Vegetable - Tomato

Tomato

Health Benefits Nutrition Facts Beauty tips Naming Convention Varieties Recipes Allergies Other tips

About the Vegetable :Tomato, a pulpy nutritious fruit commonly eaten as a vegetable, is another wonderful gift of the Mayans. This humble vegetable of Central America has seized the attention of millions of health seekers for its incredible phyto-chemical properties. Interestingly, it has more health-benefiting compounds than that of an apple!There are around 7,500 tomato varieties grown for various purposes. Heirloom tomatoes are becoming increasingly popular, particularly among home gardeners and organic producers, since they tend to produce more interesting and flavourful crops at the cost of disease resistance and productivity.The poor taste and lack of sugar in modern garden and commercial tomato varieties resulted from breeding tomatoes to ripen uniformly red. This change occurred after discovery of a variety in the mid 20th century that ripened uniformly. This was widely cross-bred to produce red fruit without the typical green ring around the stem on uncross-bred varieties. Prior to general introduction of this trait, most tomatoes produced more sugar during ripening, and were sweeter and more flavourful.

Scientific / Binomial name : Solanum lycopersicum

Popularly Known as :Tamota, Tameta hannu, Tamatar

Usage :The tomato is consumed in diverse ways, including raw, as an ingredient in many dishes, sauces, salads, and drinks. While it is botanically a fruit, it is considered a vegetable for culinary purposes (as well as under U.S. customs regulations.

• In South India, Tomatoes are regularly used in making curries and is a regular additive, while making curries. Moreover ,Tomatoes are used for making Ketchup,Pickles and many sausage items for external adding.
• They are used extensively in cooking especially in Mediterranean, Greek, Italian, South-east Asian, and East European cuisine.
• Raw ones have extra acidic taste, but when mixed with other ingredients while cooking gives wonderful flavour and rich taste.
• Regular as well as cherry tomatoes are one of the popular items in salad preparations.
• Fresh tomato juices as well as its soups are increasingly becoming popular health-drinks all across the world. Organic varieties hold three times more lycopene than non-organic.
• Unripe, green tomatoes are used in many similar ways like other raw vegetables to prepare in curries, stews and to make "chutney" in some of the Indian subcontinent states.