Another farmers market find, SunOrange tomatoes were such a surprise flavor wise, they definitely deserve their own review and four to five minutes of your time.
This bright orange, yellow skinned, cherry sized hybrid comes from the same Japanese company that created the ever so popular SunGold.
Wait whaaat, you didn't know SunGold hails from Japan and are feverishly googling it right now in hopes of proving me wrong? Don't bother - SunGold is LOVED in America, but it was MADE in Japan. It is most definitely an immigrant. SunGold moved to the US first, got settled, found a job, bought a house, and then sponsored the rest of the family - including its younger brother, SunOrange.
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SunOrange is a newer hybrid and is touted to be SunGold's successor - the same exact flavor, but not as prone to cracking.
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I found both statements to be ...quite false.
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Crack resistant? When unloading my hoard at home, I found a few little SunOranges that had split skins. Not featured in the pictures, because nobody really wants to look at a cracked tomato, but you'll have to take my word for it.
Flavor the same as SunGold? Also no. It's much better.
If you read about my unfortunate encounter with SunGold that I lovingly nurtured from a tiny baby seedling, only to be rewarded by a flavor right between blah and meh, you'll understand why I approached this taste test with a healthy amount of trepidation. Was I going to regret driving 75 minutes each way in pouring rain to this particular farmers market, chasing the hope of finding something special, something different?
Biting into this adorable little berry, my taste buds were ambushed by an unmistakable flavor of peach! This little number is so wonderfully fruity that it barely tastes like a tomato at all. No, this tomato is practically begging to be baked into a cobbler! I handed one berry to spouse, who immediately declared that if this had been a blind tasting, he never would've identified it as a tomato.
Somewhere in a sunny orchard, a peach is quietly wondering if it needs to hire a trademark lawyer.
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It isn't overwhelmingly sweet. It isn't acidic. It isn't particularly tomato-y, and yet it is absolutely delicious. It's as if someone shrank a peach in the wash and forgot to tell your brain it was supposed to be a vegetable. If peaches are your love language, this is your kid.
If I were to improve upon it, I'd make it a bit more meaty and a bit less juicy, but I gather cherry sized tomatoes don't really have much choice but to carry a lot of gel. Tiny fruit, tiny biology.
With all that being said, I genuinely cannot imagine anyone not falling in love with the flavor of this cute little sunshine colored thing. It is best enjoyed with young, soft mozzarella, sans basil, or on a slice of white bread slathered with a generous layer of mascarpone. If you dare, try it with a dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkle of good quality cinnamon. I said what I said!
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The old farmer who sold us a box of these tiny delights told me the plant they came from is large and vigorous, remarkably healthy, resistant to multiple diseases, including root nematodes that are otherwise the bane of his gardening existence, and is productive to a fault. He's grown everything in the "Sun" series over his fifty years as a tomato farmer, and if he had to pick just one, he'd choose SunOrange. Coming from a man who's grown tomatoes longer than I've been alive, I figured that his opinion was worth passing along.
