How To Sweeten Unripe Tomatoes With Just 2 Easy Additions

There's nothing worse than prepping for an in-depth dinner recipe only to find the main ingredient isn't at its finest. When working with tomatoes, time isn't always on your side. Though not as temperamental as avocados, tomatoes can go from stiff off the vine to perfectly ripe in the blink of an eye, and then turn to rotten mush before you know it. If that carton of fresh tomatoes could use some more ripening time, but you're in a time crunch, there's a simple hack to speed things up.

I caught up with Italian-American chef, cookbook author, and restaurateur Antonia Lofaso at this year's New York City Wine & Food Festival, and she clued me in on an all-too-easy tomato magic trick. "Put the tomatoes in a brown bag in a warm spot and they will ripen faster," Lofaso said, but that's not her only approach. Tomatoes are naturally sweet, so you just need to bring out that tenderness, and Lofaso does so with nothing more than a pinch of salt and a little sugar.

Before tomatoes reach their peak, they lack that signature zing, delivering a bland watery bite that doesn't offer much flavor. To make out of season tomatoes shine, Lofaso will sprinkle both sugar and salt onto them ahead of time and then leave them out on the counter to marinate. "Never put tomatoes in the refrigerator," she shared with conviction. The cold temperatures mess with the texture and flavor of tomatoes, resulting in the mealy bite we all dread when biting into a tomato.

It might seem like salt and sugar would work against each other, but they both play an important role when bringing tomatoes to life. The sugar cuts the acidity, while the salt draws out moisture, creating a more structured bite while bringing out natural, juicy flavors. Nothing can replace sugar's job here, but the necessary acidity can be added with other tangy ingredients like red wine vinegar or pineapple juice. Nigella Lawson also uses salt and sugar to sweeten up unripe tomatoes, but then she roasts them to add some caramelization.