Freezing Tomatoes

[SQWIB]

Freezing works great. Freeze whole, crushed, diced or quartered in zip loc bags. I don't blanch
You can pull whole tomatoes from the freezer, thaw in a colander and the skins and water will be no problem to remove, then use how you like, sauces, stewed tomatoes as crushed tomatoes in recipes salsa's etc.

Whole tomatoes frozen will look like a jellyfish out of water once thawed, this works great for separating the water and skins, you can save the water for stocks, just put a colander in a bowl and thaw tomatoes in the colander.

Frozen - Roast with your favorite herbs and seal in a vac-seal or ziploc or use a "wide mouth" mason jar to freeze.





Frozen - Roast and freeze with your favorite veggies.




Fresh, Frozen - Use an immersion blender, blender, magic bullet for a quick sauce or tomato soup

Frozen - Dump a huge frozen bag of tomatoes in a dutch oven to make some awesome garden jambalaya.








Fresh - Dehydrate for sun-dried tomatoes (too expensive to buy)








Freeze till the weather gets cool to can sauce or make a ready to eat sauce.








use the scraps in your garden or compost.



Fresh - Dry and use a coffee grinder for a soup and stock thickener, sorry no pic.




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[kath]

I've canned tomato pieces, puree, sauce and paste- love the convenience but hate the heat/work involved. Freezing takes up too much room unless it's cubes of paste and that still requires the heat/work as well as freezer space. Dehydrating works for adding bits to soups/stews which is mostly how I use them now- it's work to peel/deseed them and fill the trays, but it doesn't involve heat since my dehydrator lives in the basement and the final product stores in a jar in the basement, too. This year I'm going to turn some into powder in the Vitamix so it'll take even less space to store and will rehydrate even more quickly when added to whatever I'm cooking.

[Nan6b]

I core them & remove bad spots, then cut them into large pieces (they thaw better than whole tomatoes). Put in a 1 gallon ziplock bag and flatten out the bag so it freezes in a thin shape not a thick blobby thing; they thaw quicker that way. When thawing, you can drain off the clear fluid to use as a flavoring elsewhere. Thaw the tomatoes and run through a food mill to remove seeds & skins. I use the rest to make pasta sauce.

If you get any tomatoes that taste bland, try dehydrating them. Without their water, the taste is concentrated. Yellow Pear tomatoes taste great this way.