Tomatillos - what recipes do you use?

A couple of years ago, a friend grew tomatillos and then left town, so guess who ended up with a bunch of tomatillos??? We used them in "Canadian Salsa" (which I've since learned is very different than "Mexican Salsa") They were successful enough that I grew them myself the next year, but didn't get a lot of them. I've been moving them around my property since, and I think I've finally found a spot where they are actually happy.

This got me looking into the nutritional value:
https://www.nutritionvalue.org/Tomatillos%2C_raw_nutritional_value.html#:~:text=Tomatillos

This is maybe not going to qualify as a "superfood", but if it grows without too much fuss and I can add it to other foods, I'm good with that!

But now I need some recipes! Preferably recipes I've got some hope of replicating! This one, so far, needs some work:

Oven Roasted Tomatillos
Ingredients:
Tomatillos -husks removed. Didn't say how many, but I used 6 cups
Olive Oil
Salt
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Arrange tomatillos on pan. Drizzle olive oil and stir so they're coated. Sprinkle with salt.
Bake for 60-70 minutes, stirring half way through. Cook until tomatillos look like they've popped.
Serve immediately or store in the refrigerator for a few days. Alternatively, you can place these in freezer bags and freeze them.

So mine turned into mush in 30 minutes. The resultant mush was ~2 cups. I suspect that my stick blender would turn it into a sauce that could be added to spaghetti sauce or soups.

So help people - I've got another 4 cups or more that I need to find a good use for - what recipes have all you awesome permies used?

I really like them pickled, like pickled green tomatoes.  But, another favorite is a fermented salsa or kind of a chunky hot sauce unless you strain it after it has fermented.  I toss some tomatillos, hot green peppers, garlic, onion and cilantro (fresh or dried) in the blender with some salt and black pepper and cumin.  After it is finely pureed, I mix in some plain kombucha - just 1/4 cup or so.  Then, I pour it into a jar and either use a fermentation air lock or put a rubber glove over the opening.  The kombucha gets it fermenting fairly strongly within 24 hours if it isn't too cool.  You can eat it at any time.  But, I let it go at least a weeks so the flavors can come together.  Once it is fermented to taste, it will keep for years.  I have a jar in the fridge right now that is 5 years old and keeps getting better!  It is hot and funky, sour and pickley - great on a cheese burger!

I have only used the tomatillos in salsa, though this article has a lot of different ways to use them:

https://www.thekitchn.com/tomatillo-recipes-206915

Green Chilaquiles - it's a Mexican breakfast dish.
2 lbs. tomatillos
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped
4 cloves garlic
1 tsp. salt
12 corn tortillas, quartered
oil for frying

Combine first 4 ingredients in 2 cups of water, bring to boil, reduce to simmer. Simmer until everything is soft, about 15-20 minutes. Puree in blender.
Deep fry tortillas in oil. Combine fried tortillas and sauce in a saute pan, heat through, stirring to cover the chips with the sauce.

Many people like these with eggs, scrambled or fried. We like them with sour cream, particularly if we make them spicier.

Oh, I almost forgot pork chili made with tomatillos, peppers, onions and garlic, cumin and cilantro, corn, whatever beans you like and some beer - THAT is good stuff!

I have substituted 50/50 tomatillos for tomatoes in my "Canadian-style Salsa" recipe. It's a chunky salsa and has some vinegar added to help it keep longer since it's rare that my family will join me in eating it. Consider all the quantities "approximate"!

6.5 lbs tomatoes/tomatillos together
1 cup onion finely chopped (I often use green onion if my Walking Onions are producing a lot of tops)
1 clove garlic
1/8th cup chopped fresh parsley
2 Tbsp chopped celeriac leaves (or leaf celery)
1/3 cup mild peppers
2 hot peppers (whatever I have - I'm *not* a connoisseur of pepper varieties, as we are at the edge of their range and they all tend to be mild)
1 tsp sea salt
1 Tbsp fresh oregano
1/4 tsp cumin
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar

I've never made a smooth Salsa Verde and maybe this year would be the year to try it. I recall seeing a recipe that called for baked tomatillos in it, but have any of you used baked T's in your Salsa Verde?

