How do I describe different kinds of tomatoes in Spanish?

June 9, 2020 11:24 PM

I'm giving my extra tomato starts to people in my community garden whose plots were assigned after the local plant sales. We've been asked to label donated starts bilingually. What are the terms for slicing tomatoes, paste tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes in Spanish? I could just write the varieties' names, but I assume most people don't geek out about tomatoes as much as I do. Thank you!
posted by centrifugal to Writing & Language (12 answers total)

cherry tomatoes = tomatoes de cerza or tomatitos cherry are general terms most people will know.

For slicing tomatoes the general term is probably tomato liso for smooth kinda normal tomatoes and and tomato bola or jitomato grande for the big beefsteaks. Romas are tomato roma (or saladette, but I think that's more in Spain). If any of them are heirloom I'd put the color.

I don't know what paste tomatoes are even in English, sorry but on the off chance they are plum tomatoes I'd call those Ciruela Tomate myself. I know there are a lot of names though.

I always put the variety too, people like to know in case they want the same ones again.
posted by fshgrl at 12:50 AM on June 10, 2020 [5 favorites]

If you mean roma tomatoes, I'd call those "sauce" or "cooking" tomatoes (sorry, I don't know Spanish, but I know how to use tomatoes and how to describe that plainly :)
posted by amtho at 1:27 AM on June 10, 2020

I think Fshgrl has it, although Wikipedia gives tomate de pera (literally pear tomatoes) for the Roma style ones as well.
posted by cobaltnine at 6:14 AM on June 10, 2020

In addition to the words, a little cartoon drawing could go a long way.
posted by heatherlogan at 6:51 AM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I would write the variety and then something like (cherry/translation) (sauce/translation) or (slicing/translation).

People may not know the variety by heart, but google will instantly tell them everything they need to know about it, which is far more helpful than just knowing what each variety's tomatoes are used for (especially if the translation is accidentally off).
posted by randomnity at 7:07 AM on June 10, 2020

Diced tomatoes: tomate triturado
Fried: tomate frito
Chopped: tomate picado or tomate triturado
Finely chopped tomato: tomate bien picado/triturado
Tomato paste: pasta de tomate
Sliced tomato: tomate rebanado or tomate en rodajas
Slices of tomato: rodajas de tomate
Stewed tomato: tomate guisado
Grilled tomato: tomate a la parilla
Canned tomato: tomate enlatado
Peeled tomato: tomate pelado
Cherry tomato: tomate cherry (I've heard the term tomate de cerza before, but only in recipes. I never saw or heard it in a restaurant in Mexico)
Tomate sauce: catch-all term is salsa de tomate; in mexico and central america, salsa de jitomate is used just as often if not more

Source:close-to-fluent non-native spanish speaker who does a lot of mexican and texmex cooking, and former 15-year San Diego resident who ate over-the-border dozens of times n Tijuana, Rosarito, and assorted towns throughout baja california.

SUERTE!
posted by BadgerDoctor at 8:31 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

Just want to note that 'cerza' should be 'cereza'.
posted by Mister Cheese at 9:06 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

Chedraui.com.mx (Mexican supermarket chain)
posted by bricoleur at 9:39 AM on June 10, 2020

I’ve been looking at Spanish language seed catalogs and found English terms as subcategories in some of them (cherry, salad). The most detailed descriptions so far are in Planeta Huerto, which also has a lot of varieties.
posted by clew at 11:16 AM on June 10, 2020

Determinate/indeterminate is another descriptive term that would be useful if someone has that translation handy.
posted by rockindata at 3:56 AM on June 11, 2020

Good one! And days to expected harvest.

So far I’ve found "indeterminado" but not determinado in a variety description. Also "tipo cherry",
but even in the entry for Roma VFs I don’t see a one-word for "paste" or "sauce", there’s a sentence instead. I’m much better at seed catalogs than I am at Spanish though.
posted by clew at 10:10 AM on June 11, 2020

I’ve lived in several Spanish-speaking countries but am not a native speaker. These terms can vary so much regionally, I would hesitate to use an exact, technical translation. So I would try to use basic descriptive terms that people will understand functionally, even if they aren’t what you might read on a produce counter in Argentina. “Tomate para cortar” = tomato for cutting, “tomate para hacer pasta” = tomato for making paste. And yeah, in all three countries I’ve lived in they’d understand “tomate cherry” or tomatito (little tomato), even if it wasn’t the preferred term.
posted by exutima at 10:31 AM on June 11, 2020 [1 favorite]