25 Delightful Green Tomato Recipes That Everyone Will Love

So you’re here to get the gist on a list of green tomato recipes? Yes, yes, you have. Welcome.

The appearance of sweet, tangy unripe tomatoes in our garden heralds the promise of free-form, no-cook dinners and evenings spent on the porch, tossing through cold, crisp salads. 

Get a head-start on summer with these brilliant green tomato recipes!

Nothing screams perfect brunch quite like a plate heaped full with glistening, waxy emerald tomatoes. 

Cutlery abandoned and glasses of ice-cold sangria at the ready, we descend on the fruit with ravenous joy, stopping only to breathe and dab at the juice on our chins (we’re a civilized bunch, thank you very much). 

Verdant and verging on citrus-y, green toms are a thing of wonder; lovely in a leafy-green salad or side by side with some slippery fried eggs — they’re the perfect breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

We only wish they were around longer. Growing season is a scant six weeks, following which we spend long hours in the kitchen elbow deep in rapidly-softening fruit, frantically pickling, canning and freezing in quantities that would imply the existence of several hundred mouths to feed.

Even the leftover tomato water is put to good use: marvelously tasty, it’s delicious by itself or in an umami-rich tomato martini! 

Simply mix the tomato water with equal parts of your favorite vodka, give it a good shake over ice and strain. 

Chutneys and alcohol aside, there’s loads you can do with a green tomato. 

Bake them into a silky Green Tomato Pie, tuck them in a Fried Green Tomato Tart, sling them in a stacked BLT or go one better and enjoy alongside a robust, creamy burrata — like in number #7!

1. Fried Green Tomato Tart

Just as good straight out of the oven as it is fridge cold, this stunning, vibrant tart is the perfect ode to summertime.  

Crisp, flaky pastry gives way to a burst of fizzy, piquant flavors like a citrus-y, onion-forward supernova — you may even find you’re a teensy bit woozy afterwards.

2. Fried Green Tomatoes With Come-Back Sauce

We don’t have a recipe for fried-green tomatoes. 

We make them from memory, season with feeling and serve them up on greasy beds of newspaper alongside a sour garlic mayonnaise or lemon aioli we buy from a farm shop manned by an old lady in a flowery apron and red galoshes.

This recipe is the next best thing.

3. Green Tomato Pie

A stout, portly pie; like the sort you might expect to see cooling on a windowsill in a Disney movie. 

Thankfully, it’s still plenty tasty in reality — though we suspect it’d be marginally more fun to put together if we’d had little blue birds twittering about our kitchen the whole while.

4. Green Tomato Muffins With Cheese

Muffins don’t have to be stodgy and sickly sweet. 

This recipe makes for an airy, light baker’s dozen that’ll be a welcome sight at any time of day.

5. Fried Green Tomato And Shrimp Sliders

Sliders are a staple on the Cooking Chew menu.

 Zesty, piquant and gloriously easy — they’re good, unfussy fun on a bun.

This is shrimp as a comfort food: tossed, seasoned, grilled, smothered in creole mustard and plopped right into a dinner roll. 

Definitely one to try.

6. Green Tomato Salsa

A classic salsa verde — lavishly reimagined with zingy green tomatoes, fiery jalapenos and sweet red peppers, all cooked down with a generous blend of signature spices for a fragrant, tangy condiment that’s sure to bring a little zip wherever it goes.

7. Grilled Green Tomatoes With Burrata And Green Juice

There’s nothing that can’t be made better with the addition of some soft, Italian cheese. 

We could eat this all summer long — provided we had enough white wine, that is.

8. Fried Green Tomato BLT

Fluffy white toast and crunchy, buttery bacon all wedged together with some sweet green tomatoes, charred lettuce and spiced mayo — now that there is a proper BLT.

It goes without saying that you need smokey, streaky bacon for this, or else you’re wasting the lovely char on those vegetables.

9. Green Tomato, Sausage, And Rice Soup

A warming, thrifty stew with tart green tomatoes, sweet onions, tender celery and odds and ends of Italian sausage. 

Serve alongside a warm, well-buttered hunk of your favourite herby loaf.

10. Quick Pickled Green Tomatoes

Tempted to stick your leftover tomatoes in the fridge? Don’t: “Tomatoes stored below 10C (50F) experience a dramatic shut down in the chemical reactions responsible for their flavor.”

Put your end-of-season glut to good use with this vibrant, punchy preserve that’s great on poached meat and fish.

11. Keto Fried Green Tomatoes With Crab Avocado Salad

This is no supporting-role salad; substantial, and boldly-flavored, it makes for a filling (but not heavy) late-evening lunch or dinner. Pairs excellently with a potato-y something or the other.

