Five tomatoes peeled and blended with a little water, salt and pepper, with celery if you want it. It is savoury rather than sweet, it takes two minutes, and it is nothing like the tinned kind.
Peeling is not optional
This is the one step people skip and the one that decides whether the juice is drinkable. Tomato skin will not blend. However long the machine runs, the skin ends up as small tough flecks suspended in the liquid, and they are unpleasant against the tongue and the throat.
Thirty seconds in boiling water and then into cold, and the skin comes off in one piece. Five tomatoes take about two minutes to do.
A savoury drink
Colombia drinks a great many fruit juices and almost all of them take sugar. This one does not. Tomato is savoury, and the recipe seasons it the way you would season a soup: salt and pepper, to taste.
That is worth knowing before the first mouthful, because a glass of tomato juice approached as though it were fruit juice is a surprise.
The water is there for the blender
Five tomatoes and three celery stalks will not move in a blender jug on their own; they need a little liquid to start circulating. That is the only job the water has.
Add it a splash at a time and stop when the mixture is turning. Every extra splash past that point dilutes the flavour, and there is no way back.
Cold makes it a different drink
Blended raw tomato at room temperature is flat and faintly metallic. The same juice after an hour in the fridge tastes clean and sharp.
If you are in a hurry, chill the tomatoes before blending rather than the juice afterwards. It gets you most of the way there.
More juices
- Tree tomato juice — tomate de árbol, a different fruit entirely.
- Carrot juice — the other savoury-leaning one.
- Beet juice — earthier, and usually mixed.
- Orange juice — the everyday Colombian one.
Tomato Juice FAQ
Yes, and it is the difference between a smooth juice and a gritty one. Tomato skin does not break down in a blender. It shreds into flecks that float and catch in the throat, and blending longer only makes them smaller.
Score a cross in the base, drop them into boiling water for about thirty seconds, then into cold water. The skins slip off in your fingers.
No. It is savoury, which is why it takes salt and pepper rather than sugar. Anyone expecting something like orange juice will be surprised by the first mouthful.
A splash at a time, only enough to get the blender turning. Five tomatoes hold a lot of liquid already, and too much water gives you something thin that tastes of very little.
No, it is marked optional. Three stalks make it greener and more vegetal, closer to a vegetable juice. Without it you taste only tomato.
Yes. At room temperature blended raw tomato tastes flat and slightly metallic. An hour in the fridge changes it completely.
The recipe's own note says so. Blended fresh tomato is the base of a sauce, so a glass that does not get drunk can go into a pot rather than down the sink.
📖 Recipe
Ingredients
- 5 medium-sized tomatoes (peeled)
- 3 celery stalks (optional)
- Water (a little, to loosen the blender)
- Salt (to taste)
- Pepper (to taste)
Notas
Instructions
- Peel the tomatoes and cut them into pieces. Do the same with the celery stalks if you are using them, and put everything in the blender.
- Add a pinch of salt and pepper to taste, pour in a little water and blend until it is smooth. Serve cold.
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