04It's got a bunch of different tools.
00:10It's got water, sugar, acids, umami, color, jammy carbs,
00:15fibrous carbs, and of course, aroma.
00:18Today, let's take a look at what a tomato can do for you.
00:23So every technique that we're looking at today
00:25works for any kind of tomato,
00:27but there are a couple of techniques
00:28that I turn to specifically
00:30when I have kind of crappy tomatoes.
00:33Step one, char them.
00:34Take them, put them into a rippin' hot cast iron pan,
00:38and let them get blistered and charred.
00:40What's going on is you have a little bit
00:42of evaporation of moisture.
00:43You're basically concentrating a little bit
00:46of the tomatoey goodness that they have locked inside.
00:48You're also using some of those sugars and amino acids
00:51to kickstart browning.
00:52You're gonna get little charred and blackened spots
00:55that will start to create a little bit more depth of flavor,
00:57earthiness, nuttiness, things that are low-key
01:01in the background of a really good
01:03peak season ripe tomato.
01:04So you could stop right around here,
01:06and already you've got like the perfect antipasti tomato.
01:11Like a little bit of salt, some olive oil,
01:13put that in a bowl and have people spoon it out.
01:15Or if you want something that can be
01:17a little bit more mushy, you can leave them in the pan.
01:19And what I like to do is actually season them with salt.
01:22What will happen is you'll get this really melty,
01:25very unique, concentrated tomato experience
01:28that you wouldn't otherwise,
01:29especially in the dead of winter,
01:31in a place where tomatoes are not currently in season.
01:33You can also take baby tomatoes,
01:35and you can do pickled whole tomatoes.
01:37They basically become almost like olives.
01:39You can take really any tomato you want
01:41and mix it with some vinegar and wine
01:43and make your own tomato vinegar.
01:45Another great medium is oil.
01:47Throw some tomatoes in a pot of oil,
01:48throw it on the back of the stove
01:50on the lowest possible heat for an hour.
01:51What you will get at the end of that hour
01:53is confit tomatoes, which are melting and delicious
01:56and roasty and wonderful that you can use then
01:59as a flavored oil for whatever else you want to use.
02:02Let's say that you really want sliced tomatoes on a sandwich
02:05but you are cursed with this.
02:08There is a get out of jail free card that you can pull
02:12if you so desire.
02:13This is the ketchup pickled tomato.
02:15Start with four parts ketchup.
02:17So the idea is we want sweetness, savoriness,
02:21umami, aroma.
02:23We want all of those things built back
02:25into this disgraceful mess.
02:28One part soy sauce.
02:29The key here is soy sauce, fish sauce, shiro dashi,
02:34the most umami substance that you have in your kitchen,
02:37straight in there.
02:38And then one part vinegar, whisk it together,
02:41and then leave them in solitary confinement
02:44for like 30 minutes.
02:46When you pull these out of that marinade
02:48and put them onto a burger, it is a revelation.
02:51Another thing you can do is take advantage of the fact
02:53that they're kind of flavor sponges.
02:55All of those pectiny jammy carbs that are helpful
02:58for thickening and creating tomato jerky
03:01are also really good at trapping scents, trapping aromas.
03:05Tomatoes love smoke.
03:08So you take a grill and you're basically gonna wanna make
03:11sure that the tomatoes are away from the smoke source
03:13and able to capture all of the smoke slowly
03:17because the goal for that is not to char them
03:19but simply to perfume them.
03:21Smoked tomato ketchup is one of my favorite condiments
03:23to make at home.
03:24Smoked tomato soup.
03:25I really like making smoked tomato jam.
03:28Yeah, smoke.
03:29Turns out it's good.
03:30Next up, tomato water.
03:32Tomatoes are like 95% water.
03:35If you're getting a tomato from a grocery store in December,
03:37it's like a million percent water.
03:38If you zoomed in on a tomato with a microscope,
03:41you'd see something that looked kind of like a honeycomb.
03:43There's a bunch of cells with walls
03:46that are holding them together.
03:48And inside each of those cells is a bunch of water.
