“Give me a kilo of tomatoes, but let them taste like something.” It's a phrase you've said or heard said in some market. It is one of the most sought after flavors, but also most longed for, because despite having tomatoes all year round, the truth is that many of them taste like cardboard. Even more so if we keep them in the refrigerator, as Ígor Lorenzo, owner of El Colmado del Tomate in Madrid, told the newspaper El País. “It is a crime to see how they treat tomatoes. It is cut from the bush uncooked and put in the refrigerator. The cold is terrifying.”
If we want to eat tasty tomatoes, experts recommend doing so in season. “Tomatoes only taste like tomatoes when they are eaten during tomato season,” explained the gastronomy experts from Directo al Paladar. Luís Ferreirim, Head of the Agriculture Campaign at Greenpeace, says the same thing, that although we can find tomatoes in supermarkets all year round, these come from greenhouses if we are in a different season. “Tomatoes are for summer and oranges are for winter,” he says.
Tomatoes are for summer
Growing in greenhouses during the winter is common, but the fruits produced do not have the necessary sunlight to fill with sugar. In 2025, more than 40 million tons of tomatoes were produced in the world, of which 2.4 come from Spain only for industrial use. Tomatoes that come from greenhouses can exceed 700 tons per hectare in a season, according to Yara Spain. Often, that yield trumps flavor and the more resistant and more productive varieties.
In fact, tomatoes can be tasteless because many are hybrids and certain characteristics are changed to be able to have them all year round. “There are new varieties that are not the traditional ones, and that causes the flavor to be lost. It has improved in some things, but it has worsened in others,” explained Salvador Soler Aleixandre, professor of Genetics at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
How to recognize a good tomato
Is there a trick to tell if a tomato tastes sweeter? Yes, a very simple one: let the time come when it is in season and for its ripening point to be appropriate. Ismael Ferrer, gastronomic popularizer, is clear and affirms that offering a Barbastro tomato in the month of February is deceiving consumers. “Enough of telling lies: tomatoes are eaten in summer and early autumn.”
When tomatoes ripen they acquire the characteristic reddish color due to the accumulation of hydrogenated carotenoids. In addition to that color, according to expert Jesús Rojas, the texture will tell us if it is at the correct point of maturation, “neither too old nor too green,” and he assures that we must pay attention to the skin, which “has to be soft and slightly shiny, but not excessively so.” Igor Lorenzo explained a very interesting tip to the Repsol Guide: “be wary of those perfect tomatoes that you see in supermarkets. If they are very shiny, they have no punch”.
Waiting for it to be in full season, when they will be at their peak, full of flavor and, also, at a better price, is not only the best for our environment. It is also the best decision for our palate.
