Giada De Laurentiis Declared It the Year of The Tomato—Here Are 4 Fun Ways to Use It

If you flip through the pages of one of Giada De Laurentiis’s 10 New York Times bestselling cookbooks or tune into an episode from her more than over two-decades long TV career, you'll quickly learn that the Italian-American chef has some serious culinary crushes. And by that, we mean that the restaurateur, entrepreneur, and mom treats a few signature ingredients as MVPs to deliver major Mediterranean flavor.

De Laurentiis’s staples are like a who’s who of regional Italian culinary lore: from lemons and olive oil to tinned fish and tomatoes—and especially, always tomatoes.

2024 is the Year of the Tomato, According to Giada De Laurentiis

In any and all of the ways—canned or fresh, sun-dried or sauce-ified, cherry or heirloom—tomatoes are so essential in De Laurentiis’s eyes, that she deemed 2024 is the “year of the tomato" in an Instagram post.

In tandem with a photoshoot so she could act as the cover star of the January edition of Los Angeles Magazine, De Laurentiis sat down with the magazine to dish up pasta 101, to reflect on her life in food, and to spill about her favorite types of tomatoes and how to use them.

You’ve been able to watch De Laurentiis cook for more than two decades on TV, and she developed those cooking skills after almost a lifetime of practice. Her earliest kitchen memories begin at a “very, very early age,” she told Los Angeles Magazine, when she started helping and learning from her movie producer grandfather, Dino De Laurentiis.

After studying food anthropology at UCLA to try to learn more about “the reason why people cook the way they do,” she jetted off to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. After that came working restaurants (for the likes of Wolfgang Puck), then a Food & Wine magazine feature, and soon after, a TV offer. 

Swiftly becoming one of the Food Network’s top stars, she's since grown her empire to include cookbooks, restaurants, a catering business with a focus on regional Italian cuisine, plus a lifestyle and shopping website, Giadzy. Through that platform, she shares her own recipes and videos directly with fans, and also sells a curated collection of her favorite imported Italian products. (De Laurentiis moved with her family from Italy to the U.S. when she was seven.)

One of the top-selling items of all? You guessed it: Tomatoes. 

On Giadzy, her selection for the ingredient of the year is available as a sauce, pesto, preserved in jars, and part of meal kits. You can even now infuse tomatoes into your home design with tomatocore.

“It’s an ingredient people understand, know and love,” De Laurentiis said to Los Angeles Magazine, explaining that many home cooks are interested in getting the inside dirt about the fruit. (In case you missed it, tomatoes are scientifically a fruit, not a vegetable!) “There’s a lot of going back to the roots of things: Where does the tomato come from? Where are the best tomatoes? And what makes a tomato so great?”

As for De Laurentiis, she prefers to cook with tomatoes from Puglia, Sicily, and the Amalfi Coast, and her favorite varieties are the smaller, sweeter types.

4 Unexpected Ways to Use Tomatoes

You’re probably well aware that tomatoes are terrific in salads, soups (ideally paired with grilled cheese), and pasta sauces. In honor of 2024 being the year of the tomato, we couldn’t resist sharing a few unique ways to celebrate De Laurentiis favorite fruit…which our Test Kitchen is sweet on, too.

Cocktails

Bloody Mary mixes usually start with a tomato-forward vegetable juice, but your garden fresh cocktail game need not stop there. In November 2023, the boutique marketing and public relations firms af&Co. and the creative services agency Carbonate released their annual trend report and declared the Caprese Martini the cocktail of the year.

After spotting tomato- and basil-scented drinks at trendy bars like Jac’s on Bond in New York City and Casaléna in Los Angeles, the trendspotters nodded to the fact that mixologists are shaking or stirring up more balanced, culinary blends rather than sticking only to classic cocktails (like Manhattans or martinis) or sweeter recipes (daiquiris and piña coladas). Keep pushing the culinary cocktail boundaries by mixing up our Spicy Tomato Gin and Tonic and Cherry Tomato Margarita at home.

Fruit Salads

Speaking of Caprese, it’s the inspiration for one of our most show-stopping summer salads. Our Cherry Caprese Salad starts with the classic elements—Burrata cheese, fresh basil, reduced balsamic, and olive oil. Layer on a 3-to-1 ratio of pitted fresh cherries and cherry tomatoes to bring even more exciting flavor. The sweet-savory combination is surprising and scrumptious.

Savory Jam

When you think of tomatoes and condiments, ketchup, salsa, and pico de gallo probably come to mind first. And when you scan the jelly and jam aisle at any supermarket, you’ll see almost exclusively the fruity regulars: grape, strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, and fig. Versatile savory spreads are often overlooked, but definitely are our jam.

Recipes like 2-Ingredient Microwave Tomato Jam, Tomato-Mango Chutney, and Tomato-Basil Jam are tasty unexpected ways to make the most of your tomato haul. They’re ideal as a topping for nearly any protein, on a crostini, or as part of a sandwich.

Desserts

Tomato soup chocolate cake: It sounds wild, but many who have tried it say it’s wildly delicious. The retro recipe calls for adding one 14-ounce can of condensed tomato soup as part of a chocolate cake batter recipe, which is said to lend moisture, a dense texture, and a subtle extra layer of sweetness (without any wild tomato flavors you might fear in dessert).

That’s not the only tomato dessert you can try. The Italian tomato company Mutti has tomato dessert recipes that feature tomato paste, cherry tomatoes, whole peeled tomatoes, and tomato purée. (We can’t wait to whip up the Tomato Tarte Tatin.)