03:50To get that water out, there's a lot of different approaches
03:52and each approach gives you different tools to work with.
03:55The simplest way that I like to get water out of a tomato
03:58is to chop them coarsely, salt them,
04:00and beat them up a little bit.
04:02If you let chopped, salted tomatoes sit
04:04for like 15, 20 minutes,
04:05you'll eventually get something like this.
04:07Water everywhere.
04:09The way you turn it into a usable tool is to strain it.
04:11This is tomato water.
04:13So tomato water is awesome.
04:17It's sour, it's sweet, it's got a lot of umami.
04:21It's really, really aromatic and smells like tomatoes.
04:24And if you salted the tomatoes to get the water out,
04:27it's also salty.
04:28This is like your do-it-all base
04:30for at least 15 things you can do with a tomato.
04:32First thing you can do with this tomato water,
04:34make salad dressing.
04:35It works great as a substitute
04:37for about half the vinegar in your vinaigrette.
04:39It also is great when you need to thin out
04:41a really creamy ranch or Caesar dressing.
04:44You can use it as a broth base,
04:46truly just like salt and tomato water
04:48is itself instant broth.
04:50You can then use this as the water
04:52that you start extracting vegetables and bones
04:55and anything that you want to build your own broth.
04:57You can use it as a pickling liquid.
04:59You can use it as a brining liquid.
05:01You can use it for ceviche.
05:03Key ingredient for any ceviche is some source of acid.
05:05Citrus, vinegar, those things can sometimes get overwhelming.
05:09Tomato has a lot of acid in it,
05:11but tomato water is a great source of a more mild acid.
05:14So replace about half the citrus juice
05:17in your ceviche base with tomato water,
05:19and you'll get something
05:20that feels a little bit more universal.
05:22A poaching liquid for fish and eggs
05:25and anything else you want.
05:26If you poach something like eggs in tomato water,
05:29now instead of just a heat transfer medium,
05:32you get the opportunity to infuse umami,
05:35sweetness, sourness, and aroma
05:37in what otherwise would be a pretty plain base of your dish.
05:40It's also great as a marinade carrier.
05:42This is a do-it-all liquid
05:44for anything that you want to start in the kitchen.
05:46So let's use that superpower in an egg wash.
05:49So one of the things I like to do
05:50is whisk an egg with a little bit of tomato water.
05:53What this gives us is it ramps up the browning power.
05:56So we get things a little bit more brown.
05:59Honestly, pretzels are great.
06:00This helps make everything feel like a pretzel.
06:02It also gives you more umami, which is amazing on anything.
06:06And the acidity in a tomato helps to cut through
06:09some of the starchy fattiness
06:11of your average biscuit or roast chicken
06:13or whatever you're brushing this on,
06:14which keeps you coming back for more.
06:16You can use this exactly like you would any other egg wash.
06:19Apply liberally before going into the oven.
06:22Using the magic of television,
06:24we have some that are already baked.
06:25It smells like roasted tomatoes
06:28and it tastes like more than just a regular biscuit.
06:32That's great.
06:34That's really good.
06:36You should try this.
06:37It's like a biscuit, but pretzel-y.
06:41Right, it's like savory.
06:42It's got that almost to the edge of too brown.
06:45Next up, tomato beurre monte.
06:47There's a bunch of different versions of this.
06:49I'm gonna start with the simplest one.
06:50We'll build from there.
06:51Basically, you take chopped butter, unsalted butter,
06:54so you can have control of how much salt you wanna add,
06:56and melt it in a pot.
06:57It's time to replace that water with tomato water.
06:59Not only is the tomato here giving you sweetness, umami,
07:04really, really nice tomato aroma,
07:06it's also bringing a little bit
07:08of extra emulsifying power to the table
07:10than you would have with just the butter or water alone.
07:13You can keep this quite watery
07:15if you wanna use it as a cooking medium.
07:18We talked about poaching earlier.
07:19Butter poaching in tomato beurre monte
07:22is what it feels like to be drunk with power.
07:25It's great.
07:26So at this point, we've evaporated enough of the water out
07:29that the emulsion has weakened and is on the verge of breaking.