Salsa Verde!  Which I use for enchilada sauce as well as with chips.  It's just the recipe out of the Ball canning book, but so good. I grew too many tomatillo plants this year.  I have never grown them before and was focused primarily on a massive tomato harvest to restock my shelves with sauces and chilis etc, but when all seeds grew into 8 gorgeous plants, I decided to put two in the east garden and 6 in the new poly tunnel.  WOW. So the plants grew and blossomed and dropped blossoms like crazy with no sign of fruit. One day at noon I saw a bee in the poly tunnel and after doing the "duh" smack to the head, I rolled up the sides of the poly tunnel and the plants were almost immediately swarmed by bees.  A little too late for Northeastern Wyoming but I'm learning.  Anyway, lots of beautiful tomatillos were growing and just before our first hard freeze early this month, we scrambled to pick everything that we were sure would freeze solid at 23 degrees F, including the tomatillos, peppers and tomatoes.  You know where I'm going with this by now....I made a huge batch of green tomato salsa verde and added some tomatillos.  I got so intensely sick after taste-testing the first batch (unripe tomatillos are toxic) that I felt like I had drunk draino and would surely die.  Thankfully I keep charcoal pills, liver vitamins and gut fixer tinctures and drink a ridiculous amount of water so I lived through it, albeit suffering through horse sized flatulence and yellow poop for 2 weeks. I had no idea that 'full but not split' tomatillos are not ripe.  So glad my son did not eat any, as I was out of chips when he visited that first evening.  WOWOWOW. I had already canned 8 pints and had to pitch the whole lot, but that was a new one on me.  Apparently I do have enough of a growing season to get them to ripen in the poly if I open the greenhouse to bees from blossom day one.  Same with the tomatoes, which yielded 200+ pounds of Martinos Romas and Amish Paste for my stewing pleasure.  I am now much wiser about tomatillos, and love them, so I will only grow 2 plants next year and baby them until they split their paper lanterns....and read about new plants before growing and eating them for crying out loud!!  (Shaking head in embarrassment).

Mostly salsas, along with hot green peppers and alliums.

I will freeze them whole (the small ones) or split (fork size) and throw them into stews and pan curries as a filler vegetable. If it's a stew with beans, I treat them like tomato and don't add them until the beans are soft.

Remelle Burton wrote: I made a huge batch of green tomato salsa verde and added some tomatillos.  I got so intensely sick after taste-testing the first batch (unripe tomatillos are toxic) that I felt like I had drunk draino and would surely die.  Thankfully I keep charcoal pills, liver vitamins and gut fixer tinctures and drink a ridiculous amount of water so I lived through it, albeit suffering through horse sized flatulence and yellow poop for 2 weeks. I had no idea that 'full but not split' tomatillos are not ripe.  So glad my son did not eat any, as I was out of chips when he visited that first evening.  WOWOWOW. I had already canned 8 pints and had to pitch the whole lot, but that was a new one on me.  Apparently I do have enough of a growing season to get them to ripen in the poly if I open the greenhouse to bees from blossom day one.  Same with the tomatoes, which yielded 200+ pounds of Martinos Romas and Amish Paste for my stewing pleasure.  I am now much wiser about tomatillos, and love them, so I will only grow 2 plants next year and baby them until they split their paper lanterns....and read about new plants before growing and eating them for crying out loud!!  (Shaking head in embarrassment).

Yikes! Thanks for the advice.  I think I might have the same growing season as you, and since my tomatillo plants got in the ground late, this year, I will admire them from afar.

In the meantime, consider frying them ala fried green tomatoes, except your tomatillos need to be ripe.

