Yellow Perfection Tomato: Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2009
Part of Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2009
As far as yellow tomatoes go, well for me they are hit or miss. I have tried some really great yellow tomatoes, and others, well, not so much. The reason yellow tomatoes are so ambiguous on the flavor scale is the fact that yellow tomatoes are either full flavored or “mild†flavored (read no flavor). Hearing that a tomato is mild flavored is like hearing your blind date has a mild personality. That’s the first sign that your evening will end early and that you should probably check your local TV listings for something more scintillating to spice up the rest of the night, like golf. So it goes with yellow tomatoes. Mild is not a word I like to hear associated with a tomato.
The description from the company I got it from reads:
This potato leaf heirloom originally from an old British seed company produces bright yellow golf ball sized, thin skinned, tangy, and delicious fruits. They are very unique in taste! Indeterminate. 75 days.
The Beauty Pageant:
Size: About the size of a golf ball is right. Bigger than a cherry tomato, but not by too much.
Shape: Very round.
Color: Bright, bright yellow. Like highlighter yellow.
The inside: Medium walls for this size tomato. Rather large seeds with juicy gel. There is a core that is also medium sized.
Texture: Rather on the soft and mealy side.
Tasting:
Off the Vine Tasting: As I feared, this is a “mild†tomato. Low acid in it makes for weak tomato flavor.
Sliced and Salted Tasting: Salt gives this tomato a little more personality (kind of like a shot of tequila does for that blind date) but you can only work with what you have.
Cooking Thoughts: This is a salad tomato if I ever saw one. Too small for anything else, really. It would be good on salads and used for appetizers. But, I would not pair it with any flavors that it would have to compete with. Otherwise it would just get lost.
Growing Notes:
Rather large plant and produces well. It looks like it may have late blight (judging by the bottom leaves) but it seems to keep going like a trooper.
Will Hanna grow this one again:
No. Just not my style of tomato. If you are looking for something “mild†(and there are lots of people who are) this is a good tomato, but I like a tomato with a little more force.
Lemon boy is the best of the pure yellows I’ve tasted. The ones from my garden were definitely not “mild”, and did in fact remind me a tad of lemons, although they had a lot of sugar to match the citrus.
I just found your fantastic tomato reviews, and have to ask: after growing all these tomatoes and tasting them, etc, what are your very favorite varieties? The 3 or 4 you would not garden without?
I’ve enjoyed reading about the variety of tomatoes you’ve reviewed. So often just the typicals are grown, leaving out the great variety that exists for this particular edible. I’ve been eating beefsteaks for a few summers now and it’s hard to not grow them at this point because they’re so hearty. But I also like to experiment with different flavors, as you have.
Thanks for the info.
The Golden Rave hybrid has been one of my favorites for sandwiches, they are sweet and produce quickly and reliably.
Thanks for posting all of your tomato tastings, what a great resource!
I’ve never grown yellow perfection, but did try Indian Moon and Hawaiian Pineapple this year. I found Indian Moon to beprolific, but mealy, also, and ‘mild’=not much flavor. However, when I roasted them under the broiler, they smelled like fresh-baked bread (?), got a lot more flavorful, and ended up making a spectacular yellow tomato sauce.
Hawaiian Pineapple is *so tasty* right off the vine, huge, and beautiful with swirls of red throughout the yellow. It’s my new must-have for next year. Anyway, thanks for sharing all your experiences!
The start of our summer was cool, cloudy and very wet. I’m sure if we had decided to grow tomatoes this year, the yield would’ve been very poor. I’m glad you’re getting to enjoy your crop!
I like this: “Salt gives this tomato a little more personality (kind of like a shot of tequila does for that blind date)”
BTW, I enjoyed your “What Flower Are You?” quiz.
Back to lemon boy. I just harvested some crosses between lemon boy, the bearing plant, and pineapple, the pollen donor.
The result was fabulous: A yellow, tennis ball or smaller sized tomato with faint vertical green streaks that is super sweet, with dark orange shoulders, which for some reason I can’t explain, has an acidic tang that is very complementary and is significantly stronger than the moderate tang the pure lemon boy F1 hybrid, or whatever it is, has.
Pineapple, at least in my experience, is very un-tangy, but it can be very sweet when it gets a lot of sun.
