Why tomatillos aren't just little green tomatoes (and why they're awesome)

[stevenrwh]

I live in a small rural town in Kentucky. I believe it was around 2004 when I first saw tomatillos at my local Save A Lot grocery store. At the time we were getting an influx of migrant workers in our area; they were working on tobacco farms and I was noticing more Hispanic foods there. I thought "tomatillos" must be Spanish for little green tomatoes at first. Then I saw the husk and I knew I was looking at something that I had never seen before.

I didn't have a smart phone back then and didn't have internet access at home. So I got the attention of a Mexican guy who was walking by. We stood there trying to communicate even though neither of us knew much of the other's language.

Eventually he grabbed cilantro, onions, some limes, jalapenos, and tomatillos and put them in my cart. Then he started miming how to chop the ingredients up and somehow I understood to roast the tomatillos from his gestures.

This was at a time when the nearest Mexican Restaurant in the area was a Taco Bell about 20 miles from where we were standing.

I started making salsa verde, pico de gallo, and began experimenting with making tacos without using the taco kits from the store.

[ajuicejemas]

This channel consistently makes me realize how little I actually know about the gazillion things that go into the foods I eat

[notgate]

The calyx trivia about how it engulfs some plants but falls away from others was fascinating. Liked just for that. Great video as always!

[calebweldon]

I’ve grown tomatillos for years and made salsa verde out of them, recently my sister was surprised to see tomatillos in the grocery store she said she assumed I was just mispronouncing tomato all these years

[QuesoCookies]

When I was a kid, my mom planted several tomatillo plants, and we spent many days if not weeks harvesting, shelling, and canning them all through that summer. They are tenacious and prolific! We were up to our eyeballs in them. We recruited all our neighborhood friends, and actually had a lot of fun shelling them at first, but soon it started to feel like tomatillo purgatory, Sisyphus' boulder made green and juicy. Hoping not to repeat T-Day next year, we decided not to plant them again... the tomatillos decided otherwise. Dozens and dozens of tomatillo popped up throughout the garden the next spring anyway, and they became a weed we ended up needing to pull every year for the rest of the time I lived with my parents. That was probably 25 years ago, and you'll still find the odd tomatillo poking up in my mom's garden to this day. Buyer beware, all I'm saying.

[TheNordicfrost]

Warning: If you decide to grow tomatillos, grow at least two plants, or have a neighbor grow some as well. I only grew one plant, and had hundreds of flowers but didn't get a single fruit. I later found out that it needs another plant to be properly pollinated.

[rick]

Living in a Mexican household; I remember peeling the husk off the tomatillos for my father everytime he would make salsa. I always wondered why the outer layer was so sticky and now I understand why! Watching this video reminded me so much of my culture and the time I had with my father. Thank you Adam for this video, very informative just like all your other videos, that’s why I like watching your channel everyday.

[Reliquancy]

I’d like to hear an explanation of why some berries are poisonous when, like you were saying, they rely on being eaten to reproduce.

[doc.rankin]

Grew up in a Mexican household (moms Mexican). I can tell you that both of the ways you're making salsa verde are correct. There are some minor differences for taste but on the whole you've nailed the process and product. Thank you for accurately representing part of my culture.

[jarvisa]

4:01 I could never understand why recipes called for aubergines (egg plants) and cucumbers to be sprinkled with salt ‘to extract the bitter juices’ because they don't taste bitter to me. Then I found out that not all people experience the taste of foods the same way.

[TheDonaldduck]

Mexican fan here: we absolutely LOVE tomatillos here, and Adam was spot on on our preferred methods of preparing a nice salsa verde. I personally go with boiling them since it's more accessible in case you wanna make something quick and less messy, but just as great. I also do fry the salsa a little bit becuse it makes it taste 100x better, otherwise a plain salsa just tastes pretty acidic. You need to balance that tone with other flavors for it to become a truly great salsa, so that's where all the personal touches come in.

If you want an amazing true mexican breakfast with your salsa verde, try chilaquiles; fried tortilla chips. You toss them in your salsa, take them out before they go soggy, and then add your cheese on top. We also throw in pulled chicken or a scrambled egg in there :)

[stefangordin]

The Romanian anecdote of the episode: We grow a whole lot of tomatillo, we call them gogonele. We primarily lacto-ferment them and eat them year-round just like you would pickles. It's in my personal top 3 pickled substances (after cauliflower and watermelon)

[MajoraZ]

Another Etymological fact that would have been fun to bring up: "Tomato" comes from the Aztec/Nahuatl word "tomatl", but Tomatl referred to Tomatillos. What we now call Tomatoes were called "Xitomatl". So Tomatoes should actually be called "Jitomato", and Tomatillos should just be "Tomato". There's also still millions of Nahuatl speakers in Mexico. I also think that the Columbian exchange, especially in the context of Aztec botany ands agriculture (look up Chinampas and their use even today!), could be a good video topic for the channel. The Columbian exchange itself is obviously something people are taught, but what's less taught is that it's not just Europeans exporting crops, but adaption of actual botanical sciences and agriculture, too: The Aztec had botanical gardens (Huaxtepec, Texcotzinco/Texcotzingo, etc) where plants and flowers were experimented with, categorized into formal taxonomic systems (complete with binominal naming, like Linnaean taxonomy) and stocked for medical uses.

