My final thoughts in the tasting: Who's to say that some of the tomatoes that I didn't like in the video wouldn't be good for you? Or even in my yard next year? Maybe the seed that germinated wasn't a great representation of the variety. Maybe the tomatoes themselves used in the batch of sauce weren't of a high quality. There's so many factors and I'll likely try some of the duds again in the future, but what I can say for sure is that I'd rather have a more flavorful sauce than a bland one that I have to add flavor to. Orange Banana is still probably my favorite. It's got a great overall balance to it, but I also really like Black Cherry, 10 Fingers of Naples, Goose Creek, Canestrino & Frank's Iranian for different reasons. San Marzano, Midnight Roma & Amish Paste in the second tier. Which is your favorite?
Have you tried Kumato? I prefer the flavor to the black cherry, if you can find it in the store, give it a try. It has a deep savory taste. Skins were a little thick but they keep well.
I grow the Italian ones with the nipple. Raw, they have very little flavor and are not good for salads. Cooking changes the flavor and they make a decent sauce. My favorite for sauce is an oval shaped cherry tomatoes that I regrow from seed. I am not sure of the name of it. My favorite for eating is the Black Krim or Crimea Negra. Ugly but delicious! Hard to keep the blight off it though.❤❤
I have watched and re-watched your tomato videos and love them SO MUCH! No one goes into detail like you do ....and that's the main reason I love these like I do!
San marzano is my nemesis I can NOT grow that sucker for the life of me. I have yet to make my own sauce but last year grew 20 different heirlooms that were all delicious! I did grow Amish paste they’re just ok. I don’t remember the new Roma varieties I have planted I would have to look this year I have over 30 started LOL. I have the black cherries this year also. My favorite of all are the Brandywines.
Thank you for all your effort! Very informative. I think with the San Marzano it's important to follow the method used by Italian grandmas (of preparing the sauce)... they are very particular in how they prepare the tomatoes and the sauce. And in Italian cooking the quality of the preparation is as important as the quality of the ingredients.
@@DK-td1lc Search on UA-cam: there are a few videos of Italians (in Italy) showing their family/traditional way of making and bottling sauce with San Marzano / Roma type tomatoes. There was one that I remember with "Italian Grandma" in the title, so try that :)
Ross, thank you for this video. I will try a couple of your keepers in my outdoor hydroponic system this year. You really saved us a lot of time and energy.
I’m trying the orange banana this year (2023) - I hear it’s great! I’m also trying 2 other highly recommended heirloom varieties from Fruition Seeds, Italian Heirloom (paste) and Rose de Berne which is described as brandywines abundant cousin. I’m also trying green zebra that you like! Good luck gardening in 2023 🍅👩🌾
Hi Ross! Thanks for a quality content. Unique video! Sow is there particular order of what u liked. I see that u mentioned in comments Orange Banana, Black Cherry, Goose Creek, Canestrino and Franks Iranian. What about production? I would like to try few of the varieties you mentioned, Orange banana on the top of the list. I wish there was a comparison of winners in the end or separate video :) Thank u again! PS: is there any video about figs like this? like top 5-10 taste and production?
Excellent video! One of the best I’ve seen. And thank you for the time stamps. Just curious, do you save seeds from your tomatoes? And were would you recommend that I look for paste tomato seeds? Last year I grew Federles and they were awesome. Many of them were over a lb in weight and the flavor was really good. That inspired me to try others. :)
Very cool video. I make tomato sauce every year and like to mix a lot of tomatoes together. I will definitely be adding Black Cherry and Orange Banana to the pot this year! Thank you!
By the way....using the same spoon sauce after sauce will get all your sauces moldy in the end....Jut keep it in mind. You need a separate clean spoon for each jar and after you put it in your mounth its the end. Do not put the spoon back in the jar. Unless of course you are going to eat all these things in just a few days. Do not contaminate the jars if you want them to last more
Possibly why you are not getting the best taste out of pienollo del vesuvio and sans marzano is because the tomatoe has to be grown in the same climate as naples to a degree but most of all these two varieties are grown in a rich volcanic ash soil that makes the world of difference! lol i have been to naples and the Pienollo del Vesuvio is amazing !
Interesting! If i think of pasta, i might not want a totally dominating rich tomato flavor because i would also want my other ingredients to shine like mushrooms, eggplant, etc.
As a chef you sometimes need an ingredient that takes on flavor better than over powering the flavor of other ingredients. The tomato needs to beable to take on the oil,basil,garlic, salt etc.
corbarino makes a very good tasting sauce; a classic tomato flavor. I found san marzano variety I grew had almost no flavor.. maybe it’s good when cooked down, but I would never know.