07:32If you wanna use this, let's say for like a pasta sauce
07:35or for something to glaze a piece of roast chicken
07:38that just came out of the oven,
07:39take it off the heat,
07:40and you can add some cold butter back into the mix.
07:43You can basically just swirl that in.
07:45This is also great if you wanna use it
07:47for glazing vegetables.
07:49It's great if you wanna use it for cooking seafood
07:52or shellfish really slowly in a poaching liquid.
07:55All right, the version of liquid tomatoes
07:57that most people are familiar with is pureed tomatoes.
07:59You can absolutely take quartered tomatoes,
08:02put them in a food processor or blender,
08:04and give them a buzz.
08:06There's all kinds of pectin and different kinds of fiber.
08:09There's a lot of structure that's getting lost in here
08:12that's making it thick and kind of pucky.
08:15Tomato puree is good for stews and sauce bases
08:19and for making tomato fruit leather
08:22and things where a bunch of solids are helpful,
08:24but there's a lot of applications
08:26where that gritty, mealy, coarse texture of tomato puree
08:30isn't actually what you want.
08:31A nice middle ground is to use a cheese grater.
08:33You take your tomato and you grate it like it's Parmesan.
08:37So after grating, we have really opened up
08:41the holes in that honeycomb to let water out quickly.
08:44If you salted this, it would accelerate it even more,
08:47and in just a couple minutes,
08:49you would get a lot of really nice, usable tomato water.
08:53And the key is you haven't completely destroyed
08:56all of the cells in the tomato,
08:57so it doesn't become this homogenous puree.
09:00You're still able to effectively separate out
09:01all the solids from all the liquids,
09:04which gives us more tools to work with.
09:05Obviously, tomato does well in savory circumstances.
09:08Let's talk about a couple of sweet applications.
09:11So sweet-slash-savory caramel,
09:14but with tomato water as an enhancer.
09:17Most caramel recipes tell you to start with sugar,
09:21usually something like honey or corn syrup,
09:24and then almost every caramel recipe
09:26will tell you to start by diluting everything with water.
09:30Water plus.
09:31What caramel does is it takes the sweetness of sugar
09:34and it seasons it with other stuff
09:36that makes it more complex and interesting.
09:38So instead of just sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet,
09:41your brain gets to enjoy sweet, nutty, sour, bitter,
09:45a little bit of cheesy, sometimes funky, fishy.
09:49All of those aromas and all of those tastes in small doses
09:53create something that feels like a kaleidoscope
09:55instead of just looking out a plain window.
09:56When you add tomato into the mix,
09:58you're basically amplifying all of those notes
10:00that I just said.
10:01And also the fact that tomatoes have a lot of umami
10:04and they're savory means that this is a caramel
10:07that you could either cook and finish
10:10and put on chocolate cake,
10:12or it's something that you could season
10:13with a little bit of extra salt
10:14and go right back into Brussels sprouts
10:17or brushing it on chicken drumsticks
10:19when you're grilling them on the grill
10:20or brush them onto a duck breast
10:22if you're trying to get it super glassy and crispy.
10:24It's a little bit of a do-it-all.
10:25Now is the perfect time to add soy sauce or fish sauce,
10:30whatever your favorite savory condiment is.
10:31And then all of a sudden this becomes barbecue sauce plus.
10:35When you have fully cooked meat,
10:37lacquer this on top, you can make like tomato flan.
10:40You can use it as a swirl in for a cookie
10:43or for an ice cream.
10:45You could even make granola.
10:46So not only is it a super flavorful caramel,
10:49but it becomes weirdly even more versatile
10:51when using tomato water
10:52instead of just regular water as the base.
10:54One of my favorite beverages to make with tomato water
10:58is a simple play on bitters and soda.
11:00So typically you've got your bitters on ice,
11:04a little bit of tomato water and some soda.
11:08Garnish with a lime and a pinch of salt and hydrate.
11:13This works great as a non-alcoholic cocktail.
11:16This also works great as an excuse to drink vodka.