The texture of this cross is the most interesting thing. It is just short of crunchy, and the sweet gel is very juicy.
Not trying to sell anything here. Anyone who is into cross-pollinating, likes tangy sweet tomatoes, and wants to strike a blow against the forces of mealiness ought to try this.
It’s probably my own particular brand of veggie bias leaking through…but I just can’t get past the yellowness — I like my tomatoes to be red. Silly, I know. A neighbor gave me a yellow tomato and it just didn’t look normal to me. Sigh…
thanks for a lovely blog. we grew italian costoluto tomatoes from http://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk this year, they are lovely flavour beefsteaks, and produce loads, so many, that the cupboard is now full of sauces and chutney for winter. take care
I have always wanted to try yellow perfection, I normally find them at a vendor about 3 miles from my house. I want to try to grow some different varieties this next year to allow for my taste buds to broaden their spectrum. I am a big fan of the yellow perfection.
These yellow tomatoes can be weak for tasting but they’re sure good when they’re fried with tomato sauce.
I prefer the robust flavor of the Black tomato and Brad’s Black Heart. Before I tried these heirloom varieties, I was so sick of the bland taste of store-bought varieties that I couldn’t even eat tomatoes by themselves. I will say that the blander varieties blend well into homemade salsa…You think the bad weather this summer had anything to do with the taste of tomatoes this year? Willing to give them another try next year?
Thank you for your tomato tastings! It has helped me decide what I want to do next year. Having said that, Yellow tomatoes always seem to be bland. I think they are more for show than for serious tomato eating.
Thanks for posting all of your tomato tastings.
My favorite yellow/orange tomato of the year was Amana Orange. It is an heirloom orange beefsteak tomato. It was flavorful and a heavy producer, even in the cool, wet summer we had this year.
Thanks for the reviews. Now I have some new ideas for next year.
thanks for the post!!yellow tomato is little sour n always seem to be bland. I think they are more for show than for serious tomato eating.
Thanks for the post, it gives me some ideas for next year!
I just read a blog about dark purple potatoes. It’s kind of weird coming across your blog and the yellow tomatoes 🙂
I haven’t tried yellow tomatoes and I doubt if they’d be mealy as the red ones. I think the darker a vegetable the stronger the flavor.
Just my 2 cents
Marie 🙂
I know you haven’t posted yet, but your blog feed is being scraped here.
Check out this post to see what to do, or just call the people (info on the scraper’s main site)–but they don’t seem to know what’s going on.
I wanted to fill you in on a friend of mines site. He is selling really great heirloom seed mixes that seem like something you would be into. Check it out and let him know what you think.
Thanks for the info,
Thomas J. Ameloot
p.s. I think it is odd to see an ad for tyson chicken on such an amazing site.
I wanted to fill you in on a friend of mines site. He is selling really great heirloom seed mixes that seem like something you would be into. Check it out and let him know what you think.
http://www.collectedseed.com
Thanks for the info,
Thomas J. Ameloot
p.s. I think it is odd to see an ad for tyson chicken on such an amazing site.
Thanks for the Tomato tastings. These are very interesting articles especially with the way you casually describe the tomatoes. I’ll look forward to more reviews. 🙂
Ohh how I long for tomato season again!
I agree, if a tomato doesn’t explode with flavor it’s really a dud. I’m going to try a some yellow tomatoes in my garden this year and see if I can find a yummy one.
http://roostershamblin.wordpress.com/ would you please spend a few minutes and check out my blog. I am a farmer who has been raising over fifty breeds of chickens for forty years.
I have trouble finding great flavor in yellow tomatoes also. If they didn’t look so beautiful in a bowl- red, purple, green, yellow. We grew Gold Medal last year and it was by far the best. And need I mention Sun Gold? Perhaps they are in a category of their own. Thanks for the tomato tasting.
Hey! Hope you’ll be back for 2010 tomatoes, and all is well! 🙂
I like yellow tomatoes, but I eat mostly red ones because of nutrient: lycopene, which is also converted in the body to vitamin A, is the very thing that makes red tomatoes red. The redder the tomato, the more lycopene, and no lycopene at all is to be found in green or yellow tomatoes.