While it's quite juicy and dditional cooking would be needed, I recommend trying Costoluto Genovese. Yield was abundant and it's decent fresh, but cooking it is transformative and this variety produced two quarts of an excellent sauce from a single plant and that wasn't even half the yield.
You need to try out the Momotaro tomato if you haven't. It has the best sweet-acid balance I've ever tasted. I imagine the sauce made from it would be phenomenal. I may have to grow a bunch this year and try make some, usually I just grow a couple and eat them straight as they're so good plain.
@@RossRaddi I imagine you’ll favor it quite a bit. Hope to hear you talking about it some time in the future since I’ll probably never grow all the varieties you do. Curious how it compares to other top varieties
i think piennolo was cultivated as an extremely long life tomato which makes sense that its not super tasty. from what ive seen is its hung dried for months into winter
IMO growing heirloom plants is much less about growing the tastiest item (though heirloom tomatoes taste very nice) and much more about preserve the genetics of them and enjoying their beauty. And I personally think that our need to find the most "x" vegetable has led to bland selection of vegetables were are left to but at the grocers.
Ross, you can not judge sauces that are not consistently made ... you should have made them all with a salt because salt does so much, especially to acid in tomatoes... and a little sugar too... anyway, nice try.
I think for something so regionally specific like Piennolo Di Vesuvio it's unfair to judge it grown in a very different climate. PdV is labelled D.O.P and exclusively grown commercially on volcanic soil in a dry climate and at a higher altitude. I respect your work, time and dedication but I believe you've done PdV no favours by growing it in a humid climate and with soil that varies greatly to where its originally from. I understand you obviously can't grow every one in ideal circumstances but generations of tomato experts can't be wrong with PdV. If you ever visit Campania, make sure it's one of the first things you try. I'm not familiar with many other tomatoes that can be stored for 10 months out of the fridge without rotting or drying.
Important comment! Different environments, soil, temp, altitude, temperatures give different results for the same variety of tomato, making a comparative judgement very difficult to do, if not impossible. Thanks, Peppe.
It is important to note that Piennolo del Vesuvio is not actually one specific variety of tomato but a _product_ grown from five DOP-designated varieties or "ecotypes": Patanara, Re Umberto, Principe Borghese, Fiaschella (not Fiaschetto) and Lampadina (not San Marzano Lampadina). Also note that some of these are available in the US, but due to changes in growing conditions and improper selection, they have mutated into something different from the originals. In Italy, if these varieties are grown according to prescribed rules in the correct locations within Vesuvius National Park, harvested by hand and stored correctly, they can be certified "Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio D.O.P." Here in the States, such a system is practically unheard of. Someone got a hold of seeds from Piennolo del Vesuvio, probably store bought fruits, and without knowing which specific variety it is, we stuck the DOP trade name onto it. A similar story is how "Kenneth's Piennolo" came to be - it was grown from seeds taken from fresh fruit bought in Europe. It is believed, based on it being a potato leaf variety, that it is actually Patanara, but no one knows for sure. This year I'm growing Patanara and Principe Borghese from European seeds. We'll see how they do in my dry Mediterranean climate sans the volcanic soil.
@Jack Turner Partially true. A lot of cherry tomatoes have exerted stigmas so visiting bees (usually bumblebees) can and do cross-pollinate them. Other blossoms, such as some of the big potato leaf beefsteaks, have malformed flowers where the anther cone does not properly cover the stigma. In such a case, cross-pollination is much easier. No matter what, I bag trusses to keep the varieties as pure as possible.
![My MOST PRODUCTIVE TOMATO Varieties! [And 4 Varieties To Avoid]](/img/n.gif)
My final thoughts in the tasting: Who's to say that some of the tomatoes that I didn't like in the video wouldn't be good for you? Or even in my yard next year? Maybe the seed that germinated wasn't a great representation of the variety. Maybe the tomatoes themselves used in the batch of sauce weren't of a high quality. There's so many factors and I'll likely try some of the duds again in the future, but what I can say for sure is that I'd rather have a more flavorful sauce than a bland one that I have to add flavor to. Orange Banana is still probably my favorite. It's got a great overall balance to it, but I also really like Black Cherry, 10 Fingers of Naples, Goose Creek, Canestrino & Frank's Iranian for different reasons. San Marzano, Midnight Roma & Amish Paste in the second tier. Which is your favorite?
Have you tried Kumato? I prefer the flavor to the black cherry, if you can find it in the store, give it a try. It has a deep savory taste. Skins were a little thick but they keep well.
