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Here in the UK, tomatoes from the Netherlands are the most common sold in British supermarkets. Unfortunately, they are quite flavourless. The type of tomato (
by cirrus-clouds 9y ago
Here in the UK, tomatoes from the Netherlands are the most common sold in British supermarkets.
Unfortunately, they are quite flavourless. The type of tomato (and price) makes no difference (organic, vine-ripened, salad). Most of them are usually semi-ripe. Even if you allow them to ripen at home for a few days, they are still quite tasteless.
Presumably, Italy keeps its best tomato produce for themselves and I don't blame them (although Italian tinned tomatoes are widely available in the UK, just not the fresh variety).
- jules 9y agoThere are flavourful varieties such as Tasty Tom or small plum tomatoes, but they are much more expensive at €10 per kg versus €2 per kg for a basic variety and less than €1 per kg for the most tasteless variety.
- tirant 9y agoEven Tasty Tom or small plum from AH are terrible compared what you can get locally in Spain or Italy to give an example.
- johansch 9y agoIn Sweden we tend to get e.g. tomatoes from the Netherlands, Spain and Morocco. From a consumer perspective it seems random - the price doesn't really factor in at all. Tomatoes from the Netherlands are almost always tasteless. Tomatoes from Spain are often tasty, but sometimes tasteless. Tomatoes from Morocco are sometimes tasteless and sometimes horrible. So I look for Tomatoes grown in Spain and wish for the best...
- ardit33 9y agoItalian, or Albanian tomatoes are the best. You guys live so up-north, that it takes a long time for tomatoes to get there so you are most likely going to get shipped the 1. Tasteless type, that happens to resist longer on shelves, or 2. Unripped tomatoes that get ripened on the way there. There is a huge difference in taste between in vine ripped tomatoes and the one they are picked up still green. The northeast US has the same problem. Tomatoes in California are usually pretty good, tomatoes in Boston taste like crap. (the joke is that Boston is the last stop for a tomato truck, before they get thrown in the ocean as trash).
- iagovar 9y agoDo they tell you from which region?
- johansch 9y agoOrigin country is always clearly labeled. Not harvest date though. :(
- agiamas 9y agoComing from the southern part of Europe, here in the UK groceries (save for Whole Foods 5pounds a bite..) are almost always tasteless. Except for the apricots at the Turkish deli down the street. I don't know where he gets them from, they are the best apricots I've ever had by far =)
- aaronbrethorst 9y agoTurkey, perhaps, seeing how they are the biggest producer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apricot#/media/File:2012apricot.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apricot#/media/File:2012aprico...
- Brakenshire 9y agoMediterranean vegetables that taste good are unfortunately luxury products in the UK. You can get good tomatoes, you just have to pay 2-3x as much. It's because the mediterranean diet is a middle class thing, so supermarkets segment the market, because people will pay. Whereas in France, Italy, Spain etc that food culture goes across all classes.
- yilugurlu 9y agoThey probably coming from Malatya - Turkey, which famous with its apricots. If you want to taste really good tomatoes ask your Turkish deli for Çanakkale tomatoes or pink tomatoes coming from Turkey.
- pjc50 9y agoItalian tomatoes are just better to an extent that's almost magical.
- andreapaiola 9y agoAnd probably you don't know the best... have you ever try a "cuore di bue"?
- jnunoferreira 9y agoFun fact: "cuore di bue" means heart of a bull. I've had amazing tomatoes of this species, but I've also had many watery ones...so I'm guessing the greenhouse-to-supermarket waterbombing effect is more important than the actual species.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ardit33 9y agoHeirloom tomatoes... In next door Albania they are called "Zemërkau", which it translates "cuore di bue". Very delish, and fortunately local farmers like to grow them for themselves, so you will always find cheap good ones during the season. The reason they are really good as they are the most similar to the original wild tomatoes, and less likely to have been modified just because their color and shape as most grocery common tomatoes are.
- viewtransform 9y agoThese are amazing! I grew these in Santa Monica CA a couple of years ago and they came out the size of large mangoes with the best flavor I've tasted in a tomato. http://www.growitalian.com/tomato-cuor-di-bue-oxheart-106-24/ http://www.growitalian.com/tomato-cuor-di-bue-oxheart-106-24...
- andreapaiola 9y agoYeah, the ideal tomato for salads and/or with mozzarella https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_cuore_di_bue https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_cuore_di_bue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-j3ZxGnMC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-j3ZxGnMC8 #foodporn
- erdewit 9y agoIn Germany the tomatoes from Holland are called 'Wasserbomben'.
