Green tomato recipes are an old fashioned tradition meant to ensure every last bit of the harvest is put to good use. Don’t let those underripe tomatoes go to waste, there are so many creative ways to use green tomatoes (besides the ever-popular fried green tomatoes).
Every year my tomato plants set fruit well into the fall months…only to be killed by early frosts in our short 100 day Vermont growing season. We’ll top the plants with spare bedsheets to protect them from light frosts, but when temps well below freezing those tomato plants are done for.
With a killing frost on the way, it’s time to strip the plants bare before nightfall. That often means buckets, baskets, and totes filled to the brim with green tomatoes.
With patience and good airflow, many of those underripe beauties will still ripen on the counter over the next few weeks. Many though, will spoil in buckets long before they ripen.
This isn’t exactly a new problem, and resourceful gardeners have been cooking up green tomato recipes for generations.
Green Tomato Canning Recipes
Since green tomato harvests usually come by the bucketful in the fall, it’s no surprise that there are literally dozens of ways to preserve green tomatoes.
You can’t fry them all, but it’s easy enough to preserve green tomatoes with enough creative green tomato canning recipes.
Green tomatoes are actually more acidic than fully ripe tomatoes, and their texture holds up better to prolonged cooking. Add in a flavor that works equally well in savory and sweet recipes, and you’ve got the perfect vegetable for everything from pickles to pie filling.
Yes, really…home canned green tomato pie filling…
There are so many green tomato canning recipes, I’ve separated them into savory and sweet.
Savory Green Tomato Canning Recipes
Green tomatoes maintain their crunch better than cucumbers for pickling, but they also make excellent salsa, ketchup, and chutney.
All of these recipes are perfect for water bath canning, but they also make great refrigerator or freezer preserves as well (no canning required).
Green Tomato Sauces & Salsas
The National Center for Food Preservation notes that you can substitute green tomatoes in place of tomatillos in any sauce or salsa canning recipe, so keep that in mind.
But if you’re looking for a perfectly portioned green tomato sauce or salsa recipe, here are some to get you started:
- Green Tomato Ketchup ~ Spruce Eats
- Green Tomato Salsa Verde ~ Grow, Forage, Cook, Ferment
- Green Tomato Enchilada Sauce ~ Milhorn Farmstead
Green Tomato Relish
Chow Chow Relish is traditionally made with green tomatoes, as are some picadilli recipes. It’s all about using up the end-of-season veggies all in one simple preserve.
- Green Tomato Picadilli ~ Southern Kitchen
- Canning Green Tomato Picadilli ~ National Center for Food Preservation
- Green Tomato Chow Chow Relish ~ Attainable Sustainable
- Fall Garden Relish ~ National Center for Food Preservation
- Rummage Relish (Kitchen Sink Relish) ~ National Center for Food Preservation
- Green Tomato Relish ~ Taste of Home
- Pickled Green Tomato Relish ~ National Center for Food Preservation
- Spicy Green Tomato Relish ~ Life’s Ambrosia
Green Tomato Pickles
While regular tomatoes are too soft to make a good pickle, green tomatoes soak up flavor from a sweet or savory pickling brine and keep their crunch too.
There are traditional recipes for pickled green cherry tomatoes, since those little jewels are extra special, but you can also use whole sliced green tomatoes.
- Pickled Green Tomatoes ~ Creative Canning
- Pickled Stuffed Green Tomatoes ~ Natasha’s Kitchen
- Romanian Style Green Tomato Pickles ~ Where is my Spoon
Green Tomato Chutney
Though it’s most popular in the British Isles, it’s delicious anywhere!
Try your hand at these green tomato chutney recipes…
- Green Tomato Apple Chutney ~ David Lebowitz
- Green Tomato, Apple & Pepper Chutney ~ Farmersgirl Kitchen
- Green Tomato Chutney ~ Lovely Greens
Simple Green Tomatoes
If you’re just looking to can green tomatoes on their own, that’s fine too!
- Canning Green Tomato Slices ~ A Farm Girl in the Making
Sweet Green Tomato Canning Recipes
I know, it sounds strange, but green tomatoes are actually amazing in sweet preserves. I was really skeptical, but I absolutely loved old-fashioned green tomato jam.
Don’t knock it until you try it…
- Canning Green Tomato Pie Filling ~ National Center for Food Preservation
- Sweet Spiced Green Tomatoes ~ National Center for Food Preservation
- Green Tomato Marmalade ~ The Messy Baker
- Old Fashioned Green Tomato Jam ~ Creative Canning
My homemade green tomato jam
Green Tomato co*cktails & Drinks
Never would have guessed there’d be enough drink recipes using green tomatoes to warrant their own category.
Trust me, I’m as shocked as you are.
- Green Tomato Mojito ~ Rachel Ray
- The Dirty Jane ~ NYT Cooking
- Spicy Green Tomato co*cktail ~ Vanity Fair
- Green Tomato Juice ~ Five Star Cookies
- Green Tomato Bloody Mary Mix ~ Plating Pixels
Green Tomato Bloody Mary from Plating Pixels
Green Tomato Bread, Soup & Salads
Unripe tomatoes can fit in just about anywhere, and they’re great at adding moisture to quick breads.
Green tomato cornbread is particularly lovely, and it’d go well with green tomato soup!
- Green Tomato & Cornbread Salad ~ Taste of the South
- Fried Green Tomato Soup with Cornbread Croutons ~ McCormick
- Roasted Green Tomato Soup in a Sourdough Bowl ~ Food and Wine
- Green Tomato Muffins with Cheese ~ Southern Lady Cooks
- Green Tomato Quick Bread ~ Nums the Word
Green tomato quick bread from Nums the Word
Green Tomato Main Courses
If you really need recipes using a lot of green tomatoes, then dinner’s the way to go.
Turn them into the main course, and you’ll work through your harvest in no time.
- Southern Style Pizza with Fried Green Tomatoes & Bacon ~ Ask Chef Dennis
- Green Tomato Chilli~ Farm Fresh Feasts
- Savory Green Tomato Cobbler ~ Food52
- Green Tomato Chipotle Mac and Cheese ~ The Brewer and the Baker
- Scalloped Green Tomatoes ~ Martha Stewart
- Savory Corn and Green Tomato Cakes ~ Syrup and Biscuits
- Savory Green Tomato Gruyere Tart ~ The Egg Farm
- Southern Bistro Shrimp and Grits ~ Nourish and Nestle
Southern Bistro Shrimp and Grits with diced green tomato from Nourish and Nestle
Green Tomato Desserts
There are a surprising number of old fashioned desserts made with green tomatoes. I told you they were versatile!
(Besides, toss just about anything with enough sugar and cinnamon and stick it in a pie crust, it’ll taste like apple pie. It works for mock apple pie (with zucchini) and ritz cracker pie too!)
- Green Tomato & Raspberry Pie ~ Not Entirely Average
- Green Tomato Bundt Cake ~ My Diverse Kitchen
- Green Tomato Cake with Browned Butter Frosting ~ Paula Dean
- Green Tomato Chocolate Cupcakes ~ Ciao Chow Linda
- Green Tomato Mincemeat Pie ~ Southern Living
- Mock Apple Green Tomato Pie ~ House of Nash Eats
- Green Tomato Pie ~ Grit and Pinecones
Green Tomato Pie from Grit and Pinecones
Cultured & Fermented Green Tomato Recipes
Home fermenting gets more popular every year, as people discover just how easy it is to make your own nutritious pro-biotic vegetables.
If “healthy” isn’t really your thing, you can always ferment a bit of green tomato wine too…
- Lacto-Fermented Green Tomatoes ~ Learning and Yearning
- Fermented Green Tomatoes with Hot Peppers ~ Nourished Kitchen
- Garlic Dill Fermented Green Tomatoes ~ Grow Forage Cook Ferment
- Georgian Style Fermented Green Tomatoes ~ Bake Street
- Lacto-Fermented Green Tomato Salsa ~ Thank Your Body
- Fermented Green & Red Tomato Salsa ~ Healing Harvest Homestead
- Fermented Green Tomato Chutney ~ Mountain Feed
- Fermented Green Tomato Relish ~ One Green Planet
- Green Tomato Wine ~ Urban Overalls
Lacto-Fermented Green tomatoes with garlic and dill from Grow, Forage, Cook, Ferment
Fried Green Tomato Recipes
There’s no way I can end a list of green tomato recipes without covering classic fried green tomatoes. Sure, they’re well known, but there’s more than one way to get the job done.
Seasoning? Single or double batter? Deep fry, pan fry, air fry, or bake?
So many tasty options for cooking up a humble green tomato.
- Classic Southern Fried Green Tomatoes ~ Noshing with the Nolands
- Baked “Fried” Green Tomatoes ~ Drugstore Divas
- Low Carb Air Fryer Green Tomatoes ~ Temecula Blogs
- Fried Green Tomatoes with blue cheese, crab & balsamic Reduction ~ The Good Hearted Woman
- Loaded Fried Green Tomatoes ~ Southern Fatty
- Fried Green Tomato BLT ~ A Cozy Kitchen
- Oven-Fried Green Tomatoes ~ Sweet Cayenne
Oven-Fried Green Tomatoes from Sweet Cayenne
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