How to Honor the Flavor of Peak Summer Tomatoes

A couple weeks ago, I saw an article with the headline “The Sandwich Southerners Wait for All Year.” It was, of course, referring to the tomato sandwich, a sandwich that is popular not just in the South, but in New Jersey as well. But the sandwich in the photo was not the sandwich I wait for all year. The bread was toasted. The tomatoes were seasoned with furikake. I’m sure it tastes fine—good even—but that is not a proper tomato sandwich.

We don’t have a Milk Street recipe for a tomato sandwich because you don’t need one. The more you mess with this sandwich, the further you stray from the point of it. It’s just sliced tomatoes on squishy white bread (Japanese Milk Bread would be perfect, but cheap sandwich bread is more aligned with the spirit of the sandwich), slathered in mayo and seasoned with salt and pepper. Some people (me) would argue you don’t even need the pepper.

Like tomato season itself, this sandwich is an immediate, fleeting pleasure. It’s messy and best consumed over the sink. Toasting the bread can delay some of the sog, but sog is inevitable with juicy in-season tomatoes—and really, how long do you need to eat a sandwich? As for the furikake, I would imagine the extra hit of savory glutamate does wonders for bland, out-of-season tomatoes, but a good summer tomato has plenty of umami on its own—we don’t “wait all year” for arbitrary reasons, we “wait all year” because there is only a brief window in which the tomatoes are good enough to eat this plainly.

What to do when you tire of eating tomato sandwiches

It’s not technically correct to say I “tire” of eating tomato sandwiches. I’ll eat two or three a day as long as I have the tomatoes, but not all tomatoes are sandwich tomatoes. Some, like cocktail and cherry varieties, are too small; others, like plum, are too dry. But we have recipes for tomatoes of all types.

Salad-wise, caprese has been done (and you know how to do it.) Recipe developer Rose Hattabaugh is a fan of Persian Tomato and Cucumber Salad, which she calls “Much brighter and more exciting than a caprese.” Like a good tomato sandwich, there’s little to hide behind—it’s just pounds of fresh produce, tossed with a bracing dressing of salt-softened scallion whites, garlic, mint and lime, then finished with cilantro and scallion greens.

Our Burmese Tomato Salad with Shallots and Peanuts is the tomato salad for tomato growers. It uses firm, round varieties and smaller cherry tomatoes—making it a great vehicle for whatever’s popping off in your garden. And the flavors are electric. Adapted from a recipe for khayan jin thee thoke, from Amy and Emily Chung’s The Rangoon Sisters, it’s packed with surprising textures and flavor pops that highlight the umami-heavy tanginess of the tomatoes. Chilies, crunchy peanuts, crispy shallots, umami-rich fish sauce and a cut of lime juice all add up to a truly more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts recipe. “You have the combination of the slightly sweet but acidic tomato, sour lime, flavorsome garlicky oil, saltiness from fish sauce and texture of crunchy peanuts and shallots,” Amy and Emily Chung write. “Plus, it just looks beautiful on a plate.”

How to cook tomatoes while preserving their summer flavor

This is not a disparagement of tomato sauce, but summer is not the time for long-simmered sauces—if you want sauce, try a no-cook option. Now is the time for tarts and tians that put the produce front and center.

We use firm, dryish plum tomatoes to make our Upside-Down Tomato Tart, along with a store-bought pie dough and a few other common ingredients. To keep the crust crisp and flaky, we salt the tomatoes in a colander and let their watery juices drain away, then roast them to drive off the last bit of excess moisture and intensify their flavor. And, borrowing from the classic tarte tatin, we bake it upside-down, laying the pie dough on top so the juices caramelize on the pie plate instead of seeping into the crust. Crumbled blue cheese or fresh goat cheese adds a salty, creamy counterpoint to the crisp crust and savory-sweet tomatoes. We often make two because these vanish quickly.

We use similar sog-mitigation strategies for our Tomato-Summer Squash Tart with Za’atar, salting the slices for 20 minutes or so while the oven heats to draw out excess juices. The slices are tossed with a little oil, some thinly sliced onion, and earthy, zesty za’atar, then shingled on a sheet of store-bought puff pastry. It’s elegant but impactful.

Even easier is the Summer Tomato Tian, which feels spiritually aligned with the tomato sandwich in terms of simplicity. The classic French tian usually showcases an assortment of summer produce, but here the focus is on tomatoes seasoned with garlic and herbs. We opt exclusively for plum tomatoes which are firmer and drier than regular round tomatoes—save those for sandwiches—and because they can withstand a long baking time and yield deep, rich, concentrated flavor. Serve warm with crusty bread and maybe a little cheese—I‘ve only found the cheese to be necessary if the tomatoes are less than stellar.

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Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.