As the COVID pandemic began to wind down and restaurants reopened for indoor dining, I was anxious to end my exile in a Florida RV park to get back into a kitchen. While scrolling on Instagram, I saw that a restaurant I’d been following, Spoon and Stable in Minneapolis, was hiring cooks. With the hope of finding a sanctuary for our bus, I reached out to my wife’s kin, who owned a sprawling estate on the outskirts of the city. Their lengthy driveway offered the perfect spot to boondock, and with that logistical hurdle cleared, I eagerly submitted my resume to the restaurant.
During my phone interview, I mentioned that I’d been killing time during the shutdown baking sourdough, which led Spoon and Stable to hire me as a bread baker and pasta maker. Bread baking came naturally to me, but making fresh pasta was new, so I had to jump into intensive on-the-job training. Because the restaurant was famous for its pasta program, which utilized hand-milled heritage grains and seasonal sauces, I knew I had big shoes to fill. Stepping into that kitchen meant not only mastering traditional pasta-making techniques but also honoring local farmers, respecting high-quality ingredients, and carrying forward a culinary legacy with every batch of dough I rolled.
With their house-made pasta menu shifting according to the seasons, every day brought a fresh learning experience. I learned how to craft deep crimson doughs infused with roasted beets, pitch-black spaghetti colored with squid ink, brilliant yellow pastas tinted by saffron and turmeric, and vibrant green varieties flavored with pea leaves, spinach, or – most surprising of all to me – fresh tomato leaves!
Growing up, I believed that tomato leaves were toxic. This caution seemed justified, as tomatoes belong to the solanaceae family – the same botanical lineage as Atropa bella-donna, commonly known as deadly nightshade. Yet, as noted by Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking – often regarded as the definitive culinary text – while these leaves contain the alkaloid tomatine to ward off insect pests, modern research suggests a surprising benefit. Tomatine actually binds to cholesterol within the digestive tract, preventing the absorption of both the alkaloid and the cholesterol. Consequently, McGee affirms that tomato foliage is perfectly suitable for the kitchen. Furthermore, other reports indicate that one would need to ingest over a pound of uncooked greens in a single sitting to suffer even minor gastric upset, confirming that they are quite benign when utilized as a savory infusion.
The earthy smell of tomato plants comes entirely from the leaves. In their raw state, tomato leaves have a sharp, resinous bite and a bitterness that can be quite intense. Due to their fibrous nature and high oil content, tomato leaves are never consumed raw, like salad greens, but they are wonderful as a flavoring – much like rosemary, bay leaves, or makrut lime leaves. By blanching, steeping, or blending tomato leaves, you replace their raw, bitter harshness with a rich, savory umami taste and deep earthy nuances.
When making fresh tomato sauce, a short cooking time keeps it bright and fresh. But it will have a thin, watery consistency and lack the deep umami that develops when natural sugars slowly caramelize. Conversely, simmering a sauce for 45 to 90 minutes reduces water content, creating a luxurious, velvety texture. But it also burns off the lively, fruity aroma characteristic of vine-ripened tomatoes. That quintessential summer garden tomato aroma is from the compound 2-isobutylthiazole, which is found in the leaves.
To restore bright, garden-fresh notes to a long-simmered sauce, you can add a small handful of thoroughly washed tomato leaves during the final 15 minutes of cooking. As they steep in the warm sauce, the leaves release their volatile aromatic oils, infusing the dish with the fresh garden scents that prolonged heating degrades. Simply remove and discard the leaves and stems before serving, just as you would with a bay leaf.
Only use the tender, new growth from the plant’s apex or utilize the suckers you’ve just pruned, avoiding any yellowed or overly woody segments. Be sure your greens have not been exposed to chemical sprays. Give your trimmings a thorough cold-water bath to remove any grit or garden pests. Most importantly, treat tomato foliage with the same restraint that you would apply to pungent herbs like rosemary or bay; a modest handful is all that is required to impart a profound aromatic complexity to your dish.
Even the tomato skins, which are commonly removed and discarded before making sauce, have culinary value. The skins are packed with pectin, concentrated glutamates, and bright acidity. Dehydrating and grinding tomato skins into a powder offers versatile uses: it can be blended into sauce to enhance thickness and savory depth or mixed with salt for an umami-rich seasoning salt.
To make tomato skin salt, place the wet skins between double layers of paper toweling and microwave on high for four minutes, then in 20-second bursts until dry and crumbly. Grind into a powder, mix with equal parts salt, and store in an airtight container.
Utilizing tomato skins and leaves goes beyond creating a novel spice – it reflects a true commitment to zero-waste cooking. By adopting a “root-to-stem” approach, kitchen waste becomes an effective tool, amping up flavor and making you a better cook.
This article appears in 2026 Fall Guide.
