Tomatoes - Weights & Conversions

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Recipes routinely call out for a "medium" or "large" tomatoes, without any hint about size or weight - except English cookbooks which just call for "1 Tomato" with no hint whatever as to how much "1 Tomato" weighs in London. This page is based on tomatoes grown in California and Mexico, which together supply 75% of the fresh tomatoes consumed in the U.S. California produces about 96% of the processed tomatoes consumed in the US. California canned tomatoes have beat the Italians badly in every properly conducted blind tasting, so just ignore all those Italian recipes that claim you must use Italian canned tomatoes.

More on Tomatoes

Recipe Weight Table

Conversion - Fresh to Canned

This table is based on our actual simmering down peeled and finely chopped Mexican tomatoes and a 28 ounce can of peeled whole tomatoes with all their juice to a similar thick sauce consistency. The canned will usually be more flavorful, so you could sometimes get away with a little less canned than the table calls for and consider the weights equivalent.