11:19That's like really good.
11:21I'm just gonna keep that with me.
11:25One of the most overlooked and honestly maligned
11:28useful tools that you can get from a tomato is the skin.
11:31There is so much of the aroma
11:32and the color of a tomato locked up in the skin.
11:34I kind of hate the boiling water blanch
11:36and ice bath method of taking tomato skins off,
11:39but it is one way to do it.
11:40And it's a good way if you don't have a lot of equipment.
11:42So let's show it right now.
11:44Cut an X in the top of the tomato,
11:46the side opposite the stem,
11:48and then we're ready to go into boiling water
11:49and leave it in there for about one to two minutes.
11:52The goal is to start to see the skin loosening away
11:55from the rest of the body of the tomato.
11:56These have been in for a few seconds.
11:58The plant glue, the plant cement is starting to loosen.
12:01Put it in your ice bath.
12:03The reason everybody in culinary school
12:05is taught to go into an ice bath
12:07is to try as much as possible to keep the aroma,
12:10the taste, the texture of everything deeper than the skin
12:14as similar to raw as possible.
12:16It doesn't work great,
12:17but it is a good way to get the tomatoes
12:20to be at a more friendly handling temperature.
12:23So once cool enough to handle,
12:25take the tomato out of the ice bath
12:27and you can simply peel away the skin.
12:29This skin is gold.
12:31It's full of the jammy carbs,
12:33that plant cement, plant glue
12:35that we're referring to as pectin.
12:37It also has a lot of fibers
12:38and those fibrous carbs
12:40are really good at making things crispy.
12:41If you wanna get the seeds and skin
12:43separate from all the water and pulp,
12:45the number one most efficient best way is a food mill.
12:48If you use the smallest gauge,
12:50you can just grind whole tomatoes in it
12:52and it will trap the seeds and skin up top
12:54and it'll allow all the water and the pulp to pass through.
12:57And then inside the mill itself,
12:59we have skin and seeds and all the innards,
13:03but don't throw the pulp and water away.
13:05This is basically your classic tomato puree.
13:07If you're looking to make sofrito,
13:09you can also use this in a sorbet or an ice cream.
13:13You can also turn this into your own tomato paste,
13:15but enough about all that nonsense.
13:17We're here to see some skin.
13:18Tomato skins are great for dehydrating.
13:22If you don't have a dehydrator, no worries.
13:24You can do this in a home oven.
13:26You can also do it if you have
13:27like a tabletop convection oven.
13:29And this is also one of the best applications
13:31for an air fryer.
13:32And what you get after they're dehydrated
13:33just for an hour or two is a tomato skin chip,
13:37which you can eat like a chip.
13:40It's got a really lovely, delicate, crispy texture,
13:43very similar to like nori if you have like seaweed chips.
13:45And you can put this on a sandwich.
13:47I think every sandwich in the United States and beyond
13:49is better with chips inside of it.
13:51You can also grind them up and use them as a way
13:54to give some more structure and dimension
13:56to like a fried chicken breadcrumb coating.
13:58These are great in a salad.
14:00These are also great if they're fully ground up
14:02into a tomato powder,
14:04which is what we're gonna look at next.
14:05Basically, you're gonna start with dehydrated tomatoes
14:08and a spice grinder.
14:09Load them in, put the top on, and grind.
14:13So after a couple of whirls,
14:17we're starting to get to a powder,
14:18but you can see that there's still a couple of pieces
14:21that are kind of floating.
14:22So what I'll do is add a little pinch of salt.
14:25A pinch of salt in that grinder
14:27will help mash the tomato chips up even more
14:30so that they have a chance to hit the blades of the grinder.
14:32Tomato powder.
14:33This is one of the most useful, versatile things
14:36that you can have in your kitchen.
14:37French fries are a perfect application for tomato powder.
14:40Hot, crispy potato, some tomato powder or tomato salt,
14:44and then toss.
14:45You have tomato-seasoned potatoes that won't go soggy,
14:49which makes this ideal
14:51for if you wanted to make tomato pasta or steak sauce
14:55or use them in place of bonito flakes in making dashi.