12. Green Tomato Salsa Verde

A wonderfully adaptable, uncomplicated green sauce that’ll lend its talents to just about anything — though we like it best slopped onto a ham-and-cheese roll or sitting pretty atop our scrambled eggs in the morning.

13. Mock Apple Green Tomato Pie

This is no dainty tatin or delicate tart — it’s a backslapping American classic of the Southern variety. 

Velvet-soft tomatoes tucked inside a buttery, luxurious crust that melts in the mouth; this is what we lay awake at night thinking about.

14. End Of Harvest Roasted Green Tomato Sauce

We love green tomatoes — nippy, acidic and delicately perfumed — so much so that we don’t really think it worthwhile to get creative with them. 

They’re lovely as is; this straightforward, no-frills recipe recognizes that.

15. Green Tomato Cake

Go find your wicket basket — this herby, savory sponge is the prima ballerina of our spring picnic season.

The secret is a spoonful of pungent goat’s cheese to serve.

16. Roasted Garlic Green Tomato Soup

There’s tomato soup and then there’s this.

The green tomatoes lend this riff on a Campbell’s classic with a fruity, citrus-y complexity we’re very keen on, though the recipe is a bit lacking in the heat department so it benefits greatly from the addition of some dried habanero pepper.

17. Green Tomato Chutney

We’ve had boatfuls of green tomato chutney, some of it divine, some of it truly dreadful.

It’s probably worth giving your old recipes a shakedown to see what they turn up — but this’ll make a couple jam jars’ worth of some lovely, spicy chutney in the meantime.

18. Okra And Green Tomato Fritters

There’ll be no okra prejudice at our dinner table ever again, thanks in part to these sticky, more-ish fritters.

Serve piping hot with some sharp mint yogurt for dipping in.

19. Grilled Green Tomatoes

Feelings about food are seldom reasonable.

That’s why the grilled green tomatoes we served in lieu of fried ones at a dinner party last week were met by an answering chorus of grumbled boos and loud jeers. “What,” our friends demanded, “is this?”

But they changed their tune. And so will you.

20. Fried Green Tomato Bacon Grilled Cheese

Life is too short for sup-par sandwiches.

This is anything but a sub-par sandwich. 

Note that nothing but the most crap soft, white bread will do, as what we’re after is that nice, crunchy seal (no leaky, pan-blackened cheese for us, thanks).

21. Green Tomato Jam

Tomayto, tomahto: if only we had an ever-green orchard-full to last us our whole lives through, we’d live on nothing else.

But nothing lasts forever — so enjoy beautiful, sun-warmed tomatoes while you still can. 

And this glorious, sticky green jam when you can’t. 

Serve slathered on some goldened sourdough with a sprinkling of chilli flakes.

22. Green Tomato Quick Bread

This is the easiest loaf in all the land (mercifully quick too) and tastes absolutely nothing like tomatoes — only cinnamon, vanilla and walnuts. 

It’s a masterclass in culinary deceit. And a revelation.

Cool thoroughly before slicing and serve alongside your favorite onion soup.

23. Vegan Green Tomato Stew

If your pantry won’t stretch to accommodate anything remotely elaborate, this homespun, unpretentious creamy tomato stew is no less delicious for taking all of 20 minutes to throw together.

A splash of rich coconut milk, some nippy green chilies and seasoning to taste — that’s all there really is to it.

24. Green Tomato Pasta Sauce

What do you get when you blitz green tomatoes with loads of garlic, fresh basil, pungent parmesan and a generous glug of olive oil? 

The only sauce you’ll ever need.

This pairs particularly well with cacio e pepe tortellini (preferably plump and fresh from the pasta counter, but the vacuum sealed stuff does just as well in a pinch) or a good, buttery spaghetti alla busara.

25. Green Tomato Salad

There comes a point in our green tomato glut that we can no longer stomach asking ourselves what to make with green tomato.

We’ve failed to do what we failed to do last year and the year before that — pace ourselves. 

But there are still toms aplenty everywhere we look: counter, crisper, larder, kitchen table. 

Sling them in a fresh, summery salad and be done with it.

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The bottom line

To anyone out there wondering what to cook with green tomatoes that isn’t fried or chutney-d, here you are. 

Ta-daaaaaaaaa. 25 green tomato recipe ideas to send you well on your way.

Some suggest a level of artifice that will fool even the most ardent of tomato-haters (see #22) while in most others, the tomatoes are out and proud, happy to grace salads and cakes and fritters alike. 

That’s the great thing about toms: they’re excellent team players. 

Feel free to hide smaller amounts in muffins or pies or position them front and center in sandwiches and soups — that’s the tomato way, baby.

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