Big Beef Tomato
The 1994 AAS winner that made hybrids respectable with heirloom people, graded by 26 Cornell reviewers as more reliable than delicious, and now quietly replaced on seed racks by a "Plus" version whose own numbers don't match its marketing.
Flavour & performance
The honest verdict
What's great
- Thirty years as the benchmark hybrid beefsteak, 1994 All-America Selections winner
- Heavy, dependable yield that Cornell's grower reviews score above its own flavor
- Broad certified disease package covering verticillium, fusarium, nematodes, and more
- Earlier than most beefsteaks at 73 days despite the fruit size
- Sets fruit reliably in cool or unsettled weather where other beefsteaks sulk
Watch out for
- Flavor is good rather than great, and Cornell reviewers rate taste its weakest trait
- F1 hybrid, so saved seed will not come true
- No spotted wilt resistance in the original, the gap the Plus version was built to fill
- Real plants run 6 to 8 feet and overwhelm standard store-bought cages
- Being replaced by Big Beef Plus, whose retail claims outrun the breeder's own spec sheet
Grow it in your zone
| Trait | Big Beef Tomato | Better Boy | Beefmaster |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Hybrid beefsteak slicer | Hybrid slicer | Hybrid beefsteak |
| Days | 73 | ~75 | ~80 |
| Fruit size | 10 to 12 oz | 12 to 16 oz | 1 to 2 lb |
| Flavor reputation | Balanced, dependable | Good, classic | Mild for its size |
| Disease package | VFFNTA | VFN | VFN |
| AAS award | Yes, 1994 | No | No |
| Save seeds | No, F1 | No, F1 | No, F1 |
The Big Beef tomato has spent thirty years answering one question. What should I plant if I cannot afford a bad year? Since winning the All America Selections award in 1994, it has been the insurance policy of American gardens.
Heirloom loyalists plant it right next to their Brandywines. Big fruit, early for its size, armored against disease, and utterly dependable.
The seed catalogs leave out two things. What it is actually like to eat, and the fact that the original is quietly being replaced. This guide uses Cornell’s grower review data to answer the first question honestly.
It also untangles the Big Beef Plus reformulation. On that one, the breeder’s own spec sheet and the retail catalogs tell two different stories.
What the Big Beef tomato actually is
Big Beef is an F1 hybrid beefsteak from the PetoSeed program that became Seminis. It’s widely credited to the late breeder Colen Wyatt. It won the All America Selections national award in 1994, graded by trial gardens across the country against the standards of the day.
It has anchored the hybrid beefsteak category ever since.
The plant is a vigorous indeterminate on regular leaf foliage. Expect a 6 to 8 foot vine that grows until frost, whatever the compact figures on some plant tags claim. Fruit runs 10 to 12 ounces in most gardens, with a documented range of 8 to 16.
Maturity lands around 73 days from transplant, which is genuinely early for fruit this size. Cornell’s database logs 70 to 75.
One detail from the breeder’s own spec sheet gets smoothed over in retail copy. The fruit is officially a deep oblate shape with a green shoulder. It is not the perfectly round, evenly red globe of the catalog photos.
In practice it picks smooth and handsome. Just don’t be surprised by a little flattening and a shoulder that colors last.
The honest flavor verdict
Every catalog uses the same phrase: old time tomato flavor. The grower record is more interesting. Cornell’s Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners database holds 26 reviews of Big Beef, and the pattern is striking.
Reliability scores 4.3 out of 5 and yield 4.1, while taste sits at 3.8, the lowest of its measured traits. Growers grade this tomato as more dependable than delicious.
Read a decade of individual reviews and the spread is wide. A New York grower called it not far from Brandywine. A Virginia grower agreed the taste compares to heirlooms.
Meanwhile others land on good, not great, or simply okay. One Indianapolis grower captured the consensus perfectly: average overall, with occasional fruits truly exceptional.
The fair summary is a solid classic tomato flavor, balanced between sweet and tart. It rarely wins a taste test outright. People do not grow Big Beef for romance.
They grow it for the heavy crop of handsome, crack resistant slicers it delivers in almost any season. The flavor is easily good enough to be glad about.
The disease package, decoded
The letters behind the name, usually rendered VFFNTA, are most of why this variety exists. They certify resistance to verticillium wilt, both common races of fusarium wilt, root knot nematodes, tobacco mosaic virus, and alternaria stem canker. Gray leaf spot resistance appears in most listings too.
For a gardener whose heirlooms collapse every August, that package is the whole argument.
Retail catalogs render the letters inconsistently, sometimes VFFNT, sometimes VFFNTASt. The breeder’s modern spec sheet uses a different European style code system entirely. The substance is the same.
The one meaningful gap is tomato spotted wilt virus, which the original Big Beef does not resist. That gap is exactly where the story gets current.
Big Beef Plus: an upgrade with an asterisk
Seminis now sells Big Beef Plus, marketed as an even better Big Beef. The pitch: sweeter, deeper red thanks to a crimson gene, and finally resistant to spotted wilt, torrado virus, and fusarium crown rot. Catalogs frame it as pure improvement, and some have begun replacing the original on their racks.
The numbers deserve a closer look. The breeder’s own spec sheet lists the Plus at 75 days against the original’s 73, a two day cost nobody mentions. The same sheet lists Plus fruit at roughly 7.5 to 8.5 ounces, while retail copy promises 9 to 16.
And one catalog advertises the Plus at a sugar reading of 6.2 Brix while the breeder’s sheet says 5.4. In each case the marketing outruns the primary source.
Grower feedback adds its own asterisk. One review on a major seed retailer’s own page reports the original beating the Plus on vigor, fruit size, and pollination reliability. Taste was a wash.
None of this makes the Plus a bad tomato. In spotted wilt country, the new resistance is a real reason to switch. Everywhere else, the original remains the proven article while the replacement earns its record.
The bootleg Big Beef problem
Because it is an F1 hybrid, Big Beef seed must be remade each year from its parent lines. Saved seed splits into a lottery. That has not stopped seed savers from trying.
A stabilized open pollinated version has circulated for years, selected generation by generation to mimic the hybrid.
Veteran growers are blunt about it. An open pollinated line might echo the size, color, and taste. It cannot reproduce the certified disease resistance created by crossing two specific parents.
One longtime forum voice put it flatly: it just is not Big Beef, no way. If you want the real thing, buy the F1 seed. If you want an open pollinated big red slicer, honest ones exist under their own names.
Growing the Big Beef tomato
Starting and transplanting
Start seeds indoors 5 to 6 weeks before your last frost. Transplant once nights hold above 55 F, burying the stem deep. Spacing advice runs from 24 to 36 inches depending on who you ask.
Give it the full yard if you can spare it. This plant fills whatever you allow.
Support, water, and feeding
Plan support for the plant it becomes, not the seedling you set out. Real Big Beefs top 6 foot cages by midsummer, and growers who trust flimsy store cages spend July improvising. A tall heavy stake or a homemade cage of concrete reinforcing mesh handles it.
Water deeply and evenly, at least an inch a week, per our guide to watering tomatoes. Keep lower leaves trimmed a hand’s width off the soil. Feed steadily without overdoing nitrogen, per our guide to fertilizing tomatoes.
The disease package protects the plant, not the schedule; it still appreciates mulch and clean airflow. Container growing is possible but fights the plant’s size; our container guide covers what it takes.
Harvest
First slicers arrive around 73 days from transplant. The plant keeps setting through cool spells that stall other beefsteaks, one of its quietest virtues. Pick at full even red with a slight give.
The fruit resists cracking and concentric scars better than almost any beefsteak its size.
Using Big Beef in the kitchen
This is a fresh slicer first and always. The flesh is meaty without being dry and juicy without flooding the cutting board. A single 10 ounce fruit covers a sandwich properly.
It holds a slice for burgers, layers cleanly into a caprese, and chops into a salsa that does not weep. Canning it is legal but wasteful; paste types do that work cheaper. Big Beef earns its space sliced thick on bread in August.
Big Beef vs Better Boy vs Beefmaster
Against Better Boy, its perennial rival, the contest is close. Growers run side by side trials every summer and still disagree about the winner. Better Boy runs slightly larger and a couple of days later with a shorter VFN resistance list.
Flavor verdicts split house by house. The honest tiebreakers are the AAS award and the longer disease package, both Big Beef’s.
Against Beefmaster, the question is size versus polish. Beefmaster chases one to two pound bragging fruit. It pays with a longer wait, rougher shoulders, and a milder taste.
Big Beef gives up the giant slices in exchange for earlier fruit, cleaner shape, and better balance. Growers wanting a reliable weekly harvest pick Big Beef; growers wanting one enormous sandwich pick Beefmaster.
The verdict
The Big Beef tomato is the definition of a default choice, and that is praise. Thirty years after its AAS award, it still owns the hybrid beefsteak class for dependability. Size, earliness, disease armor, and respectable classic flavor come in one package.
The grower data says plainly what the catalogs won’t: you plant it for the sure thing, not the peak experience.
Pair it with one riskier, better tasting heirloom and you have a complete strategy. And if your rack only offers Big Beef Plus, it will do the same job with extra virus armor, two days later. Give the marketing time to settle down around the breeder’s own numbers.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Big Beef and Big Beef Plus?
Big Beef Plus adds a crimson gene for deeper color. It also adds resistance to spotted wilt, torrado virus, and fusarium crown rot. It runs about two days later, and its retail size and sweetness claims exceed the breeder’s own spec sheet.
Is Big Beef determinate or indeterminate?
Indeterminate. Real plants run 6 to 8 feet, top standard cages by midsummer, and keep producing until frost.
Can I save seeds from Big Beef tomatoes?
No. It is an F1 hybrid, so saved seed will not come true. Stabilized open pollinated imitations exist but lack the certified disease package.
How long does Big Beef take to produce?
About 73 days from transplant, with Cornell logging a 70 to 75 day range. That is early for a beefsteak of this size.
What diseases does Big Beef resist?
Verticillium, both common fusarium races, root knot nematodes, tobacco mosaic virus, alternaria, and gray leaf spot in most listings. The original does not resist tomato spotted wilt virus; the Plus version does.