What Jitomate means
Jitomate is a Mexican ingredient name of Nahuatl origin meaning "red tomato". It is built from xictli (navel) and tomatl (husk tomato). It is pronounced hee-toh-MAH-teh, and it is most associated with central Mexico.
Literally the navel tomatl, for the dimple where the stem attaches. In central Mexico jitomate is the red tomato and tomate is the green husk one; elsewhere tomate covers both.
Jitomate 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.