I grow the Italian ones with the nipple. Raw, they have very little flavor and are not good for salads. Cooking changes the flavor and they make a decent sauce. My favorite for sauce is an oval shaped cherry tomatoes that I regrow from seed. I am not sure of the name of it. My favorite for eating is the Black Krim or Crimea Negra. Ugly but delicious! Hard to keep the blight off it though.❤❤
I have watched and re-watched your tomato videos and love them SO MUCH! No one goes into detail like you do ....and that's the main reason I love these like I do!
Wow, thank you!
Mochi is such a good tomato, I've pretty much settled on just growing that one.
I will need to try that one THANK YOU ❤
San marzano is my nemesis I can NOT grow that sucker for the life of me. I have yet to make my own sauce but last year grew 20 different heirlooms that were all delicious! I did grow Amish paste they’re just ok. I don’t remember the new Roma varieties I have planted I would have to look this year I have over 30 started LOL. I have the black cherries this year also. My favorite of all are the
Brandywines.
Thank you for all your effort! Very informative.
I think with the San Marzano it's important to follow the method used by Italian grandmas (of preparing the sauce)... they are very particular in how they prepare the tomatoes and the sauce. And in Italian cooking the quality of the preparation is as important as the quality of the ingredients.
@jay du plessis
Can you expand on italian grandmother methods?
@@DK-td1lc Search on UA-cam: there are a few videos of Italians (in Italy) showing their family/traditional way of making and bottling sauce with San Marzano / Roma type tomatoes. There was one that I remember with "Italian Grandma" in the title, so try that :)
Ross, thank you for this video. I will try a couple of your keepers in my outdoor hydroponic system this year. You really saved us a lot of time and energy.
I’m trying the orange banana this year (2023) - I hear it’s great! I’m also trying 2 other highly recommended heirloom varieties from Fruition Seeds, Italian Heirloom (paste) and Rose de Berne which is described as brandywines abundant cousin. I’m also trying green zebra that you like! Good luck gardening in 2023 🍅👩🌾
I always mix all of mine, German Lunchbox made my sauce nice and sweet. It was delicious.
Looove the colors of your sauces
This episode is combination of Martha Stewart, Science Guy & the Cohen Bros due to age of sauces. Bravo.
Hi Ross! Thanks for a quality content. Unique video!
Sow is there particular order of what u liked. I see that u mentioned in comments Orange Banana, Black Cherry, Goose Creek, Canestrino and Franks Iranian. What about production? I would like to try few of the varieties you mentioned, Orange banana on the top of the list. I wish there was a comparison of winners in the end or separate video :)
Thank u again!
PS: is there any video about figs like this? like top 5-10 taste and production?
Excellent video! One of the best I’ve seen. And thank you for the time stamps. Just curious, do you save seeds from your tomatoes? And were would you recommend that I look for paste tomato seeds? Last year I grew Federles and they were awesome. Many of them were over a lb in weight and the flavor was really good. That inspired me to try others. :)
Such an informative video! I didn’t know about Orange Banana or Canestrino Di Lucca, will definitely add them to my list!
Very cool video. I make tomato sauce every year and like to mix a lot of tomatoes together. I will definitely be adding Black Cherry and Orange Banana to the pot this year! Thank you!
By the way....using the same spoon sauce after sauce will get all your sauces moldy in the end....Jut keep it in mind. You need a separate clean spoon for each jar and after you put it in your mounth its the end. Do not put the spoon back in the jar.
Unless of course you are going to eat all these things in just a few days.
Do not contaminate the jars if you want them to last more
You got me to watch the entire video! First one. Researching tomatoes for sauce. Great Job!
Possibly why you are not getting the best taste out of pienollo del vesuvio and sans marzano is because the tomatoe has to be grown in the same climate as naples to a degree but most of all these two varieties are grown in a rich volcanic ash soil that makes the world of difference! lol i have been to naples and the Pienollo del Vesuvio is amazing !
thanks for the informative video!
Interesting! If i think of pasta, i might not want a totally dominating rich tomato flavor because i would also want my other ingredients to shine like mushrooms, eggplant, etc.
Great video.
By his description, I wonder if the Midnight Roma is some kind of a Black Krim / Roma cross?
One of the MAIN reasons San Marzano is the choice is due to is small water content. Like using Roma's for stuff. You get tomato without the water!
I love the flavor and size and sweetness of Amish Paste
San Marzano tomatoes. The best. From Naples Italy.
great video. i always thought Frank’s Iranian was an variety from Iran. Do you know if that’s the case?
As a chef you sometimes need an ingredient that takes on flavor better than over powering the flavor of other ingredients. The tomato needs to beable to take on the oil,basil,garlic, salt etc.