The Spanish recorded a huge corpus of medical treatments from herbs and documentation on flora in Mesoamerica from Aztec sources and records (The Badianus manuscript is a spanish annotated Aztec botanical text and herbal remedy document, while the Florentine Codex, a joint effort of Spanish friars and Aztec scribes/elders, has sections on botany and herbal treatments too) and it's even been suggested that Academic botanical gardens in Europe, which first show up in the following century, were inspired by the gardens Conquistadors described. While people like Cortes, Motolinia, and even Francisco Hernandez de Toledo, the royal court physician and naturalist to Philip II, all said that Aztec botanical and medical sciences (which they were also proficient with: they had the first use of intramedullary nails for fixing broken bones, better understanding of the circulatory system then Europe at the time, to name a few examples) were better then Spain's, with Francisco Hernandez travelling to Mexico and documenting Aztec records to bring back to Spain.

For people who wanna read more on this, I recommend "An Aztec Herbal: The Classic Codex of 1552" (an annotated translation of the Badianus manuscript), Book 10/11 of the Florentine Codex, "Public Health in Aztec Society", "Aztec Medicine by Francisco Guerra" (though it repeats outdated, disproven info re: inflated sacrifice totals), "Empirical Aztec Medicine by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano", and "Precious Beauty: The Aesthetic and Economic Value of Aztec Gardens" (and a lot of papers/books by Susan Toby Evans, who is an expert on mesoamerican gardens and palaces), and Kelly McDonough and Enrique Rodriguez-Alegria's research on testing Aztec medical treatments. A lot of this stuff is published online for free as open access research, too. I also have extended writeups about this I've made myself (I do essays and help history/archeology channels with stuff on Mesoamerica), if people want that messag me on twitte, I'm Majora__Z

[pablolankenau]

Hey Adam, you missed one type of salsa verde which actually showcases the tomatillo RAW.

We usually just blend this all raw: tomatillos, a chunk of onion, japalapeño or serrano peppers, garlic, cilantro. Salt to taste

It's super tart and zingy, I actually love it. It takes some trial and error to get the consistency right, but once you nail it, its one of the best low effort super healthy salsas.

[valkyrie]

We were taught to avoid berries with a calyx, specifically the "little lanterns" that grew on plants, as being a nightshade variety. I admit to having a small heart attack watching you harvest a "ground cherry". Many plants have toxic and non toxic relatives, so that's not a surprise. Moved to Cali and met the tomatillo. AWESOME! but was a bit nervous about it being a calyx berry. Well, it's great! Got to try a ground cherry but I definitely need to research their cousins to sort the good berries from the bad ones. Thank you for a very interesting video!

[lemonke]

The timing could not be more perfect on this one. I saw a video of acooknamedmatt who used tomatillos a lot and was always wondered what they actually are. Nice vid, Adam!

[gaodargon]

Thank you, thank you for loving and respecting our food, for us Mexicans food has a huge emotional/social value. And while we (at least older generations) are very welcome and not gatekeepy, which allows for a lot of personal interpretation to our dishes, I personally always cherish when someone shows real appreciation to our history, and you thanking the abuelas literally made me teary eye (note to self, therapy maybe, disproportionally emotional, something to consider) so again, thank you for the love you show our identity.

[graceyang]

My grandmother planted Chinese lantern cherries in my childhood home growing up, and it was always magical seeing the bright orange and red lanterns pop out among all of the foliage when we eventually stopped attending to our garden lol. They just stuck around unlike the other plants in the garden, and I would “harvest” them to just admire them.

[shannonolivas]

I made tamales this Christmas on my own for the first time. I had no recipe, I just went off of what I remembered seeing my parents do growing up. We always boiled the tomatillos till they were just turning soft and then tossed them into the blender or ground them in the molcajete, as you showed here, combining with other dried chiles as the base of our tamales.

I was skeptical all the way up to steaming, but in the end they turned out great.

[nancyhale]

Tomatillos are the "secret" ingredient in my homemade chicken soup, lol. I just dice up a dozen or so and toss them in towards the end (they cook fast, if I'm adding noodles I put them in before the noodles and add noodles when the tomatillos are mostly done) they are great to grow in areas with short growing seasons, and they come back! We lived at 7500ft and had no problems with them.