What To Do With Tomatoes 2025 (21 Recipes & Tips)
Fragrant, sweet, juicy tomatoes bursting with flavor are the best! What to do with tomatoes? We have lots of great ideas for tomato recipes and tomato tips.
Check out our favorite ways to use tomatoes in appetizers, sauces, salads, pastas, pizzas and main dishes.
Tomatoes are one of our favorite things about summer. We’re focusing on fresh tomato recipes, but we also included a couple of popular recipes that make good use of quality canned tomatoes.
Don’t let the end of summer go by without trying a few of these delicious and easy tomato recipes.
Appetizers with tomatoes
Easy Gazpacho Recipe (smooth or chunky)
This healthy, easy gazpacho recipe screams summer freshness. It's loaded with fresh veggies like tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and jalapeno. And it satisfies those who prefer their gazpacho smooth or chunky. Spoon it or sip it.
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Caprese Appetizers (on mini skewers)
We boost the flavor of these little caprese appetizers (made with fresh mozzarella, fresh basil and tomatoes) by a marinade and a drizzle of balsamic reduction.
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Tomato Tart with Puff Pastry
This casual, rustic tomato tart with puff pastry is a simple, tasty appetizer for a casual dinner party or a light lunch served with a salad and a glass of wine. The flavor combination of tomatoes, garlic, herbs, cheese and capers is delish.
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Main dishes with fresh tomatoes
Burrata With Pasta Tomatoes & Basil
Burrata with pasta is a simple dish made special with burrata – a soft Italian cheese with a creamy center that melts into the warm, garlicky tomatoes and pasta, turning everything rich and silky. A spoonful of pesto and a sprinkle of lemon zest take it over the top.
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Vegetarian Eggplant Parmesan (30 minutes)
This easy vegetarian eggplant Parmesan recipe has no breading, no frying and no pre-salting. It's unfussy, healthy and simply delicious. Good shortcuts cut the time down to 30 minutes.
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Fresh Tomato Basil Pasta With Lemon and Olives
Fresh tomato pasta with lemon and olives is a beautiful blend of sweet summer-ripe tomatoes, lemon-basil zing, salty olives, capers and Parmesan. It's a great summery pasta dish.
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Vegetable Spaghetti Squash Recipe (Mexican-style)
This is a vegetable spaghetti squash recipe with bold Mexican flavors. We top the spaghetti with a rich sauce of beans, onions, tomatoes, red peppers, corn, salsa, spices and cheese for a great weeknight meal. Serve with tortilla chips. Ok, this is not a real pasta dish, but tastes like one!
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Baked Cod Recipe with Cherry Tomato Sauce
A mildly spicy, citrusy cherry tomato sauce with just a few ingredients turns this baked cod recipe into a delicious jazzed-up dinner in under 20 minutes.
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Baked Halibut with Tomatoes & Capers
Create a simple and elegant Italian-Mediterranean inspired meal for weeknights or guests with this baked halibut recipe. In under 20 minutes, you'll be savoring silky, moist mild fish with a bold, earthy tomato-caper topping.
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Taco Pasta (Vegetarian, 20 Minutes)
This hearty, vegetarian taco pasta is packed with protein, fiber, and bold Mexican flavors. It's a quick stovetop recipe – ready in 20 minutes – with a one-skillet option and shortcuts – perfect for busy weeknights.
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Creamy Parmesan Polenta with Tomato Salad
Creamy Polenta topped with a robust tomato herb salad and parmesan cheese makes a fabulous lunch or side. Summer comfort food! Feel free to use canned tomatoes for this recipe if you like.
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Panzanella Toscana with Grilled Chicken (35 Minutes)
We're grilling crusty bread, chicken and peppers for this Panzanella Toscana. Then tossing them with fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, green onions, herbs and a zesty dressing to create a beautiful and delicious bread salad.
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How To Grill Pizza
When you know how to grill a pizza and you have a fresh or store-bought pizza dough on hand, an amazing grilled pizza is only minutes away – any way you like it. We've included a yummy roasted garlic tomato topping with fresh cherry tomatoes on our semi homemade pizza.
