To bring luck to a bride, her white gown is supposed to be accented by items drawn from the rather broad categories of “something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.” To bring happiness to the lips of a person sipping a traditional Bloody Mary, a parallel phrase for augmenting the tomato juice would be “something spicy, something salty, something tangy, and something complex.” And then, of course, there’s adding a jigger or two of liquor.
In both cases, there’s a lot of latitude within these categories. And in this chapter you’re going learn about all of the various foods that glorify the flavor of tomato juice, starting with an exploration of the juice itself.
You’ll find recipes in Chapter 4 that aren’t red at all. Some are green, others are yellow, and then a few are perfectly clear. But to most people a Bloody Mary is a red drink based on tomato juice or mixed vegetable juice such as V8, which is dominated by tomato juice.
After you make your own cooked tomato juice you’ll be spoiled forever, but it’s always good to have a bottle in the pantry. To determine the best brand, a group of friends and I got together one afternoon and tried eight juices commonly found across the country—you might say we got a lycopene overload.
The overall winner was R. W. Knudsen Family Organic Tomato Juice; it has the deep flavor of tomatoes ripened on the vine with a texture that is rich enough not to become wimpy when diluted with liquor and ice, but not so thick that you want to chew it when drinking it plain.
Our second-place winner, and not far below the organic juice, was Campbell’s Tomato Juice, which is about half the price of the R. W. Knudsen drink. It really tastes like ripe tomatoes.
While these two were on the top of the tomato totem pole, other juices we found acceptable were produced by Welch’s, Del Monte, Sacramento, and the 365 Everyday Value brand sold at Whole Foods Market.
But none of the commercial juices held a candle to this homemade juice.