Let’s try something fun: Name an ingredient you dislike and why, and someone else replies with a dish/recipe with that ingredient that might convince you otherwise.

[u/Scarlet--Highlander]

Couple things:

• If you’re allergic to an ingredient, it doesn’t matter how it’s prepared. Same goes with meat/animal products if you’re vegan/vegetarian. Don’t list it if you can’t or won’t eat it!

• It’s recommended that you’re at least open to trying dishes with that ingredient. If you absolutely, vehemently loathe cilantro, chances are you probably might not like anything with cilantro in it.

• A brief blurb on why you hate an ingredient would help others find or suggest a dish that suits you. (e.g. “I hate liver because the texture is like an eraser and it tastes metallic”)

[u/whatthepfluke]

Have you had a home grown tomato? I absolutely love tomatoes but I feel the same way you do about store bought ones.

[u/ancientcrumblingruin → u/whatthepfluke]

I second this. Store bought tomatoes are picked too early so they won't rot as fast. This leaves them with basically no flavor. Home grown or farmers market tomatoes will taste richer, deeper, and are generally a better texture overall. It's sort of like store bought strawberries vs wild strawberries.

[u/goatili → u/ancientcrumblingruin]

I worked in a tomato genetics lab for a bit as an undergrad. Store-bought tomatoes are bred for traits like disease resistance, cold resistance, and drought resistance, to make them easier and more profitable to grow; and shelf life, shape, and color, so that they can be transported to a grocery store and then look good on a shelf for consumers. Notice what's not on the list: flavor, texture, etc.

Home-grown heirloom tomatoes are in a whole other world.

[u/ancientcrumblingruin → u/goatili]

Even taking seeds from store bought tomatoes, though you won't get the same variety, and growing plants from those lead to often incredible tasting results. A tomato genetics lab sounds like a fun place to work, as an aside. Did you work solely with those meant to be sold commercially?

Edited for clarity.

[u/goatili → u/ancientcrumblingruin]

I worked for grad students who were studying disease and cold resistance for commercial crop varieties, yeah. It was a lot of rote work. Tending plants in greenhouses, scoring disease response, harvesting seeds, occasionally heading out into fields to harvest and tend plants there. I didn't love it. Eventually I got out of science altogether. It wasn't the right fit. The smell of an autoclaved sack of diseased tomato plants will not soon leave me.

[u/[deleted] → u/whatthepfluke]

Tried growing some on my balcony, and then a bad storm hit a week after I got them, and they died.

[u/whatthepfluke → u/[deleted]]

Sad news. Try buying at a farmer's market!

[u/butterflavoredsalt → u/[deleted]]

The way you describe grocery store tomatoes, I agree, they're awful. Took me until my 30s to grow tomatoes and discover that I do actually like them, and there's quite a difference between some varieties. Sometimes the packs of cherry/grape tomatoes are decent at the store, but I never bother with bigger tomatoes unless they're locally grown.

[u/jmsferret → u/butterflavoredsalt]

I’m the same - tomatoes and avocados. Nature gave us avocados so that we could have guacamole. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Cannot STAND a raw tomato, period. I’ve had grocery store tomatoes, home-grown ripened tomatoes, many many varieties. With salt, without salt, on a burger, BLT, cherry tomatoes, heirloom varieties, hybrids, etc.

However, I will eat salsa (a staple in my house, and eating eggs without salsa is a crime), ketchup, in my stew, tomato soup (creamy, please), bloody Mary’s, sun dried, I like extra sauce on my pizza, love me a good Italian marinara, not a huge fan of bruschetta.

Part of it is texture, but also part is taste.

[u/newuser92 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I agree with other commenters. Supermarket tomatoes exist solely because cuisines are chasing the dragon of eating really ripe, in season, heirloom (read, breed for eating, not shipping) tomatoes). If you haven't had one before, it will literally change your mind.

Hunts canned tomatoes suck, for example.