- mdekkers 9y agoThey are called the same in Holland :)
- user5994461 9y agoIt's not just the tomatoes. Everything in the UK supermarket is quite bad. It's a cultural thing I suppose.
- coliveira 9y agoIts not culture, it is for the benefit of big companies. The best tasting vegetables also spoil easily. The ones sold in supermarkets are the varieties that can be sold longer, usually with poor flavor.
- twic 9y agoIt's culture that lets them get away with it. If British people valued tasty tomatoes, they wouldn't buy the rubbish in the supermarkets. Everyone would know a guy who can hook them up with the good stuff, for a price, and the geriatric mafia who control the allotments would be rolling around in Bentleys.
- iagovar 9y agoBut why? There's plenty of production in Portugal, Italy and Spain.
- switch007 9y agoYou can find plenty of southern Spanish produce in greengrocers (it's usually so ripe it's nearly about to go off). Works OK if you want to eat it immediately.
- cirrus-clouds 9y agoOur cuisine and diet has a poor reputation, but I think some of our actual produce (vegetable and dairy) is not so bad. We don't have the warm or sunny climate for flavoursome tomatoes, but root vegetables grown here can be fine. It's also common for cows to graze outside for part of the day (true of Ireland and Sweden too). It's subjective, but I think it makes for much nicer tasting fresh milk (compared to the UHT variety that is more of the norm in other European countries).
- maxerickson 9y agoThe problem with tomatoes is that if you pick them ripe they are fragile. So if they are picked ripe, it makes it more difficult to ship them. And then this gets exacerbated when the varieties are selected for shipping and shelf life rather than flavor.
- digi_owl 9y agoApplies to more than just tomatoes really, though i guess tomatoes are more noticeable in this regard.
- Brakenshire 9y agoDutch companies actually grow a lot of tomatoes inside the UK, in greenhouse conditions.
- maxerickson 9y agoWhich are then shipped to the supermarket. US greenhouse tomatoes are generally bland and watery too. My garden tomatoes got severely damaged by some fungus this year and barely produced and I'm still not at all tempted to buy store tomatoes.
- Pica_soO 9y agoThe lack of taste is not a problem of when the fruit is shipped. Its a indicator for a lack of stress. The plant is not attacked by insects, fungi and deer. Thus it does not produce the aromatics we expect. Unfortunately, many people are okay with this and expect it. I honestly can not imagine Netherlands farmers and engineers unable to simulate that stress. So its a purely lack of customers knowing the difference.
- sambe 9y agoReference for this? Never heard of it before, and doesn't sound likely on the surface.
- 9y ago
- jessaustin 9y agoIn much of the UK (presumably in the far north it wouldn't work well?) the way to get tasty tomatoes from mid- to late-summer would be to grow them oneself... Of course during the winter tasty fresh tomatoes are unavailable.
- Boothroid 9y agoIndeed, I wonder how hard those complaining have tried to use local UK produce in season. Go to a restaurant that serves good food using local produce. I do this when I can afford it - I've had some fantastic food, comparable to anything elsewhere in Europe, and some UK fruit and veg is amongst the finest available - a couple of examples - British asparagus, and Yorkshire forced rhubarb - amongst the best available anywhere.
- prophet_ 9y agoI tried that strategy here in the NL and got very nice looking tomatoes but still, watery and tasteless. There is just not that much strong sunlight during the spring months to bring the taste out. I guess it's worse in greenhouses which is where most (if not all) tomatoes are produced here.
- dharma1 9y agoSecond this. Choose a good variety and plant in good soil and you will have lots of amazing tasting tomatoes, especially cherry tomatoes are super sweet if you let them ripen. I have been doing this for a few years in London and it's always rewarding - will grow a bigger batch next summer.
- edwinjm 9y agoDutch farmers recognised this and focused on new/other kinds of tomatoes with much better taste like cherry tomatoes and vine tomatoes.
- spiderfarmer 9y agoIf you compare a typical Dutch tomato to a supersized watermelon type tomato from California, the Dutch tomatoes are ten times more flavorful.
- HillaryBriss 9y agoi live in Los Angeles, and most of the tomatoes i've found in supermarkets here are low in flavor. OTOH, if I buy the $5-$6 per pound heirloom varieties, the flavor is better. even better: tomatoes grown in people's backyards.
- bostik 9y ago> even better: tomatoes grown in people's backyards. Best tomatoes I've ever had were indeed grown in a backyard. In volcanic soil.
