this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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I loathe tomatoes on burgers and will throw it in your face if you serve it to me.
Absolutely pointless taste wise and all that water is what makes the bread and patty move around with no respect for each other.
Ooooh them's fighting words. Have you tried a burger with a homegrown tomato? Pretty night and day, might just change your mind.
[Image description: a plate with a burger and sides. The burger is open and ready to be assembled, one bun has sauce and a slice of an heirloom tomato, the other has the patty, cheese, pickles and bacon.]
That’s the ugliest tomato I’ve ever seen on a burger!
Hah! You must broaden your horizons beyond a basic red tomato.
This guy tomatoes.
TIL
Well that's definitely a tomato I've never seen - wild! My most interesting this year is probably the German Striped but I'm going to have to try those tie-dyes I think
German Striped and variants of them are my better half's favorite. I've read that the thing to look for is green/brown shoulders on heirloom tomatoes as that is where all the tomatoey flavor comes from, and is the real reason redder tomatoes tend to be tastier than pale ones.
Oh, cool! This will be my first time trying them, and I'm definitely looking forward to it.
I haven't heard that before but it does make sense - I'll have to keep that in mind on my tomato journey haha
That looks really weird. Not knowing about it, I'd assume the tomato isn't ripe yet in that state.
But I assume it's perfectly ripened and delicious?
Yes, there are all sorts of tomatoes, coming in various shapes, sizes, and colors. They all have different tastes too, although it is going to taste like a tomato to some degree.
I'm going to look around for something like this where I live. I've only ever come into contact with the "normal" tomatoes, but I'm intrigued.
They’re all heirloom tomatoes. There are heirloom varieties of other things too. Tons of more flavors exist than what you are presented in the supermarket!
In addition to color variety, different tomatoes have different textures. A farmer's market is more likely to have a grower who knows the difference than a grocery store with a small heirloom basket where the staff just pit out what they have.
Like some are more firm, or have more juice, and with a lot of variety like apples.
Imo the more fucked up the tomato looks the better it tastes.
Eh.. Not always....sometimes they taste the way they look.
That is exactly why I avoid getting tomatoes on my burgers in restaurants except for when I cook my own, the homegrown tomato has to be there. I am still shocked at how different the taste is.
@thrawn21
@madkarlsson
Does it not taste or feel like you’re eating a tomato? Because those are the parts of eating tomatoes that I don’t like.
While there are differences in textures and flavors, different kinds of tomatoes are like different kinds of apples. Someone might just not like apples or tomatoes and never find one they enjoy, and someone else might only like one or a few types.
All tomatoes will have the firm outside and structure with liquid parts. Even with the variance on firmness and amount of liquid, they are all clearly tomatoes.
See reply here: https://beehaw.org/comment/476775
However, I bet that tomato can be removed and you wouldn't even notice if no one told you
I disagree completely but I appreciate your candor and, frankly, accurate analysis.
Not telling you how to live your life but if I may offer a different perspective: tomatoes can be very flavourful but the ones you buy at supermarkets won't be. Your stance might simply be due to not having had good tomatoes? (which is fine in its own right but I will not stand for tomato slander)
They can be, sure. I enjoy tomatoes otherwise. I can enjoy eating them like an apple or those cute cherry ones as snacks. But generally there are other ingredients on a burger (dressing, cheeses, bacon, whatever) that makes the tomato disappear completely and just become a watery slice of nothing but annoyance.
Tomatoes are fine, just keep them of my burgers.
Yeah that seems fair
I agree that the usual tomato does not bring anything in a burger. It's a tradition that should stop.
However I'm not against having a slice of nice tomato in a special burger.
Bread, some good olive oil and nice tomatoes can be an amazing sandwich.
100% agree
You gotta try heirloom tomatoes. Completely different food compared to the waterfilled Beefsteak and Roma varieties you find in the supermarket.
Man a good tomato could just be eaten on its own with a little salt. Delicious, can't wait for ours to come in, about a dozen different varieties each more delicious and beautiful than the last. 😋
Oh yes a good tomato is "a poem", as we say in German (Gericht=meal and Gedicht=poem sound similar, maybe that's the origin of this? careful, Gericht can also mean court [of law])
I really like that! I knew Gericht as court of law from my very limited German.
I have, they are great, but keep them of my burger
Whether it causes it to move around depends entirely on the order you fill it
Hence ketchup
No, ketchup is wrong. I don't mean on burgers specifically, I mean in general
Them's fightin' words
I stand by my statement - malt vinegar and tomato do not belong together. I don't know if /m/ketchuphate exists yet but it's valid!
Seems very likely you're eating bad tomatoes, sliced at the wrong thickness and on poorly constructed burgers.
I could make you a burger with tomato that would make you cry with joy. There are few actual "bad" foods/combinations, just the wrong chef preparing them who is usually undereducated on the nuance of a given cuisine.
A problem with the internet is that because you hold the world's knowledge in your pocket, many start to think they hold the world's knowledge in their heads. Just because it "feels" like your cooking, doesn't mean you're a chef. A YouTube video doesn't make an expert, it might make a convincing copy that can't improvise to save it's life because it lacks a basic knowledge of foundational concepts.
It's like chat GPT; yes, it drew hands, at a glance, but if you look closer you'll see there are 8 fingers, extra knuckles, no fingernails and no bone structure within the fingers - because the program doesn't actually know what it's doing. So you and I may both have burgers with tomatoes on our plates, but we're having entirely different experiences.
Unfortunately, being a chef feels too accessible as a concept and marketing patches many wounds, hence the boom in food trucks and YouTube channels run by "chefs" churning out garbage.
See, I dont really disagree with anything you say. Its just that on that burger you make that willmake me cry of joy... Its not the tomato that breaks or makes it. Its not going to be the tomato that pushes me to tears. No matter how good that tomato is, that's not what makes the burger.
I've had amazing tomatoes, the tomato itself is not the problem. Its the tomato on a burger. It might, in the best of cases, enrich it. But it will never make it, or break it. And in the most cases, it's just annoying fluff
That's very dependant on the other characteristics of the burger and the protein type and size. I've had tomatoes stand out in a beautiful way in certain burgers that would have been less without them.
The acid and sweetness in certain tomatoes, cut and compliment the fat/salt in say a seasoned beef patty. There are also texture and temperature contrast when prepared correctly. In certain combinations, both are less without the other. That acid cutting the fat of the beef actually chemically changes the way that your taste buds translate the bite. So in some cases you might not think of the tomato first as you bite, but it's actually changing the way you taste other ingredients, like the beef.
Again, hard to convince someone "outside the circle" on a concept like this, but the wrong person is making your burger, friend :)
Source: worked as a chef in Michelin starred restaurants for years.
I deem this opinion absolute fact. Unless you're at Louis' Lunch in New Haven, CT, you have no need for a tomato on burger.
Oh man. At one point I wouldn't even eat tomatoe unless it was on a burger. Burgers were my tomato enablers.