Remelle Burton wrote:

You know where I'm going with this by now....I made a huge batch of green tomato salsa verde and added some tomatillos.  I got so intensely sick after taste-testing the first batch (unripe tomatillos are toxic)

I'm wondering if different people have different sensitivities, as I've eaten small tomatillos and not had a problem. It also may depend on the variety, as this article, https://getbusygardening.com/how-to-harvest-tomatillos/ , says that they don't really turn yellow, but the ones I grow do. I was taught that yellow ones are over-ripe for making things like Salsa, and a sign I should have picked them sooner.

That said, I can't eat green peppers, but I can eat red ones, and there's a chemical that changes in them as they ripen, so if you reacted, I'd recommend everyone test a small amount, just as we should most new foods, and sometimes even foods that we thought were safe can become unsafe over time.

Remelle Burton wrote: I made a huge batch of green tomato salsa verde and added some tomatillos.  I got so intensely sick after taste-testing the first batch (unripe tomatillos are toxic) that I felt like I had drunk draino and would surely die.  Thankfully I keep charcoal pills, liver vitamins and gut fixer tinctures and drink a ridiculous amount of water so I lived through it, albeit suffering through horse sized flatulence and yellow poop for 2 weeks. I had no idea that 'full but not split' tomatillos are not ripe.  So glad my son did not eat any, as I was out of chips when he visited that first evening.  WOWOWOW. I had already canned 8 pints and had to pitch the whole lot, but that was a new one on me.

Wow, what an experience! I will say that either your variety or constitution must be very different then mine. Toxicity in unripe tomatillos has never come up in my reading, and I have been harvesting them at all stages of green for years with no problems for me or my family. I don’t eat them raw, and have always felt fine. Just goes to show how much diversity there is out there!
As for recipes - this one needs fresh, and doesn’t use a ton, but it is unbelievably delicious. I wish I knew how to preserve it with the flavor intact…
https://www.lataco.com/fake-guacamole-is-here/

I make salsa verde with tomatillos, green chiles and whatever else sounds good. This almost always includes onions and garlic, but doesn't need to and might include anything else -- pepitas, carrots, basil, oregano, epazote, bell peppers, corn, black beans, ginger, cabbage, etc.

I also harvest all but the very smallest the day before the first real freeze is going to happen and we eat them all and have never experienced any sort of toxicity response.

Here are a few of my favorite recipes:

We eat a lot of this salsa.  We use our own dried peppers, or dried anchos. It's a red salsa, but has tomatillos in it. In this style of salsa, tomatillos serve as the acidic/citrus tang rather than lemon or lime. This is very useful if you are low on citrus!

Mexico in My Kitchen: Taqueria Style Salsa Recipe

That type of salsa is made by roasting the ingredients, traditionally on a comal (hot griddle). You can roast them almost any way though.



She also has a popular salsa verde recipe: https://www.mexicoinmykitchen.com/salsa-verde-recipe/

This braised short ribs recipe is very good, as well:

Braised Short Ribs in Tomatillo Sauce


And tamales!  Mmmm: https://www.mexicoinmykitchen.com/tamales-chicken-in-green-salsa/#recipe

Remelle Burton wrote:.I made a huge batch of green tomato salsa verde and added some tomatillos.  I got so intensely sick after taste-testing the first batch (unripe tomatillos are toxic) that I felt like I had drunk draino and would surely die.

That must have been an awful experience! I wonder if you have any sources for this? I could not find any reliable information on the toxicity of unripe tomatillos, rather a warning that one should not replace tomatillos with unripe tomatos because those certainly have toxic solanine. I wonder if you didn't react to the green tomatos?
The other day I saw a video from a famous German garden youtuber who described how miserable he felt when he snacked on tomatos after having pruned lots of tomato plants with bare hands.

Wow! Remelle, that sounds awful.

So sorry.

