It’s the question of the hour. The frost is coming, if not already at your door. Tall tomato plants hold on desperately to clinging green fruits. What to do with all these green tomatoes before the freeze kills them for sure?

First off, get them all picked. Brown paper bag green tomatoes and store in a cool, dry, dark location–never in the fridge, a pantry is ideal. They will gradually ripen over a couple weeks.

I check my pantry bags every couple days, and pull out a couple ripe tomatoes, adding to the counter fruit bowl for slicing on sandwiches, adding to curries, sauces or whatever is on the menu.

Secondly, there’s a host of nifty recipes to use green tomatoes creatively. One I love comes from a harvest table customer this summer: green tomato pie. She bought flats of green tomatoes from my garden and described her traditional pie as a must try: “people always say, that sounds terrible, then after one bite they say, that’s delicious!”

Green tomato pie, she went on to describe, is essentially the same as a tart apple pie, with exactly the same ingredients of cinnamon, sugar, a traditional pie crust top and bottom, with the green tomatoe’s tartness and firmness acting in place of a good granny smith.

A green tomato gazpacho is an interesting possibility. Gazpacho is a Spanish simple, fresh vegetable blended soup. A green tomato variation, with cilantro, garlic, green pepper and onion is both pretty and tasty as a main dish soup or appetizer. The effect is surprising, encouraging guests not only to taste but praise it.

Try: 4 c green tomatoes, seeded; 1 c fresh cilantro; 1/2 white onion; 2 cloves garlic; 1/2 green bell pepper; 1 small cucumber, seeded; juice from a lime or 1/4 c sherry vinegar; 3 T olive oil; salt and pepper to taste; blend in food processor or blender and enjoy.

Finally, and my #1 recommendation of how to utilize your green tomatoes, the recipe I’ve been waiting to share:

Tried & True Salsa Verde: with fresh ground Cumin and Lime

Oh it’s tasty. Having seen many salsa verde versions through the years and tried different experiments, I’ve chosen this recipe as the best. Naturally smoky cumin, fresh ground, gives a deep, earthy dimension to the acid based green tomatoes and lime. Plenty of onion, cilantro and garlic is required, as with any good salsa, but it’s the pungent cumin and lime that distinguish this one.

Excellent for many Latin dishes, particularly fish or chicken, salsa verde is worth canning large amounts for later. Herein, the recipe to preserve a bunch, hopefully taking care of all those green clingers out there before the freeze.

Some prefer a thick and chunky salsa, in which case, seed the green tomatoes. Others prefer a saucier salsa, for which you can leave the seeds. This recipe works for either.

The instructions are for a “max batch,” designed to fill the water canner with 7 full quarts or multiple batches of pints. Cut the recipe in half for smaller amounts of vegetables.

Hopefully your garlic is plentiful and punchy for this recipe. I find the spicyness of garlic to be one of the most important flavors in good salsa.

Cilantro is easy to grow on a constant basis. It grows very quickly, and can be reseeded throughout the year indoors. Cilantro is entirely useful, roots, stems, seeds, leaves and all!

When in comes to cumin, purchasing fresh seed is necessary. Pre-ground cumin is always disappointingly dead, and a recipe like this takes the full-on flavor of the spice to stand up to competitor acids of green tomato and lime.

A final note about the heat of your jalapeño peppers: gauge their spice level partially on their maturity. A pepper of full maturity will have “veins” of white stretching vertically from base to stem. Without these, you may still have a spicy pepper, but it will be generally lower heat than a veined jalapeno, and a taste test is advised.

~Salsa Verde~

24 large green tomatoes, or 12 c diced

5 c onions, diced

20 cloves garlic, finely minced

8-10 jalapeño peppers, to taste depending on heat, finely diced

Juice from 3 limes, or 1/2 c bottled lime juice

3 T fresh ground cumin seed

2-3 t salt, to taste

1-2 bunches of fresh cilantro, 1 1/2 – 3 c

~Dice all vegetables, and add to a large sauce pot; use gloves when handling peppers if you find it necessary, and be careful not to touch face or eyes.

~Meanwhile, sterilize jars in boiling water canner; set out all canning supplies.

~Combine all ingredients except cilantro in a large sauce pot; bring to a boil and then reduce to a bare simmer; then add chopped cilantro (its delicate construction loses flavor if too boiled much).

~Taste for spice and salt content and adjust.

~Process in a boiling water canner 25 minutes for quarts, 15 minutes for pints.

Yield: 7 quarts or 14 pints

Love from our feezing garden to yours! Gina @ Soul & Stomach