Fresh Tomato Soup
Sammy from Ramat
Eshkol asks:
My wife
makes a delicious soup out of fresh tomatoes. Can she prepare the soup with
sh’mittah tomatoes? Can she peel the tomatoes before putting
them into the soup?
Tomatoes are
generally eaten either raw or cooked. It is therefore permitted to cook them in
a soup. However, since only a minority of people prepare tomato soup from fresh
tomatoes, one must ensure that the tomatoes are eventually eaten. This would not
be the case with onions used to flavour meat or fish. Since it is common
practice to use onions for this purpose, there is no need to eat the onions
after using them to flavour another dish. It is permitted to use the onions for
this purpose even if this will render them unfit for eating since they have lost
their taste.
Regarding
peeling tomatoes, since tomatoes are generally eaten with their peel, one may
not remove the peel. People will not eat the peel on its own. Such removal
prevents the peel from being eaten and is therefore considered a form of
destruction. However, if a thicker layer of tomato flesh is removed together
with the peel, this is permitted. We view such an act as merely separating one
part of the tomato flesh from the other. One may leave the tomato peel to spoil,
together with the attached fruit.