Your videos are fantastic.
For taste i love Black Cherry. Low acidic great taste!
You should grow the best ones next year and then do a mixed sauce. Should turn out great
I think adding beefstakes like Black Krim, Pink Brandywine always would elevate the sauce to another level :)
corbarino makes a very good tasting sauce; a classic tomato flavor. I found san marzano variety I grew had almost no flavor.. maybe it’s good when cooked down, but I would never know.
While it's quite juicy and dditional cooking would be needed, I recommend trying Costoluto Genovese. Yield was abundant and it's decent fresh, but cooking it is transformative and this variety produced two quarts of an excellent sauce from a single plant and that wasn't even half the yield.
Great video. Will you be experimenting a lot this season or are you reigning it in to grow more of your favorites?
A little of both! But nothing like last year. That was too much.
You need to try out the Momotaro tomato if you haven't. It has the best sweet-acid balance I've ever tasted. I imagine the sauce made from it would be phenomenal. I may have to grow a bunch this year and try make some, usually I just grow a couple and eat them straight as they're so good plain.
It sounds great. I'll add it to the list.
@@RossRaddi I imagine you’ll favor it quite a bit. Hope to hear you talking about it some time in the future since I’ll probably never grow all the varieties you do. Curious how it compares to other top varieties
Do you have a sauce preparation video.
i think piennolo was cultivated as an extremely long life tomato which makes sense that its not super tasty. from what ive seen is its hung dried for months into winter
IMO growing heirloom plants is much less about growing the tastiest item (though heirloom tomatoes taste very nice) and much more about preserve the genetics of them and enjoying their beauty. And I personally think that our need to find the most "x" vegetable has led to bland selection of vegetables were are left to but at the grocers.
What black cherry tomato was this?
Maybe a mix of tomatoes makes The Best sauce.
My guy, they were sitting in your fridge for MONTHS?!?!?! 🥴
Ross, you can not judge sauces that are not consistently made ... you should have made them all with a salt because salt does so much, especially to acid in tomatoes... and a little sugar too... anyway, nice try.
I think for something so regionally specific like Piennolo Di Vesuvio it's unfair to judge it grown in a very different climate. PdV is labelled D.O.P and exclusively grown commercially on volcanic soil in a dry climate and at a higher altitude. I respect your work, time and dedication but I believe you've done PdV no favours by growing it in a humid climate and with soil that varies greatly to where its originally from. I understand you obviously can't grow every one in ideal circumstances but generations of tomato experts can't be wrong with PdV. If you ever visit Campania, make sure it's one of the first things you try. I'm not familiar with many other tomatoes that can be stored for 10 months out of the fridge without rotting or drying.
Important comment! Different environments, soil, temp, altitude, temperatures give different results for the same variety of tomato, making a comparative judgement very difficult to do, if not impossible. Thanks, Peppe.
It is important to note that Piennolo del Vesuvio is not actually one specific variety of tomato but a _product_ grown from five DOP-designated varieties or "ecotypes": Patanara, Re Umberto, Principe Borghese, Fiaschella (not Fiaschetto) and Lampadina (not San Marzano Lampadina). Also note that some of these are available in the US, but due to changes in growing conditions and improper selection, they have mutated into something different from the originals. In Italy, if these varieties are grown according to prescribed rules in the correct locations within Vesuvius National Park, harvested by hand and stored correctly, they can be certified "Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio D.O.P."
Here in the States, such a system is practically unheard of. Someone got a hold of seeds from Piennolo del Vesuvio, probably store bought fruits, and without knowing which specific variety it is, we stuck the DOP trade name onto it. A similar story is how "Kenneth's Piennolo" came to be - it was grown from seeds taken from fresh fruit bought in Europe. It is believed, based on it being a potato leaf variety, that it is actually Patanara, but no one knows for sure.
This year I'm growing Patanara and Principe Borghese from European seeds. We'll see how they do in my dry Mediterranean climate sans the volcanic soil.
How do you keep them from cross pollinating?😳
I don't! The seeds were not from my own stock.
Tomatoes are 'inbreeders'. They are very difficult to cross pollinate in general compared to other vegetables.
@Jack Turner
Partially true. A lot of cherry tomatoes have exerted stigmas so visiting bees (usually bumblebees) can and do cross-pollinate them. Other blossoms, such as some of the big potato leaf beefsteaks, have malformed flowers where the anther cone does not properly cover the stigma. In such a case, cross-pollination is much easier.
No matter what, I bag trusses to keep the varieties as pure as possible.
I'm from Colombia and want to buy some tomato's seres,can somebody help me?
Federle
Holy crap, you ever here of botulism?