I am another who picks them without regard to ripeness, and have never experienced that.  I trust that you had correctly identified your fruits as tomatillos, but it’s worth mentioning that there are several similar plants that newbies might need to be warned about, the ground cherry type plants.

The sauces and salsas pretty much cover the territory of what to do with an abundance of tomatillos.  When you have just a few, they can be cut to bite size, and added to the stir fry.

I have taken to incorporating my tomatillos into my tomato sauce processing. I tend to keep an almost 80% tomato to 20% tomatillo ratio and I find the end result to be just as good as straight tomato. You probably could increase the amount of tomatillos by quite a bit before you might face some tartness but I haven't experimented that much.

My next batch might involve roasting the tomatillos before I put them through the food processor. Give it a bit more flair.

I use  a large can in my white bean chili recipe instead of tomatoes.

Timothy Norton wrote:I have taken to incorporating my tomatillos into my tomato sauce processing.

Last summer nothing seemed to want to ripen around here, so it was all "onesy-twosy". So instead of trying to make tomato sauce, I just froze my tomatoes whole in bags. Now they keep giving me the evil eye that it's time to deal with them! However, there are tomatillos mixed in. True Mexican food lovers might not approve, but this is my plan and I'm sticking to it:

Enchilada Sauce

Ingredients:
2 cloves of garlic, mashed
3 Tablespoons of fat
2 Tablespoons of flour
1/4 cup chili powder (I use commercial)
1 cup beef broth (I use homemade)
15 ounces tomato sauce - here's where I'll use my mix of tomatoes and tomatillos
1/2 tsp oregano - I will use more fresh chopped. Generally, if it's 1 tsp dry, 1 Tbs fresh is a good replacement.
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cumin if you like cumin (I don't, so usually sub ground cayenne. - I did say I'm not a purist!)

Directions:
1. In a large saucepan saute the garlic in the oil.
2. Stir in flour until it's smooth and cook for 1 minute.
3. Stir in chili powder.
4. Gradually stir in broth, sauce, and herbs.
5 Simmer for 15 minutes.

No one's complained about the Tomatillos component, but I don't think it's ever been even as much as 50%. I had hoped that tomatillos would be a reliable crop for me, but alas, after 3 years of trying, the plants seem to grow well, but are *very* fussy about setting fruit that seems to be either weather or day-length related. That would be a different question for the growies forum , so I think I will wander over there...

Timothy Norton wrote:I have taken to incorporating my tomatillos into my tomato sauce processing. I tend to keep an almost 80% tomato to 20% tomatillo ratio and I find the end result to be just as good as straight tomato. You probably could increase the amount of tomatillos by quite a bit before you might face some tartness but I haven't experimented that much.

My next batch might involve roasting the tomatillos before I put them through the food processor. Give it a bit more flair.

THis this THIS!

40 years ago my mother planted two (2) tomatillo plants in the garden. We have never again actively cultivated them, but they still run wild around the edges of the beds, and some have followed me into the mountains, presumable in soil that came with another plant. As a teen I was hard to sell on Salsa Verde, but was desperate to have a cabinet full of canned tomatoes, so I would usually make a mix of about 50% tomatoes and tomatillos. Once they are nicely ripe and bursting from their husks they are agreeably sweet and don't seem to diminish the tomato sauce in any way except that the color shifts from a rich red towards a yellowy orange.

The 2 big winners for us with the tomatillos are: the fake guacamole that went viral a few years ago. Basically it's tomatillos, a mild young squash, onion and a bit of garlic that are just barely cooked in a very neutral oil and then the whole thing is blended. Not too hard to tell that it's not real guac but it's pretty good and keeps and freezes much better.

The other is just to clean, slice and freeze and then I can pull them out as a great addition to soups, stir fries and curry. ( Thai style curry) They are mild, tangy and slightly sweet so they go well in all of these. Tomatos have a much more noticeable flavour so don't go in these things but the tomatillos do and are just so easy to grow and harvest that they feel like free food.