10 Recipes For Your Best Summer Tomatoes

It is an unfortunate truth that some people just hate raw tomatoes. For many of these haters, it's the texture that puts them off. For others, it's the watery taste. But these descriptors hardly apply to peak summertime tomatoes, whose firm skin, meaty interior, and mildly sweet flavor ought to woo the most hardened skeptics.

What follows are some recipes that use these peak season tomatoes to their fullest, showcasing their strengths within dishes designed to complement their freshness. Try making these for your tomato-hating friends and see if you can't change their minds.

Traditional Caprese salad consists of only tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil, dressed with salt, pepper, and olive oil. We consulted with chefs to see how to craft a unique and upgraded Caprese; their suggestions range from adding fruit to tossing in some breadcrumbs, and each tweak to the formula results in an exciting new twist on a classic. Read all about it here.

You won't always be able to find green tomatoes, but they should pop up at farmer's markets in late summer, depending on where you live. Fried green tomatoes are a great use for this seasonal produce, a nuanced dish that requires slicing the tomato to a particular thickness and allowing for a fair amount of inactive prep time. Paul Fehribach, chef and owner of Big Jones in Chicago, walks us through how to cook Fried Green Tomatoes and pair them with a spicy remoulade. Here's the recipe.

We firmly believe in treating your summer tomatoes right—that is, when tomatoes are at their best, you should let them steal the show. This Tomato Bean Salad is built on that philosophy, combining the most gorgeous tomatoes you can find with quick-pickled green beans, onion, and spices to create a refreshing salad perfectly suited to scorching summer nights. Get the recipe here.

This isn't a recipe so much as a formula: the classic tomato sandwich popularized by beloved children's book Harriet the Spy consists of thick tomato slices and mayonnaise on toasted bread—nothing more. You might be tempted to add lettuce and bacon and turn it into a BLT. Which is fine, but then, of course, it wouldn't be a tomato sandwich. Give this "recipe" a try with the best tomatoes you can find; it might sound boring, but you'll be amazed by how satisfying the results can be.

This recipe for Gazpacho, a zesty cold tomato soup, demonstrates the primary tenet of summer produce: garbage tomatoes will yield garbage gazpacho. Use the very best fruits you can find; by blending them up with cucumbers, peppers, garlic, and spices, you're already halfway to a bowl of seasonal comfort. Get the full recipe here.

Gnocchi might sound like a bit of a heavy choice for a summer pasta dish, but that's only because of how much moisture we typically imbue in the gnocchi as we boil and sauce it. It's easy to avoid this waterlogged, "gloopy" effect by air frying the gnocchi after boiling, turning them into crispy little nuggets of potato starch. Layering on a sauce made from fresh raw tomatoes transforms the hefty pasta into an irresistible weeknight dish. Get the recipe here.

This BLT Salad delivers what it promises—lettuce and generous helpings of tomato, with thick-cut bacon scattered throughout—but turns everything up to eleven with a Worcestershire vinaigrette, which brings bold steakhouse flavors to an otherwise simple dish. Get the recipe here.

You've no doubt encountered a classic 7-layer dip before: refried beans, cheese, guacamole, salsa, sour cream, lettuce, and taco meat arranged in tidy striations. This recipe for Mediterranean 7-Layer Dip strategically swaps out each element of the original to create an appetizer bursting with summer freshness. The key ingredient? Three good, ripe tomatoes, which combine with cucumber, olives, hummus, and feta (among other things) to create something akin to a scoopable, snackable Greek salad. Get the recipe here.

If your tomatoes begin to slow down on the vine, staying stubbornly green rather than turning red, you can make lemonade out of lemons by making Vishwesh Bhatt's Green Tomato Pie. It's not savory, as you might expect—it's a dish meant for dessert, and one that seeks to prove there's more to do with green tomatoes than simply frying them (though that's delicious, too). Get the recipe here.

The previous recipes barely scratch the surface of all that summer tomatoes can do for you. There are plenty of other ways to incorporate them into your meals this season, whether you use them to top an avocado toast or marinate them in soy sauce and sesame oil. Here's a great list of general ideas on how to start playing around with your produce, compiled by chefs from around the country. Read all the best ideas here and start getting inspired.