Curated picks

Best Beefsteak Tomatoes

Beefsteaks are the big sandwich tomatoes, the ones people picture: broad, meaty, often ribbed, and heavy enough to need two hands and a sturdy stake. Most are indeterminate heirlooms that ripen midseason to late, trading the earliness and disease resistance of smaller types for size and depth of flavor. The picks below span the full color range, from the benchmark pink Brandywine to dark, orange, green, white, and bicolor, plus one clean disease-resistant hybrid for a lower-fuss red.

1. 1Brandywinebeefsteak · heirloom · 90 days · lateThe benchmark for rich, full heirloom flavor, a large pink potato-leaf beefsteak, though it ripens late and yields modestly.
2. 2Cherokee Purplebeefsteak · heirloom · 80 days · midDusky rose-purple with a rich, sweet, smoky depth, the most-loved dark beefsteak and adaptable across many climates.
3. 3Black Krimbeefsteak · heirloom · 80 days · midA dark mahogany Russian heirloom with deep, complex, almost savory flavor, and high yields for an heirloom.
4. 4Big Beefbeefsteak · hybrid · 73 days · midIf you want a clean red slicer without heirloom fuss: a meaty AAS-winning hybrid with broad disease resistance and early, reliable fruit.
5. 5Kellogg's Breakfastbeefsteak · heirloom · 80 days · midA big, heavy carrot-orange beefsteak with sweet, rich flavor and unusually steady yields for a large heirloom.
6. 6Pineapplebeefsteak · heirloom · 85 days · lateA showy yellow-and-red bicolor weighing up to two pounds, mild, sweet, and fruity, more for the table than the sauce pot.
7. 7Aunt Ruby's German Greenbeefsteak · heirloom · 80 days · midA large green-when-ripe beefsteak with a sweet, spicy flavor that won the Heirloom Garden Show taste test in 2003.
8. 8Great Whitebeefsteak · heirloom · 85 days · lateA pale ivory-white beefsteak, meaty and nearly seedless, with a mild, low-acid flavor for those who find red tomatoes too sharp.
9. 9Mortgage Lifterbeefsteak · heirloom · 80 days · midA huge, meaty pinkish-red heirloom with few seeds and good slicing texture, the classic one-slice-covers-the-bread tomato.
10. 10Cuostraleebeefsteak · heirloom · 85 days · lateA very large, dependable, heavily ribbed red French heirloom, often one to two pounds, with intense old-fashioned flavor.

These are editorial picks, not a ranked score. For the full filterable catalogue, use the browse page or the chooser.