With thousands of tomato varieties on the market, selecting the best options for your garden can seem like a monumental task.
Since each variety offers up its own unique set of characteristics, you’ll want to make selections based upon how you plan to put your precious garden bounty to use.
If your goal is to serve up tasty tomato sauce, some varieties are better suited for the job than others.
The best tomatoes for succulent homemade sauces have fewer seeds and a firm, meaty texture.
Grow These 5 Awesome Tomato Varieties for Fantastic Homemade Sauces
Russian Big Roma
This disease-resistant heirloom tomato is excellent for pastes and sauces. If you want to be seen as a tomato sauce aficionado, you’ll want to grow this variety. Many tomato experts and master gardeners actually call the Russian Big Roma “the perfect sauce tomato.” Unlike most paste and sauce tomatoes, this is an indeterminate variety which produces large, dark and deep red fruit with a pure and rich flavor available throughout the growing season.
San Marzano
This Italian determinate tomato variety produces a deep red fruit between 3 and 4 inches in length. Some gardening experts believe that the San Marzano makes the absolute best tomato sauce. Be warned, however… don’t judge the San Marzano by its raw, right-out-of-the-garden flavor. The uncooked taste leaves a lot to be desired, but the process of cooking them down to make sauce releases the magic qualities in this tasty tomato variety.
Polish Linguisa
The Polish Linguisa tomato is an heirloom variety with very meaty flesh. It produces large fruit that are shaped like sausages and weigh up to 12 ounces. These odd looking and uniquely shaped tomatoes are ideal for sauces and pastes. This particular tomato makes a sweeter sauce and is a top choice of many discerning sauce-making tomato growers around the world.
Jersey Devil
The Jersey Devil tomato is extremely prolific. With bright red banana-shaped fruits that reach 4 to 5 inches in length at maturity, the Jersey Devil has very few seeds and a rich, sweet flavor. Thanks to its thick, fleshy texture, this delicious tomato can also be eaten straight off the vine in sandwiches and salads.
Amish Paste
This excellent sauce-producing tomato variety was developed in the United States and has been chosen by Organic Gardening magazine as a top paste tomato. Since the versatile fruit is juicier than most other paste tomato varieties, this delicious tomato is perfect for eating straight from the garden. So, don’t be afraid to add some to your favorite salad or sandwich, but make sure you save enough to makes lots of thick and full-bodied sauce!
Of course, this is list is far from comprehensive. There are lots of other terrific choices that can be used to make succulent pastes and sauces. This list a great starting point, however, because you can easily find many of these varieties at your local garden centers or online. Try adding some or all of them to your garden this year for truly outstanding results later!