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Tomato sides and salads
Pastina Salad (Caprese-Inspired)
We’re putting a fresh spin on Italian comfort food with this Caprese-inspired pastina salad. Tiny pastina, juicy tomatoes, bocconcini, olive oil, and basil come together for a simple, rustic dish packed with flavor.
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Pesto Orzo With Vegetables (20 Minutes)
Pesto pasta with vegetables is a simple, healthy side or main dish made with pasta, pesto, spinach, green beans and fresh cherry tomatoes. This delicious pasta salad is packed with flavor and ready in 20 minutes.
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Tomato Onion Salad (15 Min. Prep)
This sweet, tangy Marinated Tomato Salad with homemade Catalina dressing creates a colorful bright salad even when tomatoes are not at their best.
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Fire Roasted Tomatoes (Grilled or Roasted)
With minimal effort, fire-roasted tomatoes on the grill or in the oven will add a rich, smoky flavor with charred bits to recipes you already make or in a simple side dish.
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Cherry Tomato Sauce (spicy Moroccan-style)
Sweet cherry garden tomatoes and Moroccan spices come together in 20 minutes to make a rich, rustic, spicy cherry tomato sauce that you just want to put on everything!
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Best canned tomato recipes
These recipes use good canned tomatoes like San Marzano.
San Marzano Tomato Sauce Recipe
Italian cooking is all about good quality, fresh ingredients. Choosing San Marzano tomatoes will bring your tomato pasta sauce to a whole new level.
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Easy Tomato Soup with Canned Tomatoes
Remember Campbell's tomato soup with saltine crackers for dunking? Well, we promise this homemade tomato soup with Parmesan croutons is a way better version. Classic comfort food.
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Ratatouille Soup With Cheese Toast
Loaded with summer vegetables, this hearty and healthy ratatouille soup is low calorie and satisfying. It makes a great vegetarian meal with some warm fresh bread and cheese.
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Tomato varieties and how to use them
There are endless varieties of tomatoes – in fact 300 varieties grown in Ontario Canada alone. Here are a few of the popular varieties that are widely available in your local farmers market or grocery store.
- Beefsteak or Field Tomatoes: Mild flavor. Great for salads, salsas, BLTs, chicken burgers or veggie burgers. Not great for cooking in sauces as they have excess water content and take a long time to boil down.
- Plum or Roma Tomatoes: Great for sauces like our San Marzano sauce as they are pulpier, have fewer seeds and boil down quickly.
- Heirloom Tomatoes (my fave): Great texture and flavor. Use in salads, sandwiches and non sauce dishes.
- Cherry Tomatoes: Great for snacks and salads and appetizers. Sweet and thin skinned. Sweet cherry tomatoes come in many different colors and can also be used in sauces as they cook down pretty quickly. We have 7 recipes on what to do with cherry tomatoes!
How to choose the best tomatoes
- Color, ideally, should be deep red when ripe (place on the counter to ripen if not fully ripe). Choose tomatoes that are free of blemishes and bruises.
- Look for vine-ripened tomatoes to avoid being fooled by artificially ripened ones that are often bland and tasteless.
- Smell the stem of the tomato. It should smell fragrant and earthy.
Best ways to store tomatoes
Most of these tips come from Harold McGee, a food science expert in a post by Epicurious on how to store tomatoes the right way.
- Not yet ripe: If your tomatoes are not quite ripe, leave them on the counter for a few days. Lay them in a single layer, stem side down.
- Ripe tomatoes: It’s best to use ripe tomatoes right away or store them in a cool place like a cellar at 55F/12.8C. If these options are not possible, Harold says to put them in the fridge but let them come to room temperature before you use them.
- Overripe tomatoes: If your tomatoes are overripe, use them to make a sauce.
The bottom line is a fridge is not your tomato’s friend. Keep them out.
Not in season?
Although tomatoes are now grown hydroponically for year round availability, the off season ones are still not up to par with local seasonal tomatoes. For some recipes, it would be best to consider good canned tomatoes instead (which by the way are equally or more nutritious).
And don’t count out canned tomatoes – just as nutritious and picked at their peak.
Hope you found a recipe or two you like for what to do with tomatoes. When they are ripe and fragrant, they are a wonderful star of the dish in sauces, salads, appetizers, gazpacho and more. But don’t count out canned tomatoes that are picked at their peak.