14:59You can use tomato skins, tomato powder, and kelp,
15:03and have a delicious, deeply satisfying,
15:06rich umami broth base.
15:08["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"]
15:09Tomato skins and seeds aren't the only thing
15:12that you can put into a dehydrator.
15:13So early in the process,
15:14like a one-hour dehydrated tomato slice,
15:17I think is one of the perfect things to put on a sandwich.
15:20The mid-range, like a couple hours in the dehydrator,
15:23this jammy tomato is very similar to the jammy egg
15:26that we all got obsessed with in the late aughts.
15:28And this is great if you want to puree it
15:31for a situation where you would otherwise use tomato puree
15:35but don't have the time or the opportunity
15:38to allow water to evaporate.
15:39Puree this up, and you go straight
15:42into the jammy, creamy tomato zone
15:44that you want with your aioli.
15:45This is also, in my opinion, the ideal starting place
15:49for something like a tomato pie.
15:51This can also be taken to the extreme
15:52where if you take a bunch
15:53of slightly thinner-sliced jammy tomatoes,
15:56dress them with olive oil and salt,
15:57it basically becomes a delicious tomato carpaccio.
16:00This is also one of my favorite places to start
16:03if you're gonna thicken a sauce with tomatoes,
16:05which is why this is also a great thing
16:07to incorporate into soups,
16:09or if you want to make a tomato cream
16:11that also works well on pizza
16:13if you're an absolute decadent degenerate.
16:15It also is a great thing to fold into risotto
16:18and anything that's creamy and brothy
16:20and needs a little body right at the end.
16:22You can also take tomato skin
16:24with a little bit of the meat left on it
16:26and dehydrate it long enough
16:27that it becomes like a tomato jerky.
16:29If you take this even further, dehydrate it all the way,
16:34you end up with like a tomato cracker
16:35rather than just a tomato chip.
16:37I've said jammy enough to describe this tomato.
16:41We should make some jam.
16:43So to make tomato jam,
16:44I honestly think that tomatoes are miraculous
16:47because they can either go sweet or savory
16:50depending on what's around them.
16:51In like a typical jam with strawberries,
16:54you can incorporate some diced,
16:56partially dehydrated jammy tomatoes
16:58to basically donate a lot more pectin to the mix
17:01and make the end result feel even richer,
17:04even stickier, even jammier than it would otherwise.
17:08So I like to start with diced fruit, strawberries,
17:11about one-to-one and the dehydrated jammy tomato,
17:15some sugar to whatever your desired level is,
17:19a little bit of lemon juice.
17:21I typically use less lemon for this kind of application
17:24and then a little bit of tomato water.
17:27The tomatoes, what they're bringing to the table
17:29is depth, color, tanginess, savoriness,
17:34and thickness from the pectin.
17:37So these have been cooking for about 45 minutes.
17:41Witness the thickness.
17:45I would recommend using every possible part of the tomato
17:49because it all has something to offer,
17:51including the stems.
17:53Stick them in a bottle of white distilled vinegar.
17:55Leave them in there for a couple of weeks,
17:57strain it out, and you'll get a tomato stem vinegar
18:00that kind of brings a bright green grassy punch
18:04to anything that you wanna put it on.
18:06It also actually works really well
18:07with like a neutral spirit like vodka.
18:09Put it in salad dressings.
18:10Another thing that you can do with these stems,
18:12dry these tomato stems so that they're brittle and cracky
18:14and grind them into a powder.
18:16It'll look like drugs, but it'll taste like a garden.
18:20Honestly, I have no idea the exact number of applications
18:23we talked about for tomatoes today,
18:24but I guarantee you there's way more out there
18:27that we didn't even get to.
18:28Even more importantly is next time you look at a tomato,
18:31don't just see that thing that you turn into pasta sauce.
18:34See a thickener, a flavor sponge, a source of color,
18:38a source of acid, a source of sweetness,
18:40and a way to make stuff turn golden brown in the oven
18:43because that way of thinking about ingredients
18:45is how you really broaden your horizons in the kitchen.