- iagooar 9y agoTen times zero, is still zero ;)
- ajmurmann 9y agoWhat do you mean by "supervised watermelon type tomatoes"? Are you referring to some of the the huge heirloom tomatoes? I find there yellow ones particularly flavorful. Much better than there Dutch stuff.
- Eyght 9y agoI've been buying what they call "Plum Tomatoes" and they are much better than anything else I can get here in Sweden. Technically I think they are Grape Tomatoes, as they are quite small.
- mcv 9y agoNetherland is quite famous for its ability to grow completely tasteless vegetables. After WW2, people didn't consider taste very important; only appearance, size, cost, and maybe nutritional value mattered, so lots of tasteless vegetables were bred. Eventually customers started revolting, and now there are plenty of very tasty tomatoes available. They're more expensive, though, and not everybody can afford them. To a lot of people, cost is still a factor. And maybe even more so for export.
- sambe 9y agoI don't find it to be better or worse than any other Northern European countries. And I can't find good tomatoes at any price - the more expensive on-the-vine ones smell good initially but only taste slightly better.
- mcv 9y agoIn that case, what do you consider to be good tomatoes? If you don't like any of them, maybe you just don't like tomatoes?
- bogomipz 9y ago>"After WW2, people didn't consider taste very important; only appearance, size, cost, and maybe nutritional value mattered, so lots of tasteless vegetables were bred." Do you have a citation for or more info about this? Were genetically modified tomatoes introduced after the war? I would have thought that came much later with the rise of Monsanto[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavr_Savr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavr_Savr
- xbmcuser 9y agoMost fruits and vegetables we eat today have been genetically modified but by selective breeding sometimes over hundreds of year. Take corn for example something that is found almost all over the world its current form is because of genetic modification natural corn looks quite different.
- mcv 9y ago
- jacquesm 9y agoQuality has a price. If you buy the cheapest tomatoes you get the lowest grade, if you're prepared to spend more you get better quality and more taste. The Germans are extremely interesting in this respect deriding the lowest quality Dutch vegetables with all kinds of name-calling ('waterbombs') but at the same time they keep buying them because they are cheap. If you want quality you will simply have to be prepared to pay for it, this goes for many more things than just vegetables.
- charlesdm 9y agoAs a Belgian, I'd happily pay x4 to x5 the price of the average tomato you can buy in the supermarket here. But I can't. There's an 80% chance tomatoes are tasteless, and a 20% chance they're amazing. I want amazing tomatoes, every single time. :(
- jacquesm 9y agoYou can learn how to tell them apart if you want. Stepdad was a greengrocer so to me this is second nature but when looking for tomatoes take the smaller ones and the darker ones. They're most likely to be the ones that taste better, even when you pick them from a batch. People instinctively seem to go for the brighter and larger fruits but those are almost always the bland ones.
- charlesdm 9y agoThanks -- going to put this to the test next time I go shopping!
- jacquesm 9y agoIt's a bit more work and other people might get annoyed with you for rejecting 80% of the produce but it is worth it. Good luck!
- guelo 9y agoIn my experience smell is the best indicator. You want your fruit to smell like fruit. If it has no smell it doesn't have any flavor either.
- petre 9y agoI never buy any vegetables from the Netherlands, just flowers. They're looking good but completely lack taste. They're also grown by heavily relying on fertilizers. I prefer to buy my veggies from Southern Europe when not available locally.
- charlesdm 9y agoMy friend lives in Barcelona. I live in Belgium. Tomatoes are just _AMAZING_ there in comparison. Actually, most vegetables seem to be a lot better in Spain. And I tend to go for the best quality organic veggies I can actually buy in Belgium.
- mdekkers 9y agoStep 1. Don't keep your tomatoes in the fridge.
- dubyah 9y agoFor the most part, you should though. http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/10/why-you-can-and-sometimes-should-refrigerate-tomatoes.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/10/why-you-can-and-sometimes...
- tigershark 9y agoI'm always sad at how tasteless are vegetables that you can find in uk compared to Italian ones..
- GlennS 9y agoEveryone here is mentioning Italy, but I associate it with Greece. The first time I walked into a grocery in Rhodes I learned what good tomatoes smell like.
- westiseast 9y agoYeah, i stopped eating tomatoes in the U.K. after a holiday in Crete.
- djg3 9y agoI was genuinely surprised to find hydroponically grown tomatoes here in the UK that are consistently delicious. They're called 'Pink Temptation'. They're expensive but the taste is worth it.
- danmaz74 9y agoItalian here. I don't think we really want to "keep the best produce for ourselves" - I'm sure our producers would just like to sell at the highest price. Instead, there is a problem with transportation and timing: if you harvest well-ripened tomatoes, they spoil quickly, which is something big distributors hate. Here you can usually find the best tomatoes in small markets in the right season; tomatoes from big supermarkets are usually pretty tasteless (unless you get lucky or know how to choose). It's the same reason people tell me that bananas in banana-producing countries are way better than what you can find here: our bananas ripen during transportation, and the end result is very different. PS: it's much easier to find very tasty cherry tomatoes, but they're also much more expensive.
- dudeonthenet 9y agoHomegrown tomatoes here in Romania are pretty tasty, maybe even indistinguishable from the ones you'd find in Italy. Especially the ones that people in the country side grow in their gardens and, even more so, the late summer, early fall breeds of tomatoes. When you cut one open, you literally want to shove your face in it. Here's what they look like: http://www.desteptarea.ro/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/rosii-piata-3.jpg http://www.desteptarea.ro/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/rosii-p... Note: 6 LEI (RON) is 1.2 GBP, but can find them as cheap as 0.8 GBP, depending on the city, market or seller. The problem is that I don't think we produce enough of them for export as they're only grown naturally, they don't last more than a few days, even when in the fridge, and they are seasonal. Households tipically pick them as they ripen for immediate consumption, sell any surplus on the local markets and, by the end of the season, harvest them for around 10 gallons of tomato juice for winter. The countryside folk also lack the education to seriously market them, lack the money to produce in larger quantities, etc. Which leads to supermarkets being chock full of import tomatoes though (we also have the Dutch ones) :/
- garyclarke27 9y agoSo true - Dutch tomatoes are awful bland tasteless cardboard. Best tomatoes in the world I've tried are in Serbia in the summer, bursting with incredible delicious flavour, perfect complement to their delicious grilled meats and sausages.
- disordinary 9y agoIt's just a fact with the increase in globalisation and specialisation, fruit is picked unripened and is allowed to ripen while being transported and while sitting on the shelves in supermarkets. Nothing beats local produce which has been allowed to ripen on naturally and picked when ready. Unfortunately that's not a particularly efficient way to farm and also fruit is only available in season this way.
- Amygaz 9y agoAre tomatoes grown in the UK more tasty, or is it all the same? I am asking because I've moved back/forth a couple time between the US and Canada, and tomatoes made in the USA or central/south America are tasteless in the US. When I see tomatoes made in Canada in a US store that's what I buy, no matter what the price is, organic or not. Savoura is the brand that I prefer, but then again, I am not sure it is Canadian, and they make it all over the world and it taste different depending where they come from...
- exhilaration 9y agoCanadian tomatoes are almost certainly greenhouse-grown, see this earlier HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11919735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11919735 So they're plentiful and cheap, but generally lack flavor.
- jussij 9y ago> Presumably, Italy keeps its best tomato produce for themselves and I don't blame them I think this also comes down to the trouble with transporting those types of tomatoes without loss due to spoilage. The tomatoes you describe are exact the same as tomatoes sold here in Australia. These Australian tomatoes have been genetically selected for characteristic that allow them to be picked green, ripen on the way to the supermarket and hit the shelves blemish free. They look great on the supermarket shelf but their skin is as tough as nails and they pretty much tasteless. The only
- deepGem 9y agoAs an Indian, who has lived and worked in USA, UK, Singapore and LatAM, I can attest that produce in supermarkets in all these geographical regions are tasteless. Mostly because, as someone mentioned below they are now bred for ease of shipping. Even in India, vegetables are slowly going the tasteless route, particularly chillies and garlic, but they are a lot more flavorful than their western world counterparts. I remember as a kid garlics were so pungent, you could smell them from a mile. Not the case anymore.
- ido 9y agoHere in northern Germany if you go to the supermarket and look at the origin of vegetables, most of them seem come from Spain & Italy. Interesting, as the Netherlands would be closer geographically! But maybe the UK is just far enough from the south-med to make shipping vegetables from there not as economical.
- pombrand 9y agoFrom going through this whole thread. Best bet Tomato rankings are as follows: 1. Homegrown (in good soil) 2. Italian 3. Albanian (heirloom) 4. Spanish Smaller, darker and more aromatic are generally better (cherry a good bet), and they're all best in the summer. Did I forget anything?