📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Cuban Salami
- 🌍 Origin: A relatively rare and highly sought-after variety in the Russian/Eastern European seed swapping community. Its exact origins are a mystery, but most growers agree it is likely an accidental (or intentional) cross involving the famous “Cuban Pepper-shaped” (Kubinskiy Pertsevidnyi) black paste tomato.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall), reaching about 5.5 – 6 feet (1.7 – 1.8 m) in a greenhouse. Sturdy vines that can easily support being pruned to 2-4 stems.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Highly unique. The shape ranges from plump pears to long, bumpy peppers. The color is a swampy bronze-green base covered in striking burgundy and raspberry stripes. The interior flesh is deep burgundy, extremely dense, jelly-like, and nearly seedless. Average weight is 4 – 6 oz (110 – 170 g).
- 👅 Flavor & Use: Sweet, zesty, and refreshing with a buttery texture. Because of the dense flesh, it slices beautifully (like actual salami) and has an incredibly long shelf life, often lasting well into December.
Cuban Salami. Indeterminate, huge yielder 👋, grew in the greenhouse pruned to 4 stems. Sets fruit great on all stems all the way to the ceiling right up to the end of the season. Fruits are pear-shaped, burgundy-green, striped, average weight 3.9-5.3 oz (110-150 g). Meaty but still juicy, very tasty, sweet and tart.
I don’t know the history of this variety, there’s very little info out there. If anyone knows, please chime in 💌
Edited September 15, 2021 by Svetikk
I grew Cuban Salami outdoors in the dirt in the summer of 2022, seeds from Angelina. Tall plant, pretty sturdy. It was one of the very first to start setting fruit and worked hard until the end of the season. The shape and color (bright raspberry streaks on a swampy green background) are unforgettable. Some fruits had tiny hollow pockets, but the flesh wasn’t dry – it was tender, buttery, with a pleasant taste. Liked it.
Grew it in the greenhouse, indeterminate, very beautiful fruits and very tasty, the flesh is dense. Meaty and sweet. Yield is very good.
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Grew it in the greenhouse, indeterminate, very beautiful fruits and very tasty, the flesh is dense. Meaty and sweet. Yield is very good.
And it stores really well. My tomatoes ran out right around Christmas. I made a Greek salad with my own homegrowns. A few of them were actually this Salami, and surprisingly Wessel’s Purple Pride stored well too, even though my tomatoes started ripening very early and were setting full trusses until October. But the Salami variety is definitely on the late side, at first it ripened just single tomatoes, but by October it was producing en masse.
And it stores really well. My tomatoes ran out right around Christmas…
Man, I have no idea how to store tomatoes. I don’t know why, but mine always spoil, they even counter-ripen poorly for me.
Man, I have no idea how to store tomatoes. I don’t know why, but mine always spoil…
Masha, I keep them in ventilated produce crates out on the enclosed balcony, so they get air from all sides. I set them up that way on purpose. Sometimes a few of them will shrivel up, but at least they rot way less. I toss out any that are starting to spoil immediately so they don’t infect the rest 😁
Well, let me tell you about my Cuban Salami )) Grew it for the first time in 2020, then repeated it the next year. It immediately won the “Surprise of the Season” award 💌
A brilliant new release! A beautiful, tall variety with long pepper-shaped fruits of an unusual color. Fully ripe fruits have a deep burgundy color with multi-colored swirls on the skin. The flesh of ripe fruits is thick, jelly-like, with very few seeds. The taste is sweet, zesty, and refreshing, and it gets much richer when the fruits are fully, dead ripe.
I immediately wanted to know the origin of the variety, where its “legs grow from” so to speak. The collector who sent me the seeds couldn’t clear it up.
It’s highly likely that “Cuban Salami” is the result of an accidental or intentional cross, and that one of the parents is definitely the universally loved “Cuban Pepper-shaped”.
The plant has a strong build, in a hoop house it can reach up to 5.5 feet (1.7 m).
In the second photo, that is NOT sliced red salmon – that’s me gutting the fruits for seeds…
A beautiful, tall variety with long pepper-shaped fruits of an unusual color…
Pepper-shaped fruits? I have a photo of a tomato that grew from a megabloom, but the ones from normal blossoms turned out exactly like the photos posted earlier above. There was no pepper shape to them at all. Cuban Pepper-shaped and Cuban Salami are completely different shapes, the only thing they have in common is the word “Cuban” in the name.
Grew Cuban Salami for the first time. The bush is tall, up to 6 feet (1.8 m), sturdy, I pruned it to two stems. It grew along the wall of the greenhouse in pretty cramped conditions with average lighting. Despite that, it set fruit well, full trusses practically without skipping any blossoms from bottom to top. Large, beautiful, bumpy pepper-shaped tomatoes, green with burgundy streaks and swirls. When the tomato is fully ripe, picking it off the vine is incredibly easy, it practically drops right into your palm with one touch. Weight is 4.2-6 oz (120-170 g). The flesh is a beautiful bright burgundy color, thick walls, few seeds. Good classic tomato flavor.
The Name: Yaroslavna makes a joke in this thread that her gutted tomatoes don’t look like sliced fish. The name “Cuban Salami” perfectly matches the visual of the tomato when sliced horizontally. Because it is so dense, meaty, and has very little seed gel, the deep red and green swirled interior actually looks like a slice of cured salami or smoked meat!The Cross: Yaroslavna mentions a parent variety called Cuban Pepper-shaped (Kubinskiy Pertsevidnyi). This is a very famous, very dark brownish-black paste tomato in the Russian heirloom community. Because “Cuban Salami” shares the exact same dark flesh, dense texture, and tendency to throw pepper shapes, the community consensus is that a grower crossed Cuban Pepper-shaped with a striped green/red variety to create this masterpiece.
