What Tomate means
Tomate is a Mexican ingredient name of Nahuatl origin meaning "husk tomato, tomatillo". It comes from tomatl (husk tomato, a solanaceous fruit). It is pronounced toh-MAH-teh, and it is most associated with central Mexico.
The Nahuatl tomatl was the small green fruit in a papery husk, not the red one. English took the word and attached it to the wrong plant.
Tomate is one of the many Mexican food words formed in Nahuatl. Spanish borrowed it, and in several cases English borrowed it again from Spanish. See how Nahuatl builds words and the full list of Mexican food names.
This is a site about what Mexican words mean, so there is no recipe here. For the name itself: The words that appear inside dish names: the chiles (ancho, guajillo, pasilla, chipotle), the corn words (nixtamal, masa, tortilla, elote), and the tools (comal, molcajete, metate). Learn these and most menu items decode themselves.
