Now how the heck did this end up in appliances, LOL!

Yes, unripe.

It is what you do with the bushels of green tomatoes at the end of the season when the first frost is going to hit and kill off all of those tomatoes that haven't yet ripened.

Haha. Frost forecast means a quick run outside to the garden to get all the green tomatoes and peppers to make green tomato relish and fried green tomatoes. Sometimes in the summer I have to have fried ones too.

When we had our garden, we'd make fried green tomatoes using whichever variety of unripe tomatoes we felt like using (I think we found some varieties were a little better than others because they didn't turn mushy when fried???). Of course, in those days we had so many tomatoes coming out of the garden, we could fry up some of the green ones, and still have PLENTY left over for eating in salads, sandwiches, cooking into sauce, and giving away.....sigh. LOL

As everyone has already responded, green tomatoes in fried green tomato recipes are unripe. But there are green tomatoes that are green when ripe, i.e. Green Zebra. We grew this one year and found that the color was a big turnoff for many. Pity, it's a great tomato.

Cheryl