The Clear Tomato Martini

How I remade an old laboratory cocktail with ripe tomatoes and equipment you can actually use at home.

There's a point every summer when tomatoes stop needing much help. They smell good before you even cut into them, the counter's covered with them, and for a few weeks it feels ridiculous to cook with anything else.

A few years ago I took that idea in a fairly unreasonable direction. I made a tomato martini using a rotary evaporator, a piece of laboratory equipment that let me capture the aroma of ripe tomatoes while producing a distillate that was almost completely clear. The drink looked like water and smelled unmistakably like tomato, and I loved it. The obvious problem was that almost nobody has a rotary evaporator sitting in the kitchen.

So I came back to the drink this summer with a different question: could I get close to the same experience without the laboratory equipment? Turns out, yes.

The new version starts with very ripe tomatoes, a little salt, and vodka. Crush the tomatoes, warm them gently, and let them filter slowly, and what begins as a bowl of red pulp eventually gives you a remarkably clear tomato-infused vodka. That transformation is still my favorite part of the whole process.

The drink itself is intentionally simple: dry vermouth, a few drops of MSG solution, plenty of ice, and a long stir. A brined green tomato goes on at the end. It isn't a Bloody Mary in disguise. There's no heavy tomato juice, horseradish, or Worcestershire. It's cold, dry, and clean, but bring the glass up to your nose and there's tomato everywhere.

Watch: How I Make the Clear Tomato Martini

Clear Tomato Martini Recipe

Makes 2 cocktails

For the tomato vodka

• 2 pounds very ripe, aromatic tomatoes

• Pinch of kosher salt

• 2 cups vodka

Cut the tomatoes into large pieces and place them in a non-reactive bowl. Add a pinch of salt and crush them thoroughly with a potato masher or wooden spoon, then let them sit for about 5 minutes while the salt starts pulling moisture from the fruit.

Transfer the crushed tomatoes to a large heat-safe mason jar, add the vodka, stir well, and seal the jar. Place it in a 150°F water bath and let the tomatoes infuse for 1 hour. Remove the jar and let it cool completely.

Now comes the part that matters most: don't squeeze the tomatoes through the filter. Pour the mixture into a Chemex, coffee filter, or cheesecloth-lined fine strainer and let gravity do the work. Give it time. I usually let it drain for roughly two hours. The slower and less you disturb it, the clearer the tomato vodka gets.

Transfer the filtered tomato vodka to a clean bottle or jar and keep it refrigerated.

For each martini

• 2½ ounces tomato vodka

• ½ ounce dry vermouth

• MSG solution, to taste, a few drops at a time

• Ice

• 1 brined green tomato, for garnish

Combine the tomato vodka, dry vermouth, and MSG solution in a mixing glass. Fill generously with ice and stir until very cold and properly diluted, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass and finish with a brined green tomato.

For the Brined Green Tomatoes

• 1 cup water

• 1 cup white vinegar

• 1 tablespoon kosher salt

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• 2 garlic cloves, peeled

• 1½ tablespoons coriander seed

• 1½ tablespoons yellow mustard seed

• 1½ tablespoons black peppercorns

• 1 bay leaf

• 1 small red chile, or a pinch of chile flakes

• 1 pint green cherry or plum tomatoes, skins pricked

Combine the water, vinegar, salt, sugar, garlic, coriander, mustard seed, peppercorns, bay, and chile in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer and cook just until the sugar and salt dissolve. Pack the pricked green tomatoes into a clean jar and pour the hot brine over them. Let them cool, then refrigerate. For this recipe, treat them as refrigerated pickles rather than shelf-stable preserves.

Why MSG?

MSG isn't there to make the drink taste like seasoning. Used carefully, it reinforces the savory character that's already present in a ripe tomato. A few drops are enough. I don't want somebody drinking this and thinking about MSG. I just want the tomato to taste somehow more complete.

The Green Tomato Garnish

I like using the tomatoes at two different stages of ripeness. The ripe red fruit gives us the aromatic base of the drink, while the green tomatoes are firmer and better suited to brining, so they become the garnish. That way the garnish isn't something tacked on at the end just because the glass needs decoration. It comes from the same plant and does a completely different job.

Do You Need a Chemex?

No. A Chemex happens to work beautifully because you can see the contrast between the red tomato pulp sitting above and the clear liquid collecting underneath, but a coffee-filter-lined strainer or several layers of cheesecloth will do the job just fine. The important part isn't the equipment, it's patience. If you press on the tomatoes because you want another ounce of liquid, you'll get another ounce of liquid, but you'll also push fine tomato solids through the filter and lose some of the clarity you spent all that time creating. Sometimes leaving a little behind is the better call.

Why Stir It Instead of Shake It?

This version gets stirred. There's nothing opaque that needs to be aggressively incorporated, and after spending hours getting the tomato component clear, I don't particularly want to beat air into it. Stirring gives me the temperature and dilution I want while preserving that clean appearance.

And yes, an earlier version of this drink was shaken. Recipes aren't museum pieces. This one got better when I came back to it.

Tomato season is short enough that I don't have much interest in pretending otherwise. I wouldn't make this in February with a tomato that traveled across the country while barely ripe. The whole drink depends on aroma, and that means starting with tomatoes that actually smell like tomatoes. For a few weeks at the end of summer, though, they're everywhere. That's when I make it.