A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum The Tomato Forum What's your favorite paste tomato?

My favorite is 'Roma VF'.It does well in my garden.

Ciao emde-

My favourite tomato happens to also be a paste: Opalka, an heirloom. It's dry, very dense, has very few seeds, tender skin, and it's terrifically productive for me. It's my all-purpose tomato work horse. I use it for sauce, salsa, V-8 juice, pretty much any tomato product except sundried tomatoes..they're quite long and I use smaller tomatoes for that. Opalkas are also delicious enough to eat fresh and I use them for Caprese Salad quite a bit.

Other pastes I like are my family heirloom, Uncle Charlie's Giant Italian Pear, King Humbert which is a smaller roma-sized paste that I love to use for drying and also canning whole. It's a monster plant, though. Last year, it grew over 10 feet tall, so staking is manditory for that one. San Marzano Gigante, Nano, and Redorta, Prue and Uncle Steve's Italian Plum are also very good. I'm growing Romeo and Franchi Pear this year to test drive.

All of the above tomatoes are either heirlooms or open-pollinated, not hybrids so you can save the seeds from them and they will grow true the following year. I haven't seen blossom end rot on any of these.

Mine is Italian Gold. I used to make a lot of sauce with it and it is very resistant to problems and produces a lot at one time. I don't really want to can anymore so I haven't grown it in a few years.
I think Opalka sounds and looks great. Sometime I'll grow it.