Sara Black: Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2006

Part of Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2006

This will be the final Tomato Tasting of the year, and I am darn lucky to have it. Just a note, this is a window sill ripened tomato. Last week when the temps dropped to dangerously low levels, the Sara Black tomato plant had a single half ripe tomato on it. I picked it and brought it in the house to let it ripen the rest of the way.

It ripened up nice and now I can do a final tasting on this little beauty. I am a huge fan of black tomatoes so I am really looking forward to tasting this one.

The description from the company I bought it from reads:

A fabulous New Jersey heirloom. Flavor is out-of-this-world. The fruits are luscious: 3-inch pink-purple fruit with dark green shoulders and beautiful, unusual deep slate-purple streaks throughout the fruit.

The Beauty Pageant:

Size: I forgot to put a quarter next to this one when I took the picture but this tomato is slightly smaller than a baseball.

Shape: This is just a sexy tomato. If tomatoes were movie stereotypes, this would be a villainess who wore black leather bustier and stiletto heels. Even my husband made the comment that this was a damn fine looking tomato.

The inside: This is a very juicy tomato but at the same time very meaty. The juiciness seems to come from the meat itself rather than the gel.

Texture: This has a very nice texture, creamy and silky.

Tasting:

Off the Vine Tasting: It tastes as good as it looks. It has a smoky, sultry flavor. It almost tastes like a really rare but really tender cut of beef.

Sliced and Salted Tasting: Salt swings the taste of this tomato firmly back into tomato territory. This is certainty not a sweet tomato, but not quiet tart either. Just full fledge tomato flavor with a nice smoky aftertaste.

Cooking Thoughts: This would be a fine tomato for serving as is. Because of the meaty flavor, I would think that this would make a really nice tomato sauce.

Growing Notes:
Late season tomato. If you have a longer growing season, this would be a good plant. The plant itself was a good healthy plant of medium size.

Will Hanna grow this one again:
I would love to but as this is a late season tomato, I really don’t have a choice in the matter. It doesn’t matter how yummy a tomato is if you can’t get any tomatoes off the plant. I may try this one again and see if I can’t get it out a little earlier. Maybe when I get to the point where I have row covers on my beds, this might be a feasible